Jazz at Lincoln Center NewsFlash

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SCOTT H. THOMPSON, Jazz at Lincoln Center (212) 258-9807, sthompson@jalc.org

LISTING INFORMATION:
Venue: Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center
Event: Jim Hall Quartet, featuring Greg Osby
Date: February 22-27, 2005
Address: Frederick P. Rose Hall - Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor
Artist Sets: 7:30 & 9:30pm every day / Also 11:30pm Friday & Saturday
After Hours Sets: 11pm Tuesday-Thursday / 12:45am Friday-Saturday
Monday: Monday, February 21: Upstarts! with The Henry Mancini Institute Alumni Big Band
Doors Open: 6pm for 7:30pm set / 9pm for 9:30pm set
Admission: $30 music charge for artist sets / $10 After Hours sets
Student Prices: Sun, Tues, Wed 9:30pm set $15 with valid student ID / After Hours $5 with valid student ID / Upstarts! $10 for students with valid ID
Minimum: $10 tables / $5 bar all shows
Reservations: (212) 258 9595 or www.jalc.org

This Week at Jazz at Lincoln Center's
Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola
The Jim Hall Quartet Featuring Greg Osby
After Hours with guitarist Mark Elf and bassist Ugonna Okegwo

After Hours with Bob Kindred and John DiMartino

(New York, NY) February 22, 2005 - Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola -- located in The House of Swing, Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall – presents one of jazz's most influential guitarists, and one of its most revered musicians, Jim Hall, leading his quartet, featuring the innovative alto saxophonist Greg Osby. Hall will be leading this quartet, also featuring Steve Laspina on bass and Ken Wollesen on drums, in performances of music from his latest recording, Magic Meeting (exclusively available on ArtistShare).

Tuesday, February 22 through Sunday, February 27:
Jim Hall Quartet
Jim Hall (guitar), Greg Osby (alto saxophone), Steve Laspina (bass), Ken Wollesen (drums)

Two full artist sets at 7:30pm & 9:30pm. Additional set on Friday & Saturday at 11:30pm.

Jim Hall is one of jazz's most influential guitarists. At Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, he will be accompanied by a cream of the crop rhythm section and by the adventurous and groundbreaking alto saxophonist, Greg Osby. Jim Hall's latest recording is an ArtistShare project titled Magic Meeting. This CD, available only at www.jimhallmusic.com, was recorded live at the Village Vanguard and features Scott Colley and Lewis Nash. Through Hall's website, audiences can participate, not just by purchasing the new CD, but by getting a glimpse behind the scenes, so to speak, witnessing Jim prepare for a project, meeting the players, hearing the outtakes, and more, enabling him to share with his audience a personal view of his creative process, in addition to the finished product.

Jim Hall, born in Buffalo, NY and educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s. By 1960, Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, and Ron Carter, are legendary. Not only is Jim Hall one of the jazz world's favorite guitarists, but he has also earned critical acclaim for his skills as a composer and arranger. The first formal recognition came in 1997, when Jim won the New York Jazz Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger. His pieces for string, brass, and vocal ensembles can be heard on his Textures and By Arrangement recordings. His original composition, "Quartet Plus Four," a piece for jazz quartet augmented by the Zapolski string quartet, was debuted in Denmark during the concert and ceremony where he was awarded the coveted Jazzpar Prize, and later released on CD. His most recent large-scale composition was a concerto for guitar and orchestra, commissioned by Towson University in Maryland for The First World Guitar Congress, which was debuted in June 2004 with the Baltimore Symphony. The title of the work, "Peace Movement," is indicative of Jim's desire to contribute to world peace through his music. He views music as a way of bonding people together and crossing barriers, be they barriers of geography, ideology, religion, or other discriminations. In accepting the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award in January 2004, he said, "The women and men who have received this award in the past have spread peace and love throughout the world, something that governments might emulate. I am pleased to be one of the peacemakers."

