Jazz at Princeton University, helmed by trailblazing saxophonist/composer Rudresh Mahanthappa, returns to live performances on Saturday, November 6 with a concert featuring Mahanthappa’s internationally renowned Hero Trio performing with Princeton’s Small Group I. Other concerts this season include performances by student groups led by faculty members Mahanthappa, Trineice Robinson-Martin, Matthew Parrish and Darcy James Argue. The concerts are free and open to the vaccinated public. For information, go to https://music.princeton.edu/calendar.
“Interfacing with the community via concerts by our renowned faculty and accomplished students has always been an important aspect of Jazz at Princeton,” says Mahanthappa. “I’m excited that we are able to bring it back and offer audiences the joy of attending live performances for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.”
Fall performances include:
Saturday, November 6, 2021 – Jazz Small Group I and Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Hero Trio
One of the top ensembles in jazz, Mahanthappa’s Hero Trio features the saxophone icon with bassist François Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston. Their album Hero Trio, released in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, earned wide acclaim including top spots as one of the best albums of the year in outlets and publications including NPR, Paste, DownBeat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Denver Post. Robert Baird of Qobuz calls the album “a near perfect mix of buoyancy and mastery, a welcome revelation.” John Murph of DownBeat writes: “These tributes burst with so much interpretive ingenuity, sparkling friction and caffeinated improvisational interplay that they demand considerable replay.” Jason Bivins wrote in Dusted that Hero Trio offers “a genuinely expansive, and often thrilling, ride through songs from Mahanthappa’s personal pantheon.…In a year of precious little joy, this is quite simply a jewel of a jazz record.”
Wednesday, December 1 – Jazz Small Group I led by Rudresh Mahanthappa
Mahanthappa leads Princeton’s premiere small jazz ensemble in an energizing and beautiful evening of music.
Thursday, December 2 – Jazz Vocal Collective led by Trineice Robinson-Martin
7:30 pm, Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall. Free and open to the public. For information, call 609-258-9220 or log on to https://music.princeton.edu/events/jazz-vocal-collective-3
Jazz at Princeton University’s Jazz Vocal Collective (JVC), Princeton University's elite small jazz ensemble that features solo voice, will join director Dr. Trineice Robinson-Martin and showcase their original arrangements of classic and contemporary jazz compositions.
Internationally recognized as one of the leading educators in gospel and soul voice training, Dr. Trineice Robinson-Martin specializes in vocal pedagogy and performance practices for contemporary music styles (jazz, pop, gospel, R&B, country, rock, music theater). As the creator of Soul Ingredients®, a methodology for nurturing vocal freedom and authentic musical interpretation and expression, Dr. Robinson-Martin regularly travels nationally and internationally teaching voice, lecturing and giving workshops. She also performs internationally and recently released All Or Nothing, her highly acclaimed debut album as a leader.
Saturday, December 4 – Small Groups X & Z led by Matthew Parrish
The Princeton University Jazz Ensembles X & Z perform under the direction of master bassist Matthew Parrish. Group X evokes the small group tradition of the Art Blakey groups of the 50’s and 60's where improvisation and inspiring interaction are key. The group performs as a septet with several featured trio performances. Group Z is new this year, created in response to the expanding number of excellent student musicians participating in Princeton’s jazz program.
Matthew Parrish is a sought-after performer, arranger, composer, producer, and instructor. Matthew’s warmth in his playing and loyalty to delivering heartfelt, passionate works is apparent in every note, every tune, and every interaction with his fellow musicians. Born in central California, Matthew has performed and recorded with top names in jazz including Regina Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Paquito D’Rivera, Clark Terry, Etta Jones, Orrin Evans, Clark Terry, Dr. Jonnie Smith, Savion Glover, Bill Charlap, Houston Person, and many others. He has recorded over sixty works, including his debut CD Circles (2000) and his most recent recordings with Karine Aguiar.
Monday, December 6 – Small Group A led by Rudresh Mahanthappa
Jazz at Princeton University's Small Group A, directed by Rudresh Mahanthappa, presents an evening of jazz at its most intimate in a showcase of improvisation and inspiring interaction.
Friday, December 10 – Creative Large Ensemble – Led by Darcy James Argue
Hear Jazz at Princeton University’s Creative Large Ensemble led by Darcy James Argue in their first live performance since the start of the pandemic. The ensemble continues to redefine the big band in an innovative program encompassing classic and contemporary repertoire.
Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue has toured nationally and internationally with his 18-piece ensemble, Secret Society. Argue made his mark with his critically acclaimed 2009 debut Infernal Machines. 2013 saw the release of Brooklyn Babylon, which, like Infernal Machines before it, earned the group nominations for both GRAMMY and JUNO Awards. His most recent recording, Real Enemies, released in the fall of 2016, earned a third consecutive GRAMMY nomination. Secret Society maintains a busy touring schedule, with European, Canadian, and South American tours and four appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival. Argue has also toured Australia and New Zealand leading the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra. He has led performances of his music by the WDR Big Band, the Danish Radio Big Band, the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Big Band Palácio das Artes, and the West Point Jazz Knights. Argue has composed works for chamber duo and string quartet, art songs for Newspeak, and created arrangements for the Atlanta Symphony. In 2015, Argue was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and a Doris Duke Artist Award. He has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, the Jazz Gallery, the Manhattan New Music Project, the Jerome Foundation, and BAM, as well as ensembles including the Danish Radio Big Band, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the West Point Jazz Knights, and the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Composers Now, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.
Jazz at Princeton University under the direction of Rudresh Mahanthappa serves to promote this uniquely American music as a contemporary and relevant art form. Our goals are to convey the vast musical and social history of jazz, establish a strong theoretical and stylistic foundation with regard to improvisation and composition, and emphasize the development of individual expression and creativity. Offerings of this program include academic course work, performing ensembles, master classes, private study, and independent projects. Students also have the opportunity to participate in academic courses from the music department curriculum that encourage the study of the historical, social, theoretical, stylistic, and creative issues that pertain to the jazz idiom.
Hailed by Pitchfork as “jaw-dropping… one of the finest saxophonists going,” alto saxophonist, composer and educator Rudresh Mahanthappa is widely known as one of the premier voices in jazz of the 21st century. He has over a dozen albums to his credit, including the acclaimed Bird Calls, which topped many critics’ best-of-year lists for 2015 and was hailed by PopMatters as “complex, rhythmically vital, free in spirit while still criss-crossed with mutating structures.” His most recent release, Hero Trio, was considered to be one of the best jazz albums of 2020 by critics and fans alike. Rudresh has been named alto saxophonist of the year for nine of the last eleven years running in Downbeat Magazine’s International Critics’ Polls (2011-2013, 2015-2018, 2020-1), and for five consecutive years by the Jazz Journalists’ Association (2009-2013) and again in 2016. He won alto saxophonist of the year in the 2015-2018 & 2020 JazzTimes Magazine Critics’ Polls and was named the Village Voice’s "Best Jazz Artist" in 2015. He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, among other honors, and is currently the Anthony H. P. Lee ’79 Director of Jazz at Princeton University.
Born in Trieste, Italy to Indian émigrés in 1971, Mahanthappa was brought up in Boulder, Colorado and gained proficiency playing everything from current pop to Dixieland. He went on to studies at North Texas, Berklee and DePaul University (as well as the Stanford Jazz Workshop) and came to settle in Chicago. Soon after moving to New York in 1997 he formed his own quartet featuring pianist Vijay Iyer. The band recorded an enduring sequence of albums, Black Water, Mother Tongue and Codebook, each highlighting Mahanthappa’s inventive methodologies and deeply personal approach to composition. He and Iyer also formed the duo Raw Materials.
Coming deeper into contact with the Carnatic music of his parents’ native southern India, Mahanthappa partnered in 2008 with fellow altoist Kadri Gopalnath and the Dakshina Ensemble for Kinsmen, garnering wide acclaim. Apti, the first outing by Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition (with Pakistani-born Rez Abbasi on guitar and Dan Weiss on tabla), saw release the same year; Agrima followed nine years later and considerably expanded the trio’s sonic ambitions. In 2020, Rudresh released Hero Trio, an album of “covers” paying tribute to his musical heroes. He also co-led a project celebrating the centenary of Charlie Parker with the blessing of the Parker estate.
Mahanthappa has also worked with Jack DeJohnette, Mark Dresser, Danilo Pérez, Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, the collaborative trios MSG and Mauger, the co-led quintet Dual Identity with fellow altoist Steve Lehman, and another co-led quintet with fellow altoist and Chicago stalwart Bunky Green (Apex). His exploratory guitar-driven quartets on Samdhi and Gamak featured David Gilmore and Dave “Fuze” Fiuczynski, respectively. In 2015 he was commissioned by Ragamala Dance to create Song of the Jasmine for dancers and a hybrid jazz/South Indian ensemble. He was also commissioned by the PRISM Saxophone Quartet to compose a chamber piece, “I Will Not Apologize for My Tone Tonight,” which can be heard on the quartet’s 2015 double-disc release Heritage/Evolution, Volume 1.
Mahanthappa is a Yamaha artist and uses Vandoren reeds exclusively.
