Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Vocalist Andy Bey Dies at 85
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Firehouse 12 will release Xenogenesis Suite: A Tribute To Octavia Butler on April 29, the new studio recording of Chicago-based flutist Nicole Mitchell’s extended composition of the same name. The piece, performed by her group Black Earth Ensemble, was commissioned by Chamber Music America’s New Works Presentation program. It premiered in June 2007 at the 12th annual Vision Festival in New York and was performed again at the Chicago Cultural Center in December. The composition is inspired by the work of Afrofuturist writer Octavia Butler.
“My compositional journey was stimulated by my emotional reaction to Butler’s novel Dawn, rather than the specific events of the story,” Mitchell wrote in the liner notes. “Dawn intimately deals with the condition of fear and our ability to adapt in inhumane circumstances. The process of writing this music allowed me to face the feeling of fear head-on, to enter and explore it.
“Xenogenesis Suite: A Tribute To Octavia Butler represents a new direction for my work as a composer. I purposefully rebelled from my natural attraction to certain compositional devices in an effort to discover new methods of stimulating human emotion. I created the instrumental music as the surrounding alien environment, and used the voice of Mankwe Ndosi to portray the human element. Ndosi represents a sole human, a woman, in the midst of a wondrous and perhaps frightening landscape.”
More info: nicolemitchell.com
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
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