2010 Additional Festival Week Events
BeanTown By Tag and By Date
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Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival
The H.5 Collective
Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 7:00 p.m.Cafe 939939 Boylston Street
Boston MA 02115 [Map]
The H.5 CollectiveThe H.5 Collective was born in the late nights of New England Conservatory's dorm life when five friends from all across the country (and even outside of it) decided to give in to their insomnia and jam. It was then that Charles Burchell, Gus Carns, Kimberly Mayo, Parker McAllister, and Aquiles Navarro realized that the ease and fun of their friendship translated to their group sound as well.
All students of jazz at NEC, the H.5 Collective aims to first serve the music's tradition by honoring those that have influenced them most, such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Sarah Vaughan, among many others. However, the band is careful not to turn influence into plain plagiarism, and they tastefully mix the heavy influence of "traditional" jazz with the courage to shirk convention and infuse their own voices into the music of their idols.
With sounds as diverse as New Orleans, New York, Seattle, Panama, and Chicago coming together, the results are always exciting. Burchell keeps the music swinging with his powerful, spring-loaded drumsticks. McAllister holds it down with bass lines that blaze both supportively and creatively. Carns inspires dream-like states with piano work pretty enough to paint; Navarro brings Panamanian fire to his bebop-minded trumpet playing; and Mayo sails on top with the earthy, rich singing that invokes the emotion of vocalists from decades past, while staying true to her young, original voice.
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Lawrence "Larry" Watson: Singing the Mission Statement, with the Alvin Foster Orchestra
Monday, September 27, 2010, 8:15 p.m.Berklee Performance Center136 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston MA 02115 [Map]
Larry WatsonProfessor Larry Watson will present a musical evening of "edutainment," performing original compositions and soulful African American classical music. He will be joined by the Alvin Foster Orchestra, a full orchestra and choir composed of Berklee alumni, faculty, students, and members of the Boston community. It will be an evening of celebration and retrospection honoring the music and the trailblazers of soul, rhythm, gospel, jazz, black arts songs, and contemporary music.
Alvin Foster, a Berklee alumnus, has demonstrated his compositional skills, vocal prowess, and ability to execute several musical styles that are part of the foundation of the Berklee curriculum. Watson has invited Alvin Foster to be the evening's musical director and conductor. Watson, one of Foster's mentors, is inviting several members of the Berklee community to present an evening of music that captures the essence of the Berklee mission statement:
"The mission of Berklee College of Music is to educate, train, and develop students to excel in music as a career."
Alvin has transcribed and composed several string and horn parts to several of my original compositions. The musical selections represent the part of the African diaspora that affirms the fluidity of the traditional definitions currently associated with soul, blues, jazz, contemporary pop, rhythm, and gospel music. The music presented will tap into the tradition characterized by Nina Simone, Sweet Honey and the Rock, Donny Hathaway, the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, and the Sounds of Blackness. The music borrows from all of the traditional categories that popularly define black music and thereby is an authentic homage to the black musical tradition.
$10 general admission
