For Immediate Release Contact: Stephanie Janes PR, (617) 419-0445, [email protected] Celebrity Series of Boston Gary Dunning, President and Executive Director Presents Joshua Redman & Brooklyn Rider Saturday, May 19, 2018, 8pm — Berklee Performance Center Joshua Redman high-res photo | Brooklyn Rider high-res photo Joshua Redman video preview | Brooklyn Rider video preview Celebrity Series Press Room (Boston) Celebrity Series of Boston will present Joshua Redman and Brooklyn Rider on Saturday, May 19, 2018, at 8pm at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA. This performance is generously sponsored in part by Donna & Mike Egan, and by Katie & Paul Buttenwieser. Tickets start at $45, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling (617) 482-6661 Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m., or at the Berklee Performance Center Box Office, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA. This performance marks the Celebrity Series debut for both Joshua Redman and Brooklyn Rider first appeared on the Celebrity Series as part of Stave Sessions in 2015 and with singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane in 2016. It was music written by the young American composer Patrick Zimmerli written for Joshua Redman’s trio (Joshua Redman on sax, Scott Colley on bass and Satoshi Takeishi on drums) and Brooklyn Rider. There is a lot of composed music but definitely some jazz improvisation from the jazz side of the ensemble. I find it heady but accessible and quite exciting. The groups have recorded it for an upcoming release on Nonesuch (I believe release date still TBD) and the Boston date is between shows in Princeton and New York. Joshua Redman is one of the most acclaimed and charismatic jazz artists to have emerged in the decade of the 1990s. A gifted tenor saxophonist, Redman is a thoughtful, forward-thinking jazz artist whose robust improvisational style balances a love of the bop tradition with an ear for advanced harmony and playful exploration. Born in Berkeley, California in 1969, Redman grew up in a musical family as the son of respected tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman. Exposed to a wide variety of music from a young age, he first started out playing clarinet before switching to tenor saxophone around age ten. Although he studied music prodigiously throughout his school years, he ultimately graduated from Harvard with a degree in social studies. He had also been accepted at Yale Law School when he decided instead to move to New York City and pursue his musical interests. (more) Celebrity Series of Boston Redman – Brooklyn Rider press release, Page 2 of 3 In 1991, Redman won first place in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and landed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Two years later, he made his solo debut with an eponymous effort, earning his first Grammy nomination in the process. He followed up with 1993's Wish, featuring guitarist Pat Metheny. He then recorded and toured with Chick Corea, after which he returned to his solo work with 1998's Timeless Tales (For Changing Times). Beyond appeared in 2000. In 2001, Redman released Passage of Time, showcasing his quartet with pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. The following year, Elastic arrived in stores and found Redman exploring his electronica and experimental rock influences. In 2005, the saxophonist made the move to Nonesuch and released the Grammy-nominated Momentum, featuring keyboardist Sam Yahel, drummer Brian Blade, and others. Back East followed in 2007, with Compass arriving early in 2009. Redman next appeared on the 2011 debut album from the jazz quartet James Farm. That album was followed in quick succession by his 2013 orchestral album, Walking Shadows, and his 2014 concert album, Trios Live, featuring tracks from two separate performances, one at N.Y.C.'s Jazz Standard and the other at Washington's Blues Alley. A year later, he paired with maverick piano trio the Bad Plus on the collaborative effort The Bad Plus Joshua Redman. The album earned Redman a Grammy nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo for his performance on "Friend or Foe." In 2016, Redman joined pianist and longtime associate Brad Mehldau for the duo album Nearness. It earned them both a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Hailed as “the future of chamber music” (Strings), the veteran string quartet Brooklyn Rider presents eclectic repertoire and gripping performances that continue to draw rave reviews from classical, world, and rock critics alike. NPR credits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” To start the 2017-18 season, Brooklyn Rider releases Spontaneous Symbols in October on Johnny Gandelsman’s In a Circle Records label. The album features new quartet music by Tyondai Braxton, Evan Ziporyn, Paula Matthusen, Kyle Sanna, and Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen. To mark the release the group will tour the northeast, with stops in New York and Boston, performing music from the new album. Works from that recording by Braxton, Ziporyn and Jacobsen were also featured in live performance for Some of a Thousand Words, the ensemble’s recent collaboration with choreographer Brian Brooks and former New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan. An intimate series of duets and solos in which the quartet’s live onstage music is a dynamic and central creative component, Some of a Thousand Words was featured at the 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, before a U.S. tour the following spring, including a week-long run at New York City’s Joyce Theater. This season the quartet reunites with Whelan and Brooks for a second North American tour. They also team up with incomparable banjoist Béla Fleck — with whom they appeared on two different albums, 2017’s Juno Concerto and 2013’s The Impostor — for concerts in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado and Montana. Also in the spring, Brooklyn Rider partners with two instrumentalists who are at the forefront of their respective genres, jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman and Irish fiddle master Martin Hayes. The tours with Redman and Hayes are the product of multi-season collaborations that will continue beyond the spring and will include new recordings with both artists. Balancing these collaborations is a full schedule of quartet performances across the U.S., as well as in the U.K., Sweden, and Germany. During the 2016-17 season, Brooklyn Rider released an album entitled so many things on Naïve Records with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, comprising music by Colin Jacobsen, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Björk, Sting, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello, among others. The group toured material from the album and more with von Otter in the U.S. and Europe, including Celebrity Series of Boston Redman – Brooklyn Rider press release, Page 3 of 3 stops at Carnegie Hall and the Opernhaus Zürich. Additionally, Brooklyn Rider performed Philip Glass’s String Quartet #7, furthering a relationship with the iconic American composer which began with 2011’s much-praised Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass and will continue with the upcoming album release of Glass’s recent quartets on the composer’s Orange Mountain Music label. In 2015, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary project Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and toured 15 specially commissioned works, each inspired by a different artistic muse. Other recording projects include the quartet’s eclectic debut recording in 2008, Passport, followed by Dominant Curve in 2010, Seven Steps in 2012, and A Walking Fire in 2013. In 2016, they released The Fiction Issue with singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, with the title track a Kahane composition that was premiered in 2012 at Carnegie Hall by Kahane, Brooklyn Rider and Shara Worden. A long-standing relationship between Brooklyn Rider and Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor resulted in the much-praised 2008 recording, Silent City. About Celebrity Series of Boston Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. From orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, spoken word, and more, Celebrity Series has been bringing great artists to Boston’s major concert halls for nearly eight decades. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its Arts for All! community programs, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience–on stages, in schools, at home– everywhere. The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Leslie & Howard Appleby, Amy & Joshua Boger, the Barr Foundation, the Boston Cultural Council, The Boston Foundation, the Stephanie L. Brown Foundation, The Catered Affair, Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation, Deloitte LLP, Donna & Mike Egan, Foley & Lardner LLP, the French-US Exchange in Dance, Gabor Garai & Susan Pravda, David & Harriet Griesinger, Zachary Haroutunian and the Garbis & Arminé Barsoumian Charitable Foundation, Paul L. King, the Liberty Mutual Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, Eleanor & Frank Pao, The Peabody Foundation, Melinda & James Rabb, the Cynthia and John S. Reed Foundation, the Royal Little Family Foundation, the Stifler Family Foundation, Mrs. Belinda Herrera Termeer, Michael and Susan Thonis, Tufts Health Plan, Nancy Richmond Winsten, Anonymous, and many others. celebrityseries.org @celebrityseries facebook.com/celebrityseries Celebrity Series Instagram ### .