Festival 2011
Associazione Culturale Crosscurrent, ExB & Akamu are proud to announce the third edition of Crosscurrent international contemporary jazz festival @ (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City from 9th to 11th September 2011. Crosscurrent 3 relies on cultural sponsorship by Anthony Braxton’s TriCentric Foundation, RAI Radio 3 (third channel of italian national public radio), SIdMA (Italian Society of Afroamerican Musicology) and the Municipality of Brescia (Crosscurrent hometown). The festival, in previous editions, has counted on the presence of major international artists as William Parker, Amiri Baraka, Anthony Davis, James Emery, Fabrizio Puglisi, Hamid Drake, Corey Wilkes, Dinamitri Jazz Folklore to name but a few. At last we’re finally ready to show the definitive lineup listed below.
Friday, September 9th
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| 7:00 p.m. | Wayne Horvitz New Quartet (World Premiere) |
| 8:30 p.m. | Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet |
Saturday, September 10th
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| 7:00 p.m. | Dave Burrell, Michael Formanek & Steve Swell (Burrell 71st birthday special project) |
| 8:30 p.m. | Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin |
Sunday, September 11th
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| 6:00 p.m. | Joe McPhee |
| 7:00 p.m. | Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet |
| 9:00 p.m. | Defunkt Millenium |
| 11:00 p.m. | Tyshawn Sorey: “For Kathy Change” |
DAVE BURRELL - MICHAEL FORMANEK - STEVE SWELL (BURRELL 71st BIRTHDAY SPECIAL PROJECT)
Saturday, September 10th, 7:00 p.m.
| Dave Burrell | piano & composition |
| Steve Swell | trombone |
| Michael Formanek | bass |
Pianist and composer Dave Burrell (b. Philadelphia, 1940), artistically shaped in the golden years of free jazz, has developed a highly percussive and syncopated language that derives from the archaic forms of Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson, passing through Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and his contemporaries engaged in deconstructing the traditional jazz piano idiom. Burrell has never fallen into any stylistic categories. He has worked with Marion Brown, Giuseppi Logan, Archie Shepp and Sonny Sharrock, among many others. In the late 1960s, as these associations suggest, he was mostly involved with the avant-garde while retaining an affection for standard jazz and for non-jazz styles as ragtime, calypso and also Indian music. During the eighties he established fruitful partnership with tenor saxophonist David Murray releasing some of the best ever works for duo in jazz history. A special place in his opus resides in Burrell’s interest in opera as it’s admirably shown in La vie de Boheme, an arrangement of Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme and Windward Passages, written in collaboration with swedish-born poet/lyricist Monika Larsson, a work that blends opera voices with jazz soloists, 21-piece orchestra, dancers and chorus . Proving that sometimes truth is the daughter of time, during the last decade Burrell experienced a prodigious revaluation, expecially thanks for the renewed interest in his spectacular songbook, even though he rediscovered the joy for improvisational practice with the finest musicians around. Michael Formanek (b. San Francisco, 1958) is a composer and bass player of exceptional stature. Offering extraordinary flexibility, the plastic sound of his bass is a solid and decisive element in any context. The strong musical culture combined with an encyclopedic knowledge has ensured him enormous prestige, especially among mindful musicians, who often turn to him to add an element of robustness and reliability to their formations. The two great musicians will be accompanied, for the creation of a completely new trio, by trombonist Steve Swell (b. Newark, 1954). Constant presence in the avant-garde jazz from the 1970s is one of the most popular performers of his instrument (awarded in 2008 as a trombone player of the year by the prestigious Jazz Journalists Association). This original special project will celebrate Dave’s 71st birthday.