Jazz at Lincoln Center announces 2021 Spring Virtual Concert Season
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and guests honor luminaries Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, and Nina Simone; premiere collaboration with acclaimed activist Bryan Stevenson and two commissions by emerging composers; and explore A Love Supreme by John Coltrane
Family Concert: Legacies of Excellence hosted by Catherine Russell
New York, NY (February 2, 2021) – Jazz at Lincoln Center salutes Black History Month and unveils a 2021 Spring Virtual Concert Season designed to illuminate the artistic, social, and historic liberties that were made possible by the pioneering efforts of jazz musicians throughout history.
Since temporarily closing Jazz at Lincoln Center’s performing arts facility, Frederick P. Rose Hall, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has made available a robust, curated daily program of offerings to reach people all over the world and bring the healing power of jazz music into homes and communities.
Jazz at Lincoln Center continues this effort with four unique livestream and pre-recorded concert events from February 20 — June 10, 2021. Three of these new virtual concerts will feature the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and a cohort of master singers, and rising stars representing a broad generational timeline of this unique music.
Tickets for each virtual event and more information are available on jazz.org/spring2021.
On February 20, the family concert Legacies of Excellence featuring host Catherine Russell and emerging artists in jazz will explore concepts of excellence and freedom through music and words for families with school-age children. Legacies of Excellence will stream live from Dizzy’s Club.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and vocalists Melanie Charles, Shenel Johns, and Ashley Pezzotti will perform Voices of Freedom: Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, and Nina Simone live from Rose Theater on March 26. The group will interpret the searingly honest music and lyrics of these four great ladies of American song. Tunes including “Tight,” “Droppin Things,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Backlash Blues” will be supported by new big band arrangements from music director Chris Crenshaw and other JLCO band members.
Freedom, Justice, and Hope, a multi-disciplinary program on May 21, will feature new works by emerging composers Endea Owens and Josh Evans, as well as thematic music specially curated from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library. Josh Evans’s work, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, is a piece informed by the 1919 Elaine Massacre in Hoop Spur, Phillips County, Arkansas. This concert also features the debut of a Jazz at Lincoln Center commission by up-and-coming bassist Endea Owens, who will perform with the orchestra on this evening. The piece, not yet titled, will be inspired by the life and work of Ida B. Wells (1862 – 1931) and her crusade against the lynching and wrongful imprisonment of Black Americans. Bryan Stevenson, the founder and Executive Director of the Montgomery, Alabama-based human rights organization Equal Justice Initiative, will speak at this concert event exploring the subjects of social justice, incarceration, prison reform, and immigration.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will be featured in Coltrane: A Love Supreme live in Rose Theater on June 10. Saxophonist Camille Thurman will be featured as guest soloist with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they perform arrangements of Coltrane works predicated upon concepts of freedom and liberation, both temporal and spiritual.
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER’S 2021 SPRING VIRTUAL CONCERT SEASON
February 20, 2021
Family Concert: Legacies of Excellence
Featuring host Catherine Russell
Livestream performance. Following live premiere, program will be available on demand through February 24.
Vocalist Catherine Russell hosts an extraordinary ensemble of jazz musicians in this concert for families and student audiences. The contributions of iconic jazz artists such as Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald will be explored in a performance demonstrating the icons’ lasting legacies.
March 26, 2021
Voices of Freedom: Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, and Nina Simone
Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis with Melanie Charles, Shenel Johns, and Ashley Pezzotti
Livestream performance. Following live premiere, program will be available on demand through March 31.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and a roster of special guest vocalists will perform songs by some of the most powerful singers and songwriters of the 20th century. Under the music direction of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra trombonist and vocalist Chris Crenshaw, this brand-new program looks back at four great singers whose unapologetically honest art has stood the test of time in its meaning and musicality. Melanie Charles, Shenel Johns, and Ashley Pezzotti — rising star vocalists adept in jazz, blues, folk, and beyond — will lend their unique voices to impassioned new big band charts arranged by Chris Crenshaw and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The repertoire will span decades of songs written by or made famous by Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, and Nina Simone.
May 21, 2021
Freedom, Justice, and Hope
Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Endea Owens, and Special Guest Bryan Stevenson
Pre-recorded performance. Following premiere, program will be available on demand through May 26.
Witness the world premiere of new music by bassist Endea Owens (Jon Batiste’s Stay Human band) — who will be performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis on this evening — and emerging composer/trumpeter Josh Evans. Music Director Wynton Marsalis and Bryan Stevenson — a globally acclaimed activist, public interest lawyer, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative — will create an evening featuring readings, and new and familiar jazz works that consider large, international questions of freedom, social justice, and hope.
June 10, 2021
Coltrane: A Love Supreme
Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis and Camille Thurman
Livestream performance. Following live premiere, program will be available on demand through June 16.
In the final Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis concert of the season, the JLCO will perform a big-band rendition of John Coltrane’s immortal A Love Supreme, as well as a number of Coltrane classics related to freedom. With special guest Camille Thurman, the band will re-introduce listeners to one of the most powerful pieces of music ever created. Universally hailed as a masterpiece, A Love Supreme is a perfectly paced suite of music and a musical embodiment of Coltrane’s complex spirituality. Beyond this most-famous example, Coltrane’s songbook is a rich and diverse body of work. The band will reinterpret a number of his timeless pieces, with an emphasis on the concept of “freedom,” for this rare all-Coltrane Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performance.
Tickets:
Virtual ticket per concert: $20.00
Subscriber Price: $15.00
Member Price: $0 - $15.00
Access to all performances: $80.00
To purchase tickets go to jazz.org.
Each ticket purchase helps support Jazz at Lincoln Center.
To learn more about becoming a member, visit jazz.org/membership.
On the day of the concert premiere, ticket holders will have access to the broadcast through a private password protected webpage link shared via email.
A schedule of livestream performances, family and education programs and more can be found on jazz.org.
Your gift makes a difference. Please support Jazz at Lincoln Center in this challenging time as we continue to entertain, enrich, and expand a global community for jazz through our online learning and social media platforms. To make a contribution, click here.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is presented by the Arnhold Family.
Leadership support for Jazz at Lincoln Center is provided by Jody and John Arnhold, Helen and Robert Appel, Diana and Joe DiMenna, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Major support made possible through America’s Cultural Treasures, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
Generous Support for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s virtual concert season is provided in part by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Support for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s webcasting is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Louise and Leonard Riggio.
Operating Support for Jazz at Lincoln Center is provided in part by The Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ambrose Monell Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Abrams Foundation, Seedlings Foundation and The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.
Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its major corporate partners: Bloomberg Philanthropies, SiriusXM, Con Edison, Entergy, Steinway & Sons, and The Coca-Cola Company.
Jazz at Lincoln Center acknowledges the following supporters of Legacies of Excellence: This program is funded through the generosity of Mica and Ahmet Ertegun.
Leadership support provided in part by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Jacqueline L. Bradley and Clarence Otis, The Boule Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.
Major support provided by the Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Manitou Fund, and Susan and J. Alan Kahn.
Additional support provided by SJS Charitable Trust and Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation.
Jazz at Lincoln Center acknowledges the following supporter of Freedom, Justice, and Hope: Leadership support provided by GRoW @ Annenberg.
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Press Inquiries:
Zooey Tidal Jones
Director, Public Relations and External Communications
Jazz at Lincoln Center
212.258.9821