The Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2016 validates why New York City is the music entertainment capitol of the world! Nearly a month’s worth of quality music events will take place all over the city. A stimulating array of innovative composers, musicians, and directors.
Trying to choose which event(s) to attend is a fun challenge. One event I am drawn to is Eddie Palmieri‘s Harlem River Drive Revisited which will be a free event on May 20th
In a tribute concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the National Endowment for the Arts will recognize its 2016 class of NEA Jazz Masters the highest honor the U.S. gives to a jazz musician or advocate. The performance will be webcast live, Tonight! on Monday, April 4 at 8 p.m. via arts.gov, Kennedy-Center.org, and broadcast on Sirius XM radio.
The NEA honors four individuals in 2016: vibraphonist, bandleader and educator Gary Burton; musicians’ advocate Wendy Oxenhorn; saxophonist and composer Pharoah Sanders; and saxophonist, composer and educator. Each Jazz Master receives a $25,000 grant.
The concert will be hosted by Jason Moran, pianist and Kennedy Center artistic director for Jazz, and include remarks by Jane Chu, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center; as well as the 2016 NEA Jazz Masters. The concert will feature performances by NEA Jazz Masters Chick Corea, Randy Weston, and Jimmy Heath, as well as Ambrose Akinmusire, Lakecia Benjamin, Billy Harper, Stefon Harris, Justin Kauflin, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Pedrito Martinez, Jason Moran, David Murray, Linda Oh, Karriem Riggins, Roswell Rudd, and Catherine Russell.
With this new class, the NEA has honored 140 great figures in jazz.
I visualize the light at the edge of the world through three unique lens. Light defines our greater purpose as we travel ever towards it.
The first unique lens reveals rich textures of sound swirling in depths of dimensionality. The origin of the light at the edge of the world is an exquisite, ethereal instrumental written and composed by jazz saxophonist, Pharoah Sanders. Santana put me on to this jazz composition when it was included on the Hymns for Peace DVD filmed at Montreux Jazz Festival in 2004.
The video clip features Salvador Santana on piano ably leading an eclectic quartet that features Ravi Coltrane on tenor sax, Benny Rietveld on bass and Dennis Chambers on the drums. Once you connect with this instrumental you will embark upon a special journey.
While the first lens is still open I share a complimentary video of a hoped for documentary about Pharaoh Sanders.
The second lens opens wider to introduce us to worldwide indigenous cultures that have been reported studied, photographed, filmed and documented by the provocative mind of anthropologist, ethnobotanist, Wade Davis.
“The measure of a society is not only what it does, but the quality of its aspirations. – Wade Davis”
Wade Davis authored a book The Light At The Edge Of the World, A Journey Through The Realm of Vanishing Cultures. I happen to own and treasure this book. Again a direct influence from Santana, from the bookshelf of Carlos Santana.
Wade Davis produced, wrote, and hosted Light at the Edge of the World, a four-hour ethnographic documentary series shot in Rapanui, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Nunavut, Greenland, Nepal, and Peru.
Wade Davis is someone you want to listen to speak as well as read his books, study his photographs. You will gain such an appreciation for the preservation of societies, languages, cultures when you listen to his passionate articulations.
Here is Wade Davis talk from TED Ideas Worth Spreading, be ready to deeply educated. altered and changed when you open your mind and heart to indigenous cultures and how we are all one.
The third lens opens to a 1971 movie entitled The Light At The Edge of the World, starring Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner and Samantha Eggar. The movie is based on the adventure work by Jules Verne 1905, The Lighthouse at the End of the World.
I’ll leave the connecting of the dots to these three unique lens about The Light At The Edge of the World to your discretion. Feel free to leave a comment about this blog post and let us know what you see the dots connecting to and why 😉
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