In addition to the recent focus on orchestral and choral composition, Jim remains active as a player, working and recording with a variety of ensembles all around the world. In addition to working with his trio, Jim likes to spice up the mix with various guests. From time to time you might hear Joe Lovano, Greg Osby, the New York Voices, Kenny Barron, Pat Metheny, Slide Hampton, and others, working for a night or two with Jim's groups. In fact, several of these guests can be heard on a live recording entitled Panorama. On occasion, these alliances lead to more intensive collaborative projects such as the Jim Hall & Basses recording featuring Scott Colley, Charlie Haden, Dave Holland, George Mraz, and Christian McBride, and the "Duets" project with Pat Metheny.

Some years ago, Guitar Player magazine quoted Jim as saying "I do feel good about my playing. The instrument keeps me humble. Sometimes I pick it up and it seems to say `No, you can't play today.' I keep at it anyway though." Jim and his wife, Jane, who is both a psychoanalyst and a songwriter, live in New York City's Greenwich Village with their dog, Django.

Jim Hall remembers Dizzy Gillespie:
I was playing in the band on the Merv Griffin show. Bassist Art Davis was in the band as well. Merv had Dizzy as a guest on the show one night, and we never got to have a single rehearsal! Well, Art knew Dizzy well, we all knew him. Everyone knew Dizzy. So Dizzy comes over to the band, on the show, and says, "I want you to play three chords behind me, hold them, and I'll play over them. " He said for us to play any note we wanted and then he just signaled us to come in on the downbeat. He did this three times for the three chords and we ended up playing these crazy sounding chords behind him because everyone was playing anything we wanted like Dizzy said to do. Well it worked out beautifully, it sounded great! We all loved Dizzy. I never heard anyone utter a bad word about him.

Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola offers spectacular views and serves a jazz inspired menu seven days a week through the collaboration between Great Performances and Spoonbread culinary creators. Reservations can be made at 212-258-9595 or via the Jazz at Lincoln Center web site http://www.jalc.org.

Monday, February 21 UPSTARTS!:
7:30 & 9:30pm: The Henry Mancini Institute Alumni Big Band

Hosted by nine-time GRAMMY® Award-winning Producer Phil Ramone and Ginny Mancini, President of the Henry Mancini Institute, the Institute's Alumni Big Band will perform its first public event in New York City. The HMI's Big and Conductor Justin DiCioccio will guide the 16-piece Big Band, which will perform with celebrity guest artists.

DiCiocco also serves as Assistant Dean of the Jazz Division at Manhattan School of Music and Program Director for Carnegie Hall Jazz Education. In addition, he is a consultant to Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he also performs and heads clinics.

As a part of the organization's continuing network of support for its musicians, HMI's Professional Alumni Ensembles perform regularly throughout the U.S. Past appearances have included the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles performing with artists such as Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Shirley Horn, and Monica Mancini.

AFTER HOURS SETS
Tuesday-Saturday, February 22-26 After Hours: After Hours: Mark Elf (guitar), Ugonna Okegwo (bass)

Tuesday-Thursday set starts at 11:30pm; Friday & Saturday set starts at 12:45am.

Guitarist Mark Elf, born in Queens, NY in 1949, has been on the Jazz scene for over 30 years. He has played and or recorded with the jazz giants: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath & the Heath Bros., Wynton Marsalis & Jon Hendricks, just to name a few. His first professional jazz performance occurred around 1971 as a sideman at the Club Barron in Harlem, New York with Gloria Coleman and Etta Jones. This performance was a double bill with the George Benson Quintet. During the 1970s, he toured with Lou Donaldson, Jimmy McGriff, Groove Holmes & Charles Earland and recorded a number of albums with them. He recorded his first album as a sideman with Jimmy McGriff & Groove Holmes in 1973 on the Groove Merchant Record label called Giants of the Organ Come Together. In the late ‘70s, Mark worked with Junior Cook and Bill Hardman in New York City and also recorded with them on the Muse Label. The 1980s found him on tour with Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry and other jazz luminaries, and also recording his first album as a leader, The Mark Elf Trio Volume 1. From 1996 to 2000, all seven of his recordings had finished in the top ten on National Jazz Radio with five of them going to #1 consecutively from 1997 to 2000!

