Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Jazz Bassist Henry Grimes Concert CMU Sept 15 2008

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from DJ Edgar Um:

Monday September 15th at Alumni Concert Hall in the College of Fine Arts
on the CMU campus tcrps productions, the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and WRCT FM present legendary jazz bassist HENRY GRIMES in a solo concert. Henry Grimes will be performing solo bass, violin, poetry (from his recently published first volume of poetry, "Signs Along the Road") and spell-casting. Opening the concert will be solo performances by: BEN OPIE on reed instruments (of CMU School of Music, OPEK and Thoth Trio) MICHAEL JOHNSEN on his home-built analog electronic instruments. and bassist DAVID PELLOW (Director of Jazz Studies at CMU School of Music.) Doors open at 7pm. Concert begins at 7:30pm.Admission is $10 at the door. (There will be a reduced admission with current CMU ID.)


Admission is open to all ages. ALUMNI CONCERT HALL COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS (First Floor) CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY for more information: 412-519-4038 or edgarum@gmail.com

HENRY GRIMES bio: Master jazz musician and poet HENRY GRIMES has played almost 300 concerts in 23 countries (including many festivals) since May of '03, when he made his astonishing return to the music world after 35 years away. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and attended the Mastbaum School and Juilliard. In the '50's and '60's, he came up in the music in playing and touring with Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson and "Bullmoose" Jackson and "Little" Willie John and a number of other great R&B / soul musicians of that era; but drawn to jazz, he went on to play, tour, and record with many great jazz musicians of that era, including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Rev. Frank Wright, and many more. But a trip to the West Coast to work with Al Jarreau and Jon Hendricks went awry, leaving Henry in Los Angeles at the end of the '60's with a broken bass he couldn't pay to repair, so he sold it for a small sum and faded away from the music world. Many years passed with nothing heard from him, as he lived in his tiny rented room in an S.R.O. hotel in downtown Los Angeles, working as a manual laborer, custodian, and maintenance man, and writing many volumes of handwritten poetry. Discovered there by a Georgia social worker and fan in 2002, Henry Grimes was given a bass by William Parker, and after only a few weeks of ferocious woodshedding, Henry made a triumphant return to New York City in May, '03 to play in the Vision Festival. Since then, often working as a leader, he has played, toured, and / or recorded with many of today's music heroes, such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew Lamb, Joe Lovano, David Murray, William Parker, Marc Ribot, Cecil Taylor, and many more. Henry has also given a number of workshops and master classes on major campuses, released several new recordings, made his professional debut on a second instrument, the violin, at the age of 70, has now published the first volume of his poetry, "Signs Along the Road," and has been creating illustrations to accompany his new recordings and publications. He has received many honors in recent years, including four Meet the Composer grants and a grant from the Acadia Foundation. He can be heard on more than 80 recordings on various labels, including Atlantic, Ayler Records, Blue Note, Columbia, ESP-Disk, Impulse!, JazzNewYork Productions, Pi Recordings, Porter Records, Prestige, Riverside, and Verve. Henry Grimes now lives and teaches in New York City. <http://www.henrygrimes.com>. A few press quotes: Henry Grimes is a rare virtuoso without ostentation, an ideal ensemble player of counter-melodies and aggressive rhythms, with a big, true sound... a triumphant return for Grimes and a promise of brilliant music to come. -- John Litweiler, "Chicago Sun-Times" Tonally resplendent bass-playing ... perpetual-motion lines too fast, fleet and harmonically free-ranging to be easily notated. Grimes emerges a poet of his instrument. -- Howard Reich, "Chicago Tribune" If you haven't heard the fantastic news about Henry Grimes's return to the jazz world, I don't know what stone you've been sleeping under! He's been the talk of the town, and I don't just mean New York or Los Angeles, but the jazz community at large has been celebrating his recent rediscovery from not even having played for a good three decades. After a few gigs out West, he made his triumphant return to NYC and showed us all that he is back, and boy is he ever! His arco and pizzicato playing is like a resurrection for bass players the world over.... Welcome back, Mr. Grimes! -- Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor, "All About Jazz"/ New York Henry Grimes, who went from Sonny Rollins to Cecil Taylor to an absence of many decades, showed at the Vision Festival that he's lost none of the verve and technique that established him as one of the key bassists of the late '5Os and '6Os. -- Gary Giddins, "The Village Voice" Henry Grimes's fingers move fluidly about the bridge of the bass. His rapport with the musicians is confident as the band charts a course through some decidedly flexible musical space. His sound full and distinctive, Grimes reappears at a moment when the musical ideals of the free-jazz movement seem of renewed relevance. "Something happened," Grimes told me after the gig.... "Everything that I've strived for came true, with bigger implications for the future." -- Larry Blumenfeld, "The Village Voice" All night I was reading Henry's poems for his first published book, "Signs Along the Road," and I dozed off in my chair and had a dream about Henry. I was looking for a book in my apartment, and he said, "It isn't in there." "Where is it?" "It's underneath." "What? Underneath what?" "Down where things originate, where the formations are," he said matter-of-factly, as if he were telling me what to pick up at the store. "Where mythologies are created." -- musician / journalist / educator Dr. Marc Medwin ("Cadence," "Coda," "All About Jazz," etc.)
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