Generations of Jazz
WHEN: 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 24, 2019
WHERE: Bergenfield Free Public Library, 50 West Clinton Ave., just north of Route 4 in Bergenfield, NJ.
ADMISSION: free and open to the general public
The New Jersey Jazz Society will present Generations of Jazz. The 75-minute program will survey the major developments in jazz history, along with the factors that influenced jazz in earlier decades. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session with members of the audience.
The participants will be:
Keyboardist/educator/author Lewis Porter (right), who founded the jazz history master’s degree program at Rutgers University-Newark. Porter has spent more than four decades teaching, writing about and performing jazz. He is the author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music (University of Michigan Press: 1998) and received a Grammy Award nomination in 1996 for Best Historical Reissue for his role in producing a boxed set of Coltrane’s Atlantic recordings.- Vocalist Judi Silvano, whose latest album, Lessons Learned (Unit Records: 2018), was described as “full of energy and joy” by AllAboutJazz’s Jerome Wilson. Silvano’s voice, he wrote, “is mature, rich and melodic, and she displays it in all sorts of arrangments.” Her husband, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, is heard on two of the tracks.
Bassist Kenny Davis (right), who is a member of the faculty in the Jazz Studies program at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts. Davis has performed with trumpeter Art Farmer, pianist Herbie Hancock and vocalist Dianne Reeves, among others. He was a member of The Tonight Show band from 1999-2002 and was the music arranger for “Tell Me You’ll Wait For Me”, one of the songs on Cassandra Wilson’s Grammy Award-winning 1993 Blue Note album, Blue Light ‘Til Dawn.- Tenor saxophonist Tommy Morimoto, who has performed and recorded with such jazz giants as pianist Dave Brubeck, vocalist Anita O’Day and guitarist Les Paul.
- Drummer Steve Johns, one of the most in-demand drummers on the New York-New Jersey jazz scene. Johns, who can be heard on more than 70 albums, is a member of the jazz faculty at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University.
The New Jersey Jazz Society (www.njjs.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, promotion and preservation of jazz. The Generations of Jazz program is presented in collaboration with the Wells Fargo Bank and Investors Bank Foundations and the Rea Charitable Trust.
