Blanchard and Coltrane bands in jazz double-header, April 24
Photos (from top): Terence Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane. Photos courtesy of the artists.
HANOVER, NH—The Hop hosts a powerful jazz double bill on Friday, April 24: superb bands led by five-time
Grammy Award winner and renowned film score and soundtrack composer,
trumpeter Terence Blanchard, one of the great renaissance men of jazz; and
Grammy-nominated saxophonist and fellow Blue Note recording artist, Ravi
Coltrane, a compelling artist making “jazz the way it’s supposed to be: cool,
chaotic and unassuming" (BBC). Coltrane will also lead a jazz master class that
day at 3 pm, in the Hop’s Faulkner Recital Hall, that is free and open to
observers.
Starting as a top-tier jazz trumpeter from New Orleans, Blanchard has gone on
to compose for Broadway, opera and more than 50 films, but remains a
performer "still…overflowing with inspiration" (Los Angeles Times). While the
scoring continues—including one for the new film Black & White, starring Kevin
Costner and Octavia Spencer—Blanchard’s heart remains in performance. “The
thing about being a musician, a performing musician, is the immediacy of
playing with great musicians and the response you get from an audience when
you are moving a direction that you have no control over,” Blanchard told Jazzonline.com. “It is an amazing
ride to be on. There is nothing quite like that in my book.”
Blanchard comes to the Hop with his new quintet, the Terence Blanchard ECollective, which releases its first album this April. The band is made up of
Donald Ramsey (bass), a veteran New Orleans-based sideman; Oscar Seaton
(drums), a highly in-demand session and tour drummer and the must-have
drummer for both Boz Scaggs and Lionel Richie for many years; Charles Altura
(guitar), who has performed and/or recorded with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke,
Ravi Coltrane, Arturo Sandoval, and others, as well as with his own quintet; and
award-winning Cuban-born pianist and composer Fabian Almazan (keyboard,
piano, synths). Together they create what The London Jazz News described as
“old-school fusion with outstanding musicians...The soloing had not just
professional energy but ecstasy too... Overall the focus was not so much on
elaborate compositions, but rather on keeping the pulse and the energy level
high, on producing a sense of progression, a flow, a groove, on sophisticated
interaction between musicians.”
Praised for his music’s “elusive beauty” (DownBeat), and for his “style informed by tradition but not
encumbered by it” (Philadelphia City Paper), saxophonist Ravi Coltrane has, the course of a 20-year career,
worked as a sideman to many and recorded noteworthy albums for himself and others—establishing for
himself a place in music outside of the shadow of his jazz-legend parents John and Alice Coltrane. Said Kevin
Whitehead, jazz critic on NPR’s Fresh Air, Coltrane “has his own ways of bending and inflecting a note,
applying flexible vibrato. Even when his noble sound bears witness to his heritage, Ravi Coltrane can draw on
his father's language and make it his own. On tenor or liquid-mercury soprano sax, Ravi Coltrane is no
nostalgist. He's a musician of his own era.”
Coltrane’s quartet consists of the Cuban-born David Vierelles (piano), who has played often with revered jazz
artists like Steve Coleman and Chris Potter, and leads his own band, Continuum; Douglas Dezron (bass), who
leads his own quintet and is a long-standing member of the Cyrus Chestnut Trio and Papo Vazquez and the
Mighty Pirates; and Johnathan Blake (drums), a Grammy-nominated drummer and composer, who regularly
works with musicians such as Tom Harrell, Oliver Lake, and Russell Malone, as well as with his own group.
While Coltrane had a musical upbringing by his mother and began playing fairly early, he did not start playing
jazz professionally until his 20s, when he played in groups led by Elvin Jones, Steve Coleman and Graham
Haynes. He recorded his first album in 1998 and his sixth and most recent album, Spirit Fiction, in 2012.
Coltrane also leads the effort to restore the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, Long Island, NY and presides over
important reissues of his parents’ recordings and legacy, including a celebration in San Francisco this past fall
of the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane’s 1964 masterwork, A Love Supreme.
The April 24 concert is funded in part by the Class of 1961 Legacy: The American Tradition in Performance
Fund.
Download Word.doc press release and high-resolution photos
CALENDAR LISTINGS:
Terence Blanchard E-Collective and Ravi Coltrane Quartet
Although a prolific composer for film, Broadway and opera, five-time Grammy winner Blanchard remains “a
brass-wielding force of nature” (Los Angeles Times) as a trumpet player and bandleader. He and his honed,
powerful band share the bill with a quartet led by saxophonist Coltrane, whose “quietly adventurous
artistry” (The New York Times) embraces jazz traditions while forging a singular sound.
Friday, April 24, 8 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$25/40/50, Dartmouth students $10, 18 & under $17/19
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
Jazz Master Class with Ravi Coltrane
Saxophonist and bandleader Ravi Coltrane coaches Dartmouth student jazz musicians in this once-in-a-lifetime
master class. Open for all to observe.
Fri, April 24, 3-4:30 pm
Faulkner Recital Hall, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
Free
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2010
* * *
Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing
arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and
the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each
year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students
and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with
outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop
enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the
development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.