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Paradise Jazz

Double Bill: Ravi Coltrane – Cosmic Music | Thana Alexa

The Music of John & Alice Coltrane
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Double Bill: Ravi Coltrane – Cosmic Music | Thana Alexa

The Music of John & Alice Coltrane

Sunday, January 22, 2023—8:00pm

Sunday, January 22, 2023—8:00pm
Orchestra Hall
2 hours

PROGRAM UPDATE: The DSO and Terence Blanchard, Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair, are honored to invite pianist Cyrus Chestnut and his trio back to Orchestra Hall to join the already incredible lineup for this Paradise Jazz Series concert.

Critically acclaimed Grammy Award-nominated saxophonist, bandleader, and composer Ravi Coltrane explores the groundbreaking, mystical, and spiritual music of his late parents: the legendary jazz musicians and composers John Coltrane and Detroit native Alice Coltrane.

DownBeat magazine cover artist and fellow Grammy Award nominee Thana Alexa is an extraordinary creative force: an awe-inspiring composer, producer, and vocalist—for whom the voice is both a lyrical and experimental instrument. Her music pushes the boundaries of jazz into new and unexplored territory with deep-seated roots and overtones of contemporary soul and world music.

Artists

Ravi Coltrane

Ravi Coltrane is a critically acclaimed Grammy Award-nominated saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. In the course of a twenty plus year career, Coltrane has worked as a sideman to many, recorded noteworthy albums for himself and others, and founded a prominent independent record label, RKM.

Born in Long Island, the second son of John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane, Ravi was named after Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. He was raised in Los Angeles where his family moved after his father’s death in 1967. His mother, Alice Coltrane, was a significant influence on Ravi and it was he who encouraged Alice to return to performance and the recording studio after a long absence. Subsequently, Ravi produced and played on Alice Coltrane’s powerful Translinear Light which was released in 2004.

Ravi has released six albums as a leader. His latest, Spirit Fiction, was released in June of 2012 for the Blue Note label. Additional credits include performances as well as recordings with Elvin Jones, Terence Blanchard, Kenny Baron, Steve Coleman, McCoy Tyner, Jack DeJohnette, Matt Garrison, Jeff 'Tain' Watts, Geri Allen, Joanne Brackeem, The Blue Note 7, among others. He is a co-leader of the Saxophone Summit with Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman.

Ravi lives in Brooklyn, NY and maintains a fast paced touring, recording, composing, and performance schedule. He leads the effort to restore the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, Long Island thecoltranehome.org and presides over important reissues of his parent’s recordings.

Thana Alexa

vocalist

Surprising is the word that perhaps best describes Grammy Award-nominated and Downbeat cover artist, Thana Alexa, an extraordinarily creative force in music. An awe-inspiring vocalist, composer, arranger, and producer – for whom the voice is both a lyrical and experimental instrument – her music pushes the boundaries of the genre into new and unexplored territory with deep seeded roots in jazz and overtones of contemporary soul and world music.

Her latest album, ONA (self-release, March 2020), which earned her two Grammy Award-nominations (Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best Instrumental Jazz Solo for Regina Carter’s performance), is Alexa’s focus, her mission statement. Translated to "SHE" from her family's native Croatian, ONA was inspired by the cross generational and cross-cultural stories of the immigrant women in her family and evolved into an exploration of the experiences of contemporary women everywhere. Its premise crystalized in 2017 after her attendance at the Women's March on Washington, DC after which she was inspired to learn more about the stories of the women in her own family and the influences that their life experiences have had on her own existence, growth, and sense of freedom. The album speaks to us musically about every facet of womanhood, conveying a message of strength and empowerment.

ONA has spawned more female-focused projects: Alexa, together with Grammy Award-nominated artist, Nicole Zuraitis, and bassist, Julia Adamy, formed SONICA, a trio that fuses electronics, three-part harmonies, electric bass, keyboards, and percussion into their unique original music and arrangements. Their upcoming release  fully produced, mixed and engineered by Alexa  will be out in September 2022 on Outside In Music. Alexa also created the project Founding Mothers of Jazz in conjunction with MusicTalks Concerts to celebrate and honor the powerhouse women who helped build the jazz genre from the ground up, many of whom are not historically recognized for their contributions because of their gender.

During the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown, Alexa made headlines as a co-founder of what Rolling Stone called the first “virtual jazz festival” and fundraising initiative, Live From Our Living Rooms. Over the course of their three series (including a partnership with the DC Jazz Festival to present their FromHome Summer Session), Alexa, together with co-founders Owen Broder and Sirintip, contracted over 120 artists, raised over $140,000, and helped facilitate grants to over 80 US based musicians in need. Live From Our Living Rooms received attention from Rolling StoneForbesThe Wall Street Journal, the Financial Timesthe BBC, and more. Live From Our Living Rooms became an official 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 2021, with Alexa serving as its Executive Director.

Perhaps Alexa’s most important and ongoing collaboration has been with her husband, five-time Grammy Award-winner Antonio Sanchez (composer for the Oscar winning Birdman film and drummer with Pat Metheny for 20 years). Together with his band Migration they have recorded three critically acclaimed albums including the most recent CAM Jazz recording Lines in the Sand, a protest record about the immigrant experience. The group has toured worldwide and electrified audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Alexa also sings lead vocal in Sanchez's newest project, which features the music of 12 guest artists including Trent Reznor, Dave Matthews, Meshell Ndegeocello, Lila Downs, Thana Alexa, and others. The album is set for release on August 26, 2022 under the Warner Germany Music Label.

 

Cyrus Chestnut

Born on January 17, 1963, in Baltimore, MD; son of McDonald (a retired post office employee and church organist) and Flossie (a city social services worker and church choir director), soulful jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut might just be proof positive of the impact that music has on babies in the womb. Either that, or a life in music was simply in his blood. Chestnut's father, a postal employee and the son of a church minister, was the official organist for the local church in Baltimore, Maryland, where Chestnut grew up. Young Chestnut's home was filled with the sounds of the gospel music that his church-going parents played in their home, along with jazz records by artists such as Thelonius Monk and Jimmy Smith. Chestnut has said that the roots of his love of music began there, and to this day, Chestnut's ties to the gospel church remain constant. "Growing up, gospel music was what I heard in the house," Chestnut told DownBeat magazine.

As a boy, Chestnut reached for the piano keys before he could walk, so his father began teaching the earnest three-year-old to play the piano. One of the first songs young Cyrus learned was "Jesus Loves Me." Before long, seven-year-old Cyrus was playing piano in the family church, and by age nine he was promoted to church pianist at Mt. Calvary Star Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Chestnut, who became known for his improvisational skills and unique jazz-gospel and bop style, has credited his abilities to those formative years when he played at church. And while Chestnut's roots in gospel stemmed from his life at home and in the church, his passion for jazz was born not long thereafter. With his two-dollar allowance, young Chestnut purchased his first album, Thelonious Monk's Greatest Hits, simply because he liked the album cover, and thus the young pianist's love of jazz began.

At age nine Chestnut was enrolled in the prep program at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. He later headed to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he earned a degree in jazz composition and arranging. Before graduating from Berklee in 1985, Chestnut had received the Eubie Blake fellowship in 1982, the Oscar Peterson scholarship in 1983, and the Quincy Jones scholarship in 1984. In his free time Chestnut studied the history of music and the work of such masters as pianists Bud Powell, Wynton Kelly, and Hank Jones, and the work of gospel artists Clara Ward, Charles Taylor, and Shirley Caesar. In school he studied classical music, writing and performing. A Warner Jazz website article on Chestnut quoted the New York Times, which described Chestnut as a "highly intelligent improviser with one of the surest senses of swing in jazz."

After graduating from Berklee, Chestnut went on to work with jazz vocalist Jon Hendricks from 1986-88, and trumpeter Terrence Blanchard and saxophonist Donald Harrison from 1988-90, before joining jazz legend Wynton Marsalis in 1991. But Chestnut really cut his teeth in the business when, one day at Berklee, jazz vocalist Betty Carter arrived to perform. When the famous singer found herself without a piano player, the entire auditorium erupted with suggestions for Chestnut to fill in, and he was ushered to the stage. Terrified and nervous, Chestnut took the stage, but when Carter asked him to play Body and Soul in the key of G, Chestnut mistakenly played it in C. "I told myself that someday I would make it up to her," Chestnut told Berklee Today. After a short stint playing aboard a Caribbean cruise ship in 1985 with a band that included Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, and Tommy Flanagan, Chestnut graduated from Berklee. In 1991 Cyrus got his chance to repay Carter when he went on the road for two years as the pianist for the Betty Carter Trio. "She wanted you to create a mode of creating, not re-creating," Chestnut told the Santa Fe New Mexican. He has often said that playing with Carter was a form of graduate school.

For Chestnut, there has always been a deep connection between jazz and God. He believes jazz to be a religious musical genre. "I believe the ability to play music is a gift from God and every time I play, I'm thankful. Every time I sit down to play, for me, is worship and expression," he told Down Beat magazine. Fitting this connection, the title of Chestnut's major label debut album was Revelations, which he released in 1994 at the age of 30. The album was voted Best Jazz Album by the Village Voice and soared on the charts, outselling expectations for piano trio recordings. Prior to that, Chestnut had broken out of his role as an accompanist and band member by forming and leading his own trio. Chestnut's trio recorded two albums on the Japanese label Alfa Jazz, The Nutman Speaks and The Nutman Speaks Again, in 1992. He also recorded Nut in 1992 and Another Direction in 1993, both on Evidence.

In 1994 Chestnut released Dark Before the Dawn for Atlantic Records. "It's a musical story about me. It's about my life experiences, how I felt at the time, my reactions. Life is not one-sided. A lot of different things happen in life," Chestnut told the Philadelphia Inquirer. The album debuted in the sixth spot on the Billboard Jazz Charts. The very next year, Chestnut released the critically acclaimed Earth Stories, for which he composed nine of the CD's eleven tracks.

Chestnut has earned a reputation for his skillful versatility, his ability for blending sounds and for unabashedly bringing gospel into the club performances he gives. And despite his sense of playful showmanship, he takes jazz very seriously and believes that jazz has great staying power. "Just as Bruce Springsteen has that ability to appeal to a mass audience, I have a vision that jazz can do the same. You can't underestimate the power of this music," Chestnut told the St. Petersburg Times.


Throughout his career, Chestnut has worked with an array of artists, including saxophonists James Carter, Donald Harrison and Joe Lovano; trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Freddie Hubbard; jazzman Chick Corea, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and opera singer Kathleen Battle, with whom he tours occasionally since 1995. More recently Chestnut has collaborated with vocalists Vanessa Williams, Anita Baker, Bette Midler, Isaac Hayes, and Brian McKnight. In 2000 he collaborated with Williams, McKnight and the Boys Choir of Harlem on an updated version of Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Chestnut's 2001 release, Soul Food, provided a showcase for his versatility. The album is a blend of jazz, classical, gospel, and R&B. In 2003 Chestnut released You Are My Sunshine on Warner Brothers Records. Prior to that, Chestnut released a solo piano album, Blessed Quietness: Collection of Hymns, Spirituals, and Carols in 1996, and followed with Cyrus Chestnut in 1998.

The New York Daily News once heralded Chestnut as the rightful heir to Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) for All Things Considered, Chestnut remarked, "If I can send one person home after a performance feeling better than when they arrived, then I've done my job, and I sleep good at night." To this day, Chestnut attends church every Sunday, and whenever he can he plays in the local church in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his family. He told CBS News, "If I'm not working, you'll find me in somebody's church." Chestnut continually tours with his trio, playing live at jazz festivals around the world as well as clubs and concert halls. His leadership and prowess as a soloist has also led him to be a first call for the piano chair in many big bands including the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band.

Additional information about Cyrus Chestnut can be found at:
http://www.cyruschestnut.net

Ravi Coltrane Quartet: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

It’s easy to understand why a crowded room fell to a hush. ”

-Chicago Tribune

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