FARMINGTON – The UMF Emery Community Arts Center is excited to present a stellar jazz concert by the New York based quintet, Christine Correa Ensemble. “Just You Stand and Listen with Me: Songs of Protest and Resistance,” will be performed in the Emery Performance Space on the University of Maine at Farmington campus on March 7 at 7 p.m.
The event is free and open to the public.
This exceptional musical event features vocalist Christine Correa along with her collaborators Sam Newsome, Michael Sarin, Kim Cass and Andrew Boudreau as they revisit and re-imagine rarely performed compositions by renowned percussionist Max Roach.
Roach (1924-2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer, and a pioneer of bebop. He worked with many famous jazz musicians and is considered one of the most important drummers in history. He would have been celebrating his centennial in 2024.
This music, with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr, is drawn from Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite” and “Percussion Bitter Sweet” recordings of the 1960’s from a period in Roach’s career when he was deeply engaged in the struggle for civil rights and freedoms.
These pieces were created at a specific time in the nation’s history and the music was a reflection of a movement. The musical content and the texts/poems speak truths to the present realities of race relations and politics in America as much as they did in the 1960s.
It is for this reason that Correa has decided to resurrect these pieces and believes that it is highly relevant to recognize and celebrate this music specifically and Max Roach’s contribution to the American cultural landscape and society in general.
Christine Correa, director of the Maine Jazz Camp at UMF since 1994, is a native of Bombay, India. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. After relocating to the U.S. in 1979, she soon became involved in a variety of improvisational contexts. Correa has performed and recorded with artists such as Ran Blake, Steve Lacy and John LaPorta and has appeared at numerous festivals and clubs in the U.S., Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East and India.
She has also been featured on projects by composers Frank Carlberg, Steve Grover, Sam Sadigursky, Nicholas Urie, Guillaume Orti and Laurent Coq. Correa is currently on the faculty at Columbia University’s Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program, Teacher’s College at Columbia University and the New School in New York City.
The Emery Community Arts Center is an innovative, experimental venue for the arts in Western Maine. It is located on Academy St. (between Main St. and High St.) in downtown Farmington. For more information contact Ann Bartges, director of UMF Emery Community Arts Center at ann.bartges@maine.edu or 207-778-7461.
More Information on the Ensemble:
Over the last 30 years, drummer Michael Sarin has been at the center of New York City’s genre-bending jazz and improvised music community. His versatility and musical wit helped forge long associations with forward-looking artists Ben Allison, Frank Carlberg, Thomas Chapin, Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Erik Friedlander, David Krakauer, Myra Melford and Mario Pavone. His unique style and approach to the drum set has been highly sought after by musicians looking to expand the definitions of jazz and improvised music; he can be heard on hundreds of recordings. Sarin performs all over the world – in major and minor festivals, concert halls, famous and infamous, big and small. He is a longtime member of the Maine Jazz Camp, and currently a faculty member at the New York Jazz Workshop.
New York-based saxophonist and composer Sam Newsome often works in the medium of solo saxophone, an approach for which he gained world-wide critical acclaim with his 2009 recording Blue Soliloquy: Solo Works for Soprano Saxophone. This recording received a five-star review in Downbeat magazine. Newsome has also received numerous accolades for his adventurous work, including the 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, along with fellow avant-gardists Peter Brotzmann and John Butcher. He was also nominated for Soprano Saxophonist of the Year by the 2020 Jazz Journalist Association. Newsome leads a trio with Hilliard Greene and Reggie Nicholson. Newsome is currently Director of the Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment at Long Island University.
Canadian pianist Andrew Boudreau is an active member of the North American and international jazz and creative music scenes. In 2019 he was a prizewinner at the Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition. One of eight Canadian musicians to receive the Astral Artist Prize (2013) at the National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Boudreau is also the recipient of the OPUS Prize for Concert of the Year – Jazz and World Music in Quebec (2016). As a soloist, he has been pianist-in-residence at the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA) and at 7132 (Vals, Switzerland). He is on faculty at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY) and Associate of the Royal Conservatory Diploma (Piano Performance) from the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto).
Kim Cass, originally from Bar Harbor, Maine, spent his early life producing solo recordings of upright bass in electronic composed settings, and always striving to develop a unique voice as an improvisational conceptualizer and technical virtuoso. He has worked with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Jason Moran, Matt Mitchell, John Zorn, Matt Maneri, Noah Preminger, Tyshawn Sorey, David Binney, among others. In 2015, he released his self-titled debut recording for solo bass and electronics which received critical acclaim from critics and his peers. He is currently focused on composing for instruments in new ways that stretch rhythmic, technical and harmonic boundaries, resulting in a new album of original music to be released in 2021 featuring pianist Matt Mitchell. Cass is part of the esteemed faculty at The New School in NYC.