From 1970 to the present, Mark has taught Guitar and theory at independent studios, colleges and universities in the USA and abroad. His clinics are recognized as some of the finest in the world as attested to by Clark Terry who hired Mark to teach at several of his Jazz Camps in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Clark says, "The students love his no nonsense practical approach. He’s a great clinician."

Ugonna Okegwo is one of the most distinctive and sought-after jazz bassists in the world. Critics across the globe have praised him for his rich tone, supple sense of swing, stylistic range and inventiveness. These qualities have not only earned him a place on the bandstand with jazz legends as diverse as Clark Terry, Benny Golson, Pharoah Sanders and Joseph Jarman – they have established him as one of the leading lights of a younger generation redefining jazz for the new century. "He is very individualistic, both in his soloing and accompanying. I love the way he plays in the ensemble," says Tom Harrell, with whom Okegwo has worked for several years. "Ugonna does some really creative things that I haven't heard anyone do with his articulation and timing." Recently, Okegwo expanded his horizons and became a bandleader. In 2002 he took his quartet to Europe and documented the group with a recording entitled UOniverse [Satchmo Jazz]. The material, which consists of his compositions and brilliantly arranged standards, draws from a wide range of influences, including jazz, African, funk, and classical music.

Tuesday, March 1 through Sunday, March 6: Benny Green Trio
Benny Green (piano), Ray Drummond (bass), Rodney Green (drums)

Two full artist sets at 7:30pm & 9:30pm. Additional set on Friday & Saturday at 11:30pm.

Benny Green has managed to combine the styles of Bobby Timmons, Wynton Kelly, Gene Harris and especially Oscar Peterson in his playing to form a style of his own. He grew up in Berkeley, CA and played as a teenager with Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw. After moving to New York, he spent important periods with Betty Carter (1983-1987) and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1987-1989), becoming quite well-known during the latter association. In addition to working with Freddie Hubbard, Green popped up in many bop-oriented settings for a few years before joining Ray Brown's Trio in 1992. At the same time, he has worked with his own trio, which originally included Christian McBride and Carl Allen. When Oscar Peterson was asked in 1992 to name his protégé for a concert, Green was his choice. Benny Green has recorded for Criss Cross and Blue Note in addition to his work with Ray Brown on Telarc and his earlier Blakey dates. Green’s latest recording is Bluebird (Telarc), his second recording with guitarist Russell Malone. The duo take on classic jazz compositions, standards, pop songs, and originals with delightful aplomb.

Monday, February 28 UPSTARTS!:
7:30 & 9:30pm: Juilliard Jazz Ensemble/Ali Jackson Trio

AFTER HOURS SETS Tuesday-Saturday, March 1 through Saturday, March 5
After Hours: Dominick Farinacci (trumpet) with Adam Birnbaum (piano), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), Carmen Intorre (drums)

Tuesday-Thursday set starts at 11pm; Friday & Saturday set starts at 12:30am.

The Henry Mancini Institute Big Band performance February 21, 2005 brought in a crowd of hot performers including: Michel LeGrande and Broadway star Melissa Errico who sang "Little Boy Blue" and "How Do You Keep The Music Playing?". Joe Sample played "Manteca". Legendary composer Pat Williams also joined the festivities. You never know who’s going to show up at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Coming Up At Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola
Bobby Watson & Horizon
Bobby Watson (alto sax), Terell Stafford (trumpet), Ed Simon (piano), Essiet Okon Essiet (bass), Victor Lewis (drums) Tuesday-Sunday, March 8-13

SOUL JAZZ II
Dr. Lonnie Smith (Hammond B-3 organ), Fred Wesley (trombone), Peter Bernstein (guitar, March 15-17), Rodney Jones (guitar, March 18-20), Lenny White (drums) Tuesday-Sunday, March 15-20

Jazz at Lincoln Center is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz. With the world-renowned Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of performance, education, and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio and television programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, advanced training through the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, music publishing, children’s concerts, lectures, adult education courses, film programs, and student and educator workshops. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, President Derek E. Gordon, Chairman of the Board Lisa Schiff and Jazz at Lincoln Center Board and staff, Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce hundreds of events during its 2004-05 season. This is the inaugural season in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home – Frederick P. Rose Hall – the first-ever performance, education, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz.