Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Now in its 12th year, Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts national jazz residency program for emerging artists—includes two weeks of intense training in performance, composing, and arranging led by saxophonist Nathan Davis (residency director), bassists Chip Jackson and Michael Bowie, trombonist Curtis Fuller, drummer Winard Harper, pianist George Cables, and vocalist Carmen Lundy. The 2009 graduates will perform three free concerts, culminating events for the Jazz Ahead program, on the Millennium Stage Wednesday, April 1, Thursday, April 2, and Friday, April 3 at 6 p.m. The three Kennedy Center performances will be broadcast live on the Internet at kennedy-center.org/millennium.
Dr. Billy Taylor, Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center, invited the late, great jazz singer Betty Carter to bring her Jazz Ahead program to the Center in 1998. Twenty-nine young artists were selected for the twelfth annual residency by audition application that considered both composition and performance skills. The panel of judges included jazz artists Nathan Davis, Carmen Lundy, Winard Harper, and Curtis Fuller. 2009’s group of participants includes emerging musicians from across the U.S., Australia, and Israel.
Participants include:
Trumpeters: Matthew Jodrell, Wayne Tucker
Trombonists: James Burton III, Melissa Jean
Saxophonists: Caleb Curtis, Steve Lambert, Peter Reardon-Anderson, Will Reardon-Anderson
Guitarists: Larry Brown Jr., Graham Keir
Vocalists: Sarah Charles, Jennifer Ledesna, Lena Seikaly, Sonia Szajnberg
Vibraphonists: Behn Gillece, Benjamin Portner
Hammond B-3 Organist: Eli Sundelson
Pianists: Roy Assaf, Nicolas Hetko, Eric Hirsh, Ben Markley
Bassists: Adam Cote, Kevin Hsieh, Benjamin Leifer, Marcos Varela
Drummers: John Lumpkin, Jimmy Macbride, Jesse Simpson, Clif Wallace II
The Kennedy Center also invites young jazz artists in their teens through their late 20s to apply for the Kennedy Center’s 13th Annual Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency project, March 15-26, 2010. The deadline for the receipt of applications is November 20, 2009. Serious jazz musicians are invited to apply. Eligible candidates must be both composers and performers, proficient in English, and under the age of 30. Each applicant must submit a résumé and an audio recording of his/her own work. A panel of jazz artists, selected by the Kennedy Center, will review applications. The Kennedy Center will provide the residency participants with housing, travel to and from Washington, D.C., and modest honoraria for meal expenses. Alumni who have previously participated in two residencies are ineligible to apply.
Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead application information is available at http://kennedy-center.org/
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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