Ossining’s Inaugural “Seize the Rainbow Jazz Festival” in June to Pay Tribute to Guitarist Sonny Sharrock
Two Nights of Music with Four Different Acts to Perform at the Ossining Elks Club
Ossining, NY – The Ossining Arts Project announced today that the inaugural Seize the Rainbow Jazz Festival will take place on the evenings of Friday and Saturday, June 9 and 10. The event, which will feature four different musical acts performing at the Ossining Elks Club, will pay tribute to the late visionary jazz guitarist-composer Sonny Sharrock, who lived most of his life in Ossining....
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Ossining’s Inaugural “Seize the Rainbow Jazz Festival” in June to Pay Tribute to Guitarist Sonny Sharrock
Two Nights of Music with Four Different Acts to Perform at the Ossining Elks Club
Ossining, NY – The Ossining Arts Project announced today that the inaugural Seize the Rainbow Jazz Festival will take place on the evenings of Friday and Saturday, June 9 and 10. The event, which will feature four different musical acts performing at the Ossining Elks Club, will pay tribute to the late visionary jazz guitarist-composer Sonny Sharrock, who lived most of his life in Ossining.
According to Ted Daniel, a jazz trumpeter and also an Ossining native, “seize the rainbow” was a mantra that Sharrock, a close friend of his, lived by; in 1987 it became the title of one of Sharrock’s recordings.
“Sonny’s music and spirit still live on, of course, but for many of us who were close to him it is important that we help keep his great musical legacy alive,” said Daniel. “We are hoping this jazz festival will bring music lovers together in honor of Sonny Sharrock while also raising awareness of his accomplishments in our community and in the realm of jazz, the Improviser’s Art.”
The double bill on Friday, June 9 at the Elks Club will feature the Corcovado Samba Jazz Trio at 7:30 PM and then Soulphonics at 9 PM. The lineup on Saturday, June 10 includes Charles Compo at 7:30 PM and Sundad with a special guest (shh—it’s Ted Daniel) at 9 PM. Tickets are $15 for one band only, $25 for a one night festival pass and $55 for a two-night festival pass. To purchase tickets, visit the Brown Paper Ticket’s site for this event at ossiningjassfestival.bpt.me.
Born on August 27, 1940, Warren Harding Sharrock, Jr. started out as a singer in his youth, first at the Star of Bethlehem Baptist Church, and then later with an uncle in a doo-wop group. After seeing Miles Davis perform in 1958 he started to play guitar and formed a jazzy R&B band with some Ossining friends. Years later, having established his reputation in the jazz world as an electric guitarist with a singular, unbounded sound—his sonic adventures predated those of Jimi Hendrix and other rock guitar slingers generally thought to be pioneers in feedback distortion as a viable element of music—Sharrock would find himself in the studio with Miles Davis, then working on A Tribute to Jack Johnson. He later took a lengthy hiatus from the music business, working with the mentally disabled and as a chauffeur for a while, but when he returned to the music scene in the late-1980s, the “sweetness and brutality” that erupted from his guitar and in sheets and squalls helped pack the clubs in lower Manhattan.
In the early 1990s, Sharrock and Nick Mottern opened One Station Plaza, a performance space, in Ossining down by the train station. (The venue later moved to Peekskill.) More popular than ever following his work on the soundtrack for Cartoon Network’s “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” program, Sharrock died of heart attack in 1994 at the too young age of 53. In October 2010, South Malcolm Street in Ossining was renamed Sonny Sharrock Way in honor of a musician and native son who, according to his widow, Nettie Sharrock, “was courageous, believed in what he did and brought it to the world.”
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