Subj: At the Luckman: Yusef Lateef and Randy Weston
Date: 4/25/01 10:03:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: AField@... (Field, Adele)
LUCKMAN EVENT NOTIFICATION
A Rare Performance at the Luckman
YUSEF LATEEF AND RANDY WESTON IN CONCERT
WITH ADAM RUDOLPH AND ETERNAL WIND
Los Angeles - In a rare West Coast concert appearance, Yusef Lateef and
Randy Weston will perform at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A.,
on Saturday, April 28, at 8:00 p.m. Joining Yusef Lateef will be
composer/percussionist Adam Rudolph and Eternal Wind (Federico Ramos, Ralph
Jones and Charles Moore).
Since the 1950s, research scholar and composer/performer Dr. Yusef Lateef
has been a pioneer in the multicultural expression of "autophysiopsychic"
music - "coming from the physical, spiritual and mental self." He has
recorded over 60 records that creatively, succinctly, and clearly provide a
path for the new generation of "World" composers and musicians. He has
contributed to the legendary groups of Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and
Cannonball Adderly, and led his own ensembles in tours worldwide. Currently
a Five College Professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Dr.
Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria,
Nigeria from 1981 to 1985. "Since my return from Nigeria," he has written,
"I've been experiencing an ongoing dialectic reality in my approach to
melody, rhythm, harmony, form, and aesthetics."
Dr. Lateef has composed for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Augusta,
Georgia Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony of the New World. His
composition, The African-American Epic Suite, was recorded and performed by
the K?ln (Cologne) Radio Orchestra and received its U.S. première by the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1998. Numerous publications to his credit in
both music and literature include "Repository of Musical Scales and
Patterns," and the novella Night in the Garden of Love (Vantage Press). In
concert with Eternal Wind, Dr. Lateef performs on the soprano and tenor
saxophones, shenai, Germanic C and alto flutes, piano, oboe, bamboo flute
and Chinese globular flute.
Eternal Wind co-founder Adam Rudolph is a master percussionist and composer
who has been in the vanguard of the development of cross-cultural
improvisational music for over 20 years. Combining music-making ideas from
around the globe, his compositions weave what he terms "an audio syncretic
musical fabric." Rudolph has performed in concerts throughout the U.S.,
Europe and Brazil with Don Cherry, Jon Hassel and Hassan Hakmoun, among
others. His repertoire of world rhythms come from the Balinese, Cuban,
Ghanaian, Haitian, Hindustani and Moroccan traditions, layered on top of his
strong foundation in American improvisational jazz drumming. While living in
Ghana in 1977, Rudolph met the Gambian griot Foday Musa Suso, with whom he
formed the Mandingo Griot Society in Chicago - the first band to blend
traditional African music with R&B and jazz. Although voted "Percussionist
Deserving Wider Recognition" in a Down Beat International Critics Poll,
Rudolph has "never been interested in trying to showcase technique on the
drum" - his performances are "always in the service of greater spiritual and
emotional expression."
To honor Yusef Lateef's sixty years of performing, Beyond the Sky -
featuring ten compositions by Rudolph and Lateef, three of which were
co-composed - premièred at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in February,
2000. In celebration of Dr. Lateef's 80th birthday, the CD was recorded the
following day, and later released through YAL and Meta Records.
For five decades, pianist/composer Randy Weston has used the 20th century
African Diaspora artform of jazz to manifest a musical free zone that exalts
the spirits, rhythms, hopes, dreams, dignity and beauty of the people who
are "darker than blue." The first musician to connect the dots drawn by
Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo's Afro-Cuban fusions with the ancestral power
points of the Motherland, Weston has transcended time, space, language, and
culture barriers with music that touches the universal human soul.
Randy Weston was born in 1926 in Brooklyn into a musical household. Although
he first picked up the drums, he switched to piano around age fifteen, and
turned professional in 1949. After early apprenticeships with Art Blakey,
Kenny Dorham and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Weston emerged with a mature
sound influenced by Duke, Monk and Nat "King" Cole. In 1955, Down Beat's
annual poll cited him as "Best New Talent" on piano. He hooked up with
Gillespie big band trombonist/arranger Melba Liston in 1958, who became a
crucial element in every major statement from him since. In 1967, an
18-country African tour under the auspices of the State Department led to a
six-year sojourn in Tangier, Morocco. There he ran a club and began three
decades of interaction with the Gnawan musical healers. King Hassan II of
Morocco honored his contributions in a 1998 ceremony.
According to Luckman Fine Arts Complex Director of Music Programming and
Research, flutist James Newton, "Each of these composers, steeped and raised
in the African American improvisational tradition, have expanded their music
into new horizons, with the culture of Africa at the core of that expansion.
The Luckman is honored to present two Grand Masters who have had a major
influence on the shaping of creative composition and improvisation. The
opportunity to hear artists of this caliber on the same night is something
that normally happens only in Japan and Europe."
WHO: Yusef Lateef with Adam Rudolph and Eternal Wind; and Randy Weston
WHEN: Saturday, April 28 at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE: Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Dr.,
Los Angeles
TICKETS: $30/$25 general; discounts available for students, seniors and
groups; Luckman Box Office (323) 343-6600 or TicketMaster (213) 365-3500
PARKING: Convenient on-campus parking $5, directly across from the Luckman
Theatre
INFO: (323) 343-6600
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_______________________________
Sent by:
Adele Field, Director of Marketing
Luckman Fine Arts Complex
Cal State L.A.
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032-8116
323-343-6616 / 323-343-6423 FAX
