Eric Hofbauer Quintet at Edward Pickman Concert Hall / Longy School Of Music

On February 15th at 8pm, the Eric Hofbauer Quintet will present a concert entitled Prehistoric Jazz: The Rite & 100 Years of Revolution at The Longy School of Music of Bard College’s Pickman Hall. The concert will feature Hofbauer’s jazz quintet arrangements of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring and the world premiere of Hofbauer’s arrangement of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. Pickman Hall is located at 27 Garden Street Cambridge, MA. Info: 617-876-0956 ext. 1500. The event is free and open to the public.

The program title was inspired by video footage of Leonard Bernstein rehearsing The Rite of Spring in 1987 where he instructs the timpanist to play his part like “prehistoric jazz.” Hofbauer’s quintet arrangements synthesize the most memorable melodic and rhythmic elements from the original scores with jazz improvisation....

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On February 15th at 8pm, the Eric Hofbauer Quintet will present a concert entitled Prehistoric Jazz: The Rite & 100 Years of Revolution at The Longy School of Music of Bard College’s Pickman Hall. The concert will feature Hofbauer’s jazz quintet arrangements of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring and the world premiere of Hofbauer’s arrangement of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. Pickman Hall is located at 27 Garden Street Cambridge, MA. Info: 617-876-0956 ext. 1500. The event is free and open to the public.

The program title was inspired by video footage of Leonard Bernstein rehearsing The Rite of Spring in 1987 where he instructs the timpanist to play his part like “prehistoric jazz.” Hofbauer’s quintet arrangements synthesize the most memorable melodic and rhythmic elements from the original scores with jazz improvisation.

Stravinsky revolutionized the music world in 1913 with his use of extreme dissonance and shocking rhythmic energy. Around the same time, Jazz started to introduce itself and its own shocking rhythmic language to American audiences. Later in the early 1940’s, as Messiaen continued Stravinksy’s dissonant polytonal explorations, Bebop was redefining the harmonic vocabulary of modern jazz in similar directions. Hofbauer’s arrangements take the masterworks off their 20th century pedestals and deconstruct them as vehicles for ensemble dialogue and personal expression. This method of reinterpretation has been a part of the jazz tradition from its inception through the work of Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and even Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream movement.

The quintet features Eric Hofbauer on guitar, Todd Brunel on clarinet and bass clarinet, Jerry Sabatini on trumpet, Junko Fujiwara on cello and Curt Newton on drum set. All of the musicians are accomplished jazz and new music improvisers who also perform in classical and modern music settings.

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