Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
Charles Tolliver
(Photo: Jimmy Katz)On June 16 at 6:30 p.m. (CDT), the Strata-East All-Stars will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the artist-driven label created by Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell in 1971.
Strata-East@50 will feature Tolliver, Billy Harper, George Cables, Buster Williams and a variety of special guests. The show will be streamed live via Dreamstage from the DiMenna Centre in Manhattan.
“Sadly, Stanley recently passed away, but we will be giving tribute to him as well,” Tolliver said in a fund-raising video for the event. “Strata-East was a miracle endeavor some 50 years in the making. And throughout its storied history, its primary and steadfast goal was, still is and always will be to ensure that there is an avenue by which artist-produced recordings could reach the marketplace for our devoted fans and our new fans.”
The label’s most recent reissue in 2019 was Tolliver’s Right Now…And Then, his first studio session, which he self-funded in 1968, with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Joe Chambers and Gary Bartz. The first recording actually on Strata-East, released back in 1971, was his Music Inc. with Cowell, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Hopps. In between, the label has served as a home for Tolliver’s recorded output, always with a stellar cast in support. For example, in 1975 Tolliver released Impact with an orchestra that included Charles McPherson, George Coleman, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Owens, Cecil McBee, Reggie Workman and James Spaulding.
The label has also released music by everyone from Clifford Jordan, Pharoah Sanders, The Heath Brothers and Charlie Rouse to Max Roach’s M’Boom, James Mtume’s Mtume Umoja Ensemble and James “Plunky” Branch’s Juju.
For tickets and more information to stream the event, go to dreamstage.live/event/strata-east. DB
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
“I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”
Dec 3, 2024 12:52 PM
Stories of major shifts and rebirths among musicians during the past five years are common, from weathering the…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
Dec 12, 2024 1:58 AM
Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
Robertson had a penetrating, pliant sound with a remarkable softness at its center.
Dec 11, 2024 10:34 AM
Herb Robertson, a trumpeter and flugelhornist known for his wide-lens explorations of the avant-garde, died Dec. 10. He…
