Staten Island isn’t considered one of New York City’s swinging boroughs, but for the past 35 years, the Universal Temple of the Arts has successfully presented the longest-running jazz festival in the borough. On Dec. 20, they will celebrate their 36th year with an exceptional program featuring the Joyful Women of Jazz at St. George Theatre (35 Hyatt Street), 7 p.m.–10 p.m.
The Joyful Women of Jazz features four inventive young women with an intent of banishing genre barriers through their own expressive journeys.
Tenor saxophonist, vocalist, and composer Camille Thurman will perform with the Darrell Green Quartet. Her voice flows like moon dust: warm and magical, with scats that swing like bebop melodies, and her bold tenor improvisations are expanding the sphere of predecessors like Jimmy Heath. The alto saxophonist, composer Lakecia Benjamin, with roots in Washington Heights, infuses strong doses of soulful funk in her sound. On her acclaimed album “Pursuance: The Coltranes” (Ropeadope, 2020), she celebrated the Coltrane legacy with a combustion of fiery improvisation.
The harp is still seen as a distant relative in the jazz family, but composer Brandee Younger is revolutionizing the instrument for the digital age. In the spirit of her ancestors Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane, she continues to express the intriguing boundless possibilities offered by the harp. Olatuja is an astounding mezzo-soprano who blends her operatic vocals with a colorful mosaic of blues, gospel, and jazz harmonies.
In New York City, two women play a significant role behind the scenes in the world of jazz: Tracy Hyter-Suffern, executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and Robin Bell-Stevens, director and executive producer of Jazzmobile, who is also based in Harlem. They will both be honored for their years of commitment to presenting jazz pioneers, as well as those artists in the now and still rising. The event will be hosted by author and WBGO jazz radio host Sheila Anderson.
In this society, where jazz has been dominated by patriarchal design, this concert is destined to be an historical moment. These artists, established in their own right, at the front of their music generation, have yet to reach their zenith, but be assured they are comets zooming towards the stratosphere. The upcoming performances of Thurman, Younger, Benjamin, and Olatuja reflect the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, when history was made with the roster of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, and Sarah Vaughan. This, too, will be history in the making — a festival well worth attending!
For information and tickets, call 718-273-5610 or visit www.utasi.org.
The music of saxophonist, composer, and arranger John Zorn exhibits a creativity that defies being compartmentalized. He is an experimentalist from the fenceless mode of avant-gardism, rooted in improvisation that dares to encompass rock, world music, classical, metal, and Jewish music.
Most musicians seek nighttime engagements, but for some years now, Zorn has found an annual home at the historic Village Vanguard, where he will continue his 3 p.m. matinee performance on Dec. 15. Despite the time of day, since most jazzheads are seen as music creatures of the night, his matinees are always sold out with a line trailing around the corner.
For this daytime journey, Zorn will perform with his trusted New Masada Quartet, which he formed in 2019. It features guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Kenny Wollesen.
Zorn’s thought for Masada was to create something positive in the Jewish tradition that might move the concept of Jewish music into the 21st century, similarly to the progression of jazz from its embryonic stages to now. “My initial idea was to write 100 tunes, and then I ended up writing over 200 for the first book and then performed it countless times for years,” he noted in a 2009 interview with KTVU.com. Zorn and New Masada Quartet take audiences on a music excursion that transcends normality. For tickets, visit villagevanguard.com.
Vibraphonist, composer, and educator Jay Hoggard doesn’t play as often as fans would like, but when he does, it should be required attendance for anyone who has yet to experience his engrossing performance. Well, that moment is here: On Dec. 19–21, the Jay Hoggard Quartet will embark on a three-night engagement at Alvin & Friends in the Roscoe Room (14 Memorial Hwy., New Rochelle, N.Y), with a show at 7 p.m.
Hoggard’s quartet features his longtime bandmates over the years: pianist James Weidman, bassist Belden Bullock, and drummer/percussionist Jocelyn Pleasant (Hoggard’s protégé and bandleader of the Lost Tribe).
Hoggard has played in a variety of bands that included some time on the avant garde scene with innovators such as Max Roach, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Sam Rivers, and Oliver Lake, as well as a straight-ahead flow with his good friend Sherry Winston, Dr. Billy Taylor, and Geri Allen. Regardless of the vibraphonist’s repertoire, it is sure to be a stimulating journey.
For reservations, call 914-654-6549 or visit www.alvinandfriendsrestaurant.com/events/.
This week’s column is dedicated to my cousin Marian Dozier, who transitioned on Dec. 6. She was a former staff reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Later in West Palm Beach, Fla., she wrote an online weekly newsletter and produced and hosted a community affairs radio show. She was a great inspiration to me.