Event

Lost American JazzBook 2nd Anniversary Concert

Come celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of The Lost American JazzBook, winner of the "Jazz Vocal Album of the Year" from the 14th Annual Independent Music Awards. Hear excerpts from Volume II of the JazzBook, "The Ambassador of Bop".

JazzBook also welcomes special guest artists Tawfic Halaby and Jenay Anolin.

A note from Albert Greenberg, creator and principal composer

"In 2011 Helen Stoltzfus and I began a 4-year project developing The Prepared Table, a performance event based on the post-9/11 wars (blackswanarts.org/table). Two years into the work I began writing what would become the JazzBook. Going back and forth between the two projects gave rise to what I have come to think of as aesthetic schizophrenia. But over time each project has come to influence the other.

"In The Prepared Table Tawfic Halaby sang a Koranic Surah juxtaposed with two jazz horns, and Jenay Anolin alternated between hip hop and ballet to a classical work by Richard Wagner. After working with Tawfic and Jenay, the idea of bringing them into the JazzBook seemed too delectable to pass up. Arabic by its very nature seems naturally suited to jazzthe tonality of the language itself elicits a sense of improvisation and nuance. Hip hop, of course, flows from the same cultural stream as jazz. Given all the crudeness and anger exhibited in so much of our political and cultural life, what better way to celebrate the true artistic richness of todays America. Its what I like to think of as the politics of swellness."