Bill Lowe's Signifyin' Natives at Firehouse 12

Bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe has been a major force in the music world for close to fifty years as a performer, composer, producer, and educator. He has worked with most of the masters of African-American creative music, across all genres and musical cliques, from musical legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Eartha Kitt, and Clark Terry, to the leaders of the avant-garde like Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, and Cecil Taylor, to under-heralded greats like George Russell, James Jabbo Ware and Bill Barron. As an educator, Lowe has taught at several major universities, lectured throughout the world from Cuba to Paris, and mentored countless young musicians....

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Bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe has been a major force in the music world for close to fifty years as a performer, composer, producer, and educator. He has worked with most of the masters of African-American creative music, across all genres and musical cliques, from musical legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Eartha Kitt, and Clark Terry, to the leaders of the avant-garde like Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, and Cecil Taylor, to under-heralded greats like George Russell, James Jabbo Ware and Bill Barron. As an educator, Lowe has taught at several major universities, lectured throughout the world from Cuba to Paris, and mentored countless young musicians.

Signifyin' Natives is an ongoing project of rotating personnel under Lowe's leadership. The band has performed in several interdisciplinary productions, including Ed Bullins' Street Sounds and Lowe's own adaptation of Jean Toomer’s Harlem Renaissance masterpiece, CANE. This iteration of the ensemble, which would tour and record in celebration of Bill's 75th birthday, brings together new and old collaborators from Lowe's long and distinguished career. While there are many decades of history and collaboration between many of the individual musicians, this would be the first tour of the full ensemble.

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