Organization Mission Statement: Ars Nova Workshop (ANW) acts as a facilitator between artists and their audiences, while working to inform, inspire and challenge listeners in order to elevate the role of jazz, improvisation and experimental music in contemporary culture.
Ars Nova Workshop (ANW) is a Philadelphia-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit jazz and experimental music presenting organization. ANW acts as a facilitator between artists and their audiences, while working to inform, inspire, and challenge listeners in order to elevate the role of jazz, improvisation and experimental music in contemporary culture. ANW fervently upholds the jazz/Free Jazz continuums and recognizes the groundbreaking contributions of 20th and 21st century composers, improvisers and emerging artists. ANW seeks to be a vital cultural resource for Philadelphia, where events provide a forum for discourse, emergent trends in contemporary music, and unique forms of cultural exchange.
Founded in 2000, ANW has programmed over 350 unique events in diverse settings, many located in the underserved area of West Philadelphia. Performances have included some of the most significant contributors to jazz and experimental music over the past 50 years such as Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros and Anthony Braxton, in addition to exceptional Philadelphia-based ensembles and emerging artists from around the world. ANW hosted the US debuts of Tomasz Stanko Quartet, Dave Burrell's Full-Blown Trio, the Anthony Braxton Sextet, and Norway's Frode Haltli Quartet. ANW also presented the Philadelphia premiers of such variously unique ensembles such as Dave Douglas' Witness, Billy Martin / G. Calvin Weston Duo (our live performance in now on CD; Amulet Records), Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, and Drew Gress's Spin and Drift, as well as some of the leading names in European improvised music such as Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Paal Nilssen-Love, and Miroslav Vitous. ANW continues to be a driving force in bridging the gap between the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s - presenting musical icons such as Henry Grimes, Sunny Murray, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Dr. Art Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill and John Tchicai-and some of the most innovative musicians and ensembles in creative music today including Zeena Parkins, Tim Berne's Bloodcount, Jenny Scheinman, John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet, and MacArthur fellows Ken Vandermark, George Lewis and John Zorn.
Because of ANW's unique programming and tireless efforts to cultivate a viable community for innovative music in Greater Philadelphia, the organization has been the subject of several articles in the local and national press, including The New York Times. In 2006, ANW received ASCAP's Adventurous Programming Award as well as the organization's fourth Philadelphia City Paper Choice Award. ANW continues to collaborate fruitfully with area organizations and institutions such as International House Philadelphia, Royal Norwegian Consulate, University of Pennsylvania, American Composers Forum, Rosenbach Museum and Library and the Art Sanctuary. Our current season launches new collaborations with the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Painted Bride Art Center, The Crossing Choir, Penn's Department of Music and its Kelly Writers House, where we have presented a valuable opportunity, free of charge, for the audience/community to interact with highly-prestigious jazz critics and academics, historians, and musicians, such as John Szwed, Francis Davis, Gary Giddins and Ashley Kahn.
In our 2005-06 season, ANW experienced increased attendance along with growing acclaim and visibility as we partnered with International House Philadelphia to present our first festival, Ancient to the Future, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the landmark Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. In 2006-07, ANW continued that partnership with Seraphic Light, celebrating John Coltrane's 80th birthday and his astonishing legacy in jazz and explorative music. Both momentous festivals have given our audiences the opportunity to witness legends of the 60s and 70s jazz avant-garde, brought to Philadelphia for the first time in decades-some for the first time ever.
This season, ANW is presenting the Radical Jewish Culture Festival featuring some of the leading names in progressive Jewish music including MacArthur fellow John Zorn, Frank London, and rising stars Anat Fort and Ayelet Rose Gottlieb. This festival has facilitated new partnerships with Kehillah of Center City, National Museum of American Jewish History, Society Hill Synagogue, the Greater Philadelphia Marketing Tourism Corporation, Penn Hillel and Kol Tzedek. In addition, ANW will present the organization's first two commissioned works from composer-instrumentalists Eyvind Kang and Susie Ibarra, and a women improvisers' series, and will facilitate new collaborations between European artists and local musicians.
ANW has curated and sponsored exhibitions including, “Coltrane.”, juxtaposing archival material (including August Blume's previously unreleased 1958 audio interview and listening stations featuring live recordings, courtesy of Impulse Records) with work by contemporary visual artists who, since the 1970s, have executed homages to Coltrane's oeuvre, and “Sun Ra meets Napoleon: Fragments of the Alter-Future”, setting historical materials pertaining to ancient Egypt against objects and artifacts reflecting the work of composer Sun Ra-some on loan from Rutgers University's Jazz Archive-such as original concert fliers, tickets and handcrafted LP covers.
In addition to a rigorous programming schedule, ANW focuses closely on our archive. For more than seven years, ANW has been collecting photographic, video and audio documents, and has professionally recorded concerts to create a resource that will promote greater access to, and facilitate an understanding of, divergent artistic practices while preserving them for history, posterity and educational purposes. These recordings are an invaluable document of many of the world's greatest jazz musicians-several of whom have already passed-and emerging artists, many of whom were in Philadelphia for the first time thanks to ANW. In 2009, ANW anticipates commercially releasing ten archival recordings in partnership with Philadelphia-based High Two Recordings.
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1901 S. 9th Street
