The New Season Begins:
INEXTINGUISHABLE OAKLAND
Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, 8:00pm
Paramount Theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Allison Miller, Modern Jazz
John Santos, Afro-Latin
Meklit, vocalist, Ethio Jazz
JULIA PERRY A Short Piece for Orchestra
CLAUDE DEBUSSY La Mer
LIVING JAZZ COMMISSIONS
Tickets On Sale Now
John Santos
Seven-time Grammy-nominated percussionist, US Artists Fontanals Fellow, and 2013-2014 SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director, John Santos, is one of the foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music in the world today. Born in San Francisco, California, November 1, 1955, he was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. The fertile musical environment of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his career in a unique way. His studies of Afro-Latin music have included several trips to New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Colombia. He is known for his innovative use of traditional forms and instruments in combination with contemporary music, and has earned much respect and recognition as a prolific performer, composer, teacher, writer, radio programmer, and record/event producer whose career has spanned five decades. He illuminates and illustrates the historical and evolving intersection of Jazz and traditional Afro-Latin music. Learn more about John Santos at https://johnsantosofficial.com/bio.
Description of Piece
Un Levantamiento (An Uprising)
composer: John Santos
arrangers: Saul Sierra, John Santos
Un Levantamiento is an ode to the resilience of Puerto Ricans who have resisted colonial oppression for over 500 years. The composition honors Puerto Rico's indigenous Tainos, enslaved Africans, and working class Criollos whether forced to migrate or endure unacceptable conditions at home. 19th and 20th century rhythmic forms such as the mazurca, danza, seis Fajardeño, and plena are the vehicles to connect this heroic history with our efforts here in Oakland to remain connected to the freedom struggle of our ancestors as we confront our own contemporary struggles with the ongoing effects of colonialism.
Meklit
Meklit Hadero is an Ethiopian-American vocalist, songwriter, and composer, known for her innovative sound and vibrant cultural activism. Her most recent EP, Ethio Blue, was released to rave reviews this past Spring.
Meklit's Ethio-Jazz performances have taken her across the globe, to prestigious venues including Lincoln Center, Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Southbank Centre, as well as to the top of world music charts across the US, Europe and Ethiopia. She is a National Geographic Explorer, a TED Senior Fellow, an inaugural Taproot Fellow, and the winner of the globalFEST Artist Award. Meklit is also the co-founder, host and co-producer of Movement, a podcast, radio series and live show telling stories of music and migration, broadcasting monthly on PRX’s The World to 2.5 million listeners.
Meklit has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and musical legend Pee Wee Ellis. She has been commissioned to create new works by UCLA, Stanford Live, NYU Abu Dhabi, MAP Fund, Creative Work Fund and many more.
A former Chief of Program YBCA, Meklit has been an artist-in-residence at Harvard and NYU, as well as a featured voice in UN Women's theme song. She is the co-founder of the Nile Project, and Meklit’s music and projects have been featured in the New York Times, Vibe Magazine, BBC, CNN, NPR, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, The New Yorker, and many more.
Description of Piece
Tonight, Meklit presents a medley of three songs: Ethio Blue, My Gold, and Stars in Wide Field.
Ethio Blue is a melody for the ancestors, for the ones who birthed the music in the first place, with songs that came from calloused hands. It is written in a haunting and piercing pentatonic scale from the Ethiopian highlands called Tizita Minor. My Gold is a song Meklit wrote for her son. It is sonic love, a poem as protective force, full of the promises that parents make when holding their children tight. Stars in a Wide Field is based on the traditional riddles from Meklit's father's tribe, Kembata. When she first saw translations of these riddles, time stopped, and a way of seeing and feeling the world was revealed.
Riddle: What is the water that you don't drink?
Answer: Tears.
Riddle: What is the journey that never ends?
Answer: Thought.
Riddle: What are the roasted grains, strewn in a wide field?
Answer: The stars
Allison Miller
NYC-based drummer/composer/teacher Allison Miller engages her deep roots in improvisation as a vehicle to explore all music. Described by critics as a Modern Jazz Icon in the Making, Miller won Downbeat’s 67th Annual Critics Poll for “Rising Star Drummer” and JazzTimes’s 2019 Critics Poll for “Best Jazz Drummer.” Boom Tic Boom, Allison’s longtime band, won Jazz Journalists Association’s 2019 award for “Best Mid-Sized Ensemble.” Her composition, Otis Was a Polar Bear, is included on NPR’s list of The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women+. She is also the first recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Commissioning Grant. In January 2020 Miller along with her band, Boom Tic Boom, tap dancer-Claudia Rahardjanoto, and video designer- Todd Winkler premiered this new multimedia suite, In Our Veins, with a seven show tour sponsored by Jazz Touring Network and Mid Atlantic Arts. The project explores multimedia performance as a vital form of knowledge production through the poetic interpretation of historical events and their association with the geography, ecology and flow of specific rivers. Learn More about Allison at allisonmiller.com.
Valley of the Giants (for Eddie Marshall)
Arrangement and Orchestration by Todd Sickafoose
Featured Artist: Allison Miller
Guest Artists: Dayna Stephens
