Please join us for unique afternoons of creative music in the African American tradition.
Friday and Saturday, 29 and 30 April, 2:30-5:30 pm - Open Rehearsals at NAMA –
royal hartigan, the blood drum spirit ensemble, and NAMA invite everyone to attend our open rehearsals at NAMA Harlem. We will feature music performance and rehearsal, breaking down our arrangements to share ideas with the community. there will be open discussions throughout, and we welcome questions.
Sunday, 1 May 2022
1 set concert at 3 pm
The New Amsterdam Musical Association (NAMA)
Harlem, New York
Discussions and demonstrations to follow the performance.
Our performance will be a relaxed afternoon featuring playing and interactions among Wes Brown, David Bindman, Richard Harper, and royal in an intimate environment. The NAMA is an historic cultural and educational center in Harlem, New York City, the US, and the world. Please join us for the performance and discussion afterwards.
Donations are in support of the NAMA programs.
We hope to see you at NAMA!
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Author of the books West African Rhythms for Drumset, Dancin’ on the Time, and West African Eve Rhythms for Drumset, royal has spent decades studying and adapting rhythms, songs, and structures from global music traditions. He has lived and worked in Ghana, the Philippines, and China, studying with master artists. He brings the music he has learned into the jazz tradition as a natural extension of the African Diaspora music he has dedicated his life to, first introduced to him by his mother and uncle (he began tap dancing at three years old). royal has met and been inspired by many great artists, including Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Reggie Workman, Archie Shepp, and Sun Ra. He has studied with Lenny McBrowne, Clifford Jarvis, Max Roach, Ed Blackwell, Abraham Adzenyah, and Freeman Donkor, among others. In 1981 royal met Wes Brown and David Bindman, and they have been playing together ever since. Joined by pianist Art Hirahara in 2003, blood drum spirit has performed, given workshops, and collaborated with artists in Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean, and across the U.S.
Bios:
Wes Brown is a bassist, flutist, pianist, composer, drummer, and dancer who has toured the world with legendary pianist Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines, and performed and recorded with numerous artists, including Anthony Davis, Marilyn Crispell, Talking Drums, and the Black Rebels reggae ensemble. His musical experience includes Jazz, Afro-pop, highlife, reggae, blues, and gospel styles. For years Wes taught contrabass and directed the Gospel Choir at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. A long-time member of blood drum spirit, in recent years Wes has traveled with the ensemble to Asia and West Africa presenting examples from his own musical background, learning about local traditions, and sharing human connections.
David Bindman, saxophonist and composer, leads his sextet and has performed and recorded with Kevin Norton, Ehran Elisha, Adam Lane, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, and Talking Drums, among others. He has collaborated on multi-media works with poet Tyrone Henderson and visual artists Quimetta Perle and Malin Abrahamsson. For a decade he co-led the Brooklyn Sax Quartet with Fred Ho, recording The Way of the Saxophone and Far Side of Here. David has self-released two CDs by his sextet, Sunset Park Polyphony (2012) and Ten Billion Versions of Reality (2017). He lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Multi-instrumentalist Richard Harper has recorded on piano with Makanda Ken McIntyre, on trombone with James Jabbo Ware, on baritone horn with Bill Laswell, on both piano and trombone with Fred Ho and as a vocal tenor and on Anthony Braxton’s opus, Trillium E.. Currently he is a member of the Makanda Project and in addition performs with royal hartigan, Bill Lowe, and many other cutting-edge Jazz artists.
In addition to performing, Harper has been musical director for a number of original, off-Broadway, and LORT theater productions. His writing credits include arranging for saxophonist Chico Freeman, Off Broadway for the Late Great Ladies of Blues and Jazz, on television for City of A Cappella, as well as composing his own musical, Worksong, produced at the Harlem Stage. Possessing a Ph.D., Richard Harper has also had an extensive career as a college music professor, including the New School University’s famed Jazz and Contemporary Music Program and residencies throughout the world.
royal hartigan is a drummer, pianist, teacher, and author who has studied, lived, and performed the music of Asia, Africa, Europe, West Asia, and the Americas, as well as African American traditions. He has made a life focusing on the sounds and meaning from world cultures, bringing new concepts to drumset and jazz ensemble interactions, including time cycles and rhythms from India, West Africa, and the gong cultures of the Philippines, China, Korea, and Java. He has adapted these rhythms to drumset in coordinated independence, layers of time, timbral shading, and tonal motion. royal has produced four CDs and appears on over 40 others, many with the late Fred Ho. His books and films have documented the connections among global traditions, West African music, and the African American tradition known as jazz.
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