This spring, Carnegie Hall presents dynamic and innovative jazz programming with two performances in Zankel Hall, featuring saxophonist Donny McCaslin and trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah.
On Saturday, April 1 at 9:00 p.m., Donny McCaslin--known for melding jazz with rock, electronica, and pop genres--brings his intense, high-flying saxophone playing to Zankel Hall, accompanied by his energy-packed electro-acoustic quartet, featuring keyboardist
Jason Lindner, bassist Jonathan Maron, and drummer Zach Danziger. The program will feature songs from McCaslin's latest album,
Beyond Now, a recording dedicated to the late
David Bowie with whom McCaslin collaborated on the pop icon's final album.
Trumpeter and jazz visionary
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah gives a performance onSaturday, May 20, at 9:00 p.m., focused on his musical philosophy and style he calls "stretch music," which encompasses a form of modern, free-flowing, hybrid jazz. On his website, Scott reiterates the concept, "It's true that we are attempting to stretch-not replace-jazz's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic conventions to encompass as many musical forms/languages/cultures as we can." The New
Orleans native is joined by his ensemble featuring some of the finest young musicians in jazz today.
About the Artists
Saxophonist
Donny McCaslin and his band, featured on
David Bowie's
Blackstar, made their debut on the Motéma Music label with the
October 2016 release of
Beyond Now, a highly anticipated album dedicated to Bowie. Recorded nearly three months after Bowie's passing, the project is deeply influenced by their extraordinary experience collaborating with one of the greatest artists of all-time on his final album.
"It was like a dream, except it was something I never could have dreamed of," reflects McCaslin on working hand-in-hand with Bowie on
Blackstar. "
David Bowie was a visionary artist whose generosity, creative spirit, and fearlessness will stay with me the rest of my days.
Beyond Now is dedicated to him and to all who loved him."
The repertoire on
Beyond Now is expansive, comprising two Bowie songs; covers of deadmau5, MUTEMATH, and The Chainsmokers; as well as McCaslin originals, including the title composition, which was inspired by a song McCaslin recorded for
Blackstar that didn't make the album.
With three Grammy Award nominations and 11 albums to his name, McCaslin's path to Bowie and
Beyond Now can be traced back to 2011 with the release of his album
Perpetual Motion, taking on an electric direction for the first time in contrast to his previous acoustic projects. Two subsequent albums-
Casting for Gravity (2012) and
Fast Future (2015) released with his working band-were directly influenced by electronica artists (covering groups such as Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Baths), which netted McCaslin a 2013 Grammy Award nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo.
New
Orleans native Christian Scott, also known as
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, is a two-time Edison Award-winning (2010 and 2012) and Grammy Award nominated trumpeter, composer, producer, and music executive. Scott's Grammy Award nominated international recording debut,
Rewind That, was called "arguably the most remarkable premiere the genre has seen in the last decade" by
Billboard magazine, earning Scott two prominent features on the cover and inclusion in the magazine's list of "Ones to Watch."
In June 2015, Scott established a partnership between his newly formed
Stretch Music label and the lauded Ropeadope Music family. In the fall of 2015, Scott's debut release on
Stretch Music/Ropeadope, titled
Stretch Music, was released along with the first interactive
Stretch Music App offering for a new generation of young improvisers. The recording and the app are set to be deeply impactful statements of the new genre.
Scott is the nephew of jazz innovator and legendary saxophonist,
Donald Harrison, Jr. He began his musical tutelage under the direction of his uncle at the age of thirteen. After graduating from the New
Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 2001, Scott received a full scholarship to Berklee
College of Music, where he earned a degree thirty months later.
Since 2002, Scott has released seven critically acclaimed studio recordings and two live albums. According to NPR, "Christian Scott ushers in new era of jazz." He has been heralded by
JazzTimesmagazine as "the architect of a new commercially viable fusion" and "jazz's young style god." Scott is known for developing the harmonic convention known as the "forecasting cell" and for his use of an un-voiced tone in his playing, emphasizing breath over vibration at the mouthpiece, often referred to as his "whisper technique." Scott is also widely recognized as one of the progenitors of "Stretch Music," a jazz rooted, genre blind musical form that attempts to "stretch" jazz's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic conventions to encompass as many other musical forms, languages, and cultures as possible. His upcoming recording,
Ruler Rebel, is already receiving critical acclaim and will be released on March 31.
