What is the difference between "art" and an "idea" Jason Moran in performance at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, provoked this harmonic, mysterious and never ending question during the performance at the Long Wharf Theater. Perhaps the location says it all. For what is usually a dramatic space,a venue for the the visual imagination, rather than the auditory signaled to the audience that listening to a Thelonious Monk homage,might be the marketing disguise to lure one into a auditory drama replete with scenes, reprises, encores, pathos, surrender, mystique, annoyance,exhiliration, boredom and pause , all rolled up into a cuban cigar, by way of Jamaica, West Africa,New Orleans ,NYC and back.Was the ostensible paternal gesture to honoring Thelonious Monk really an invitation, once captured inside the proverbial theatrical black box and alluring motif to hear your musical ghosts and to even see them. Like a New Orleans funeral march, or a voodoo ceremony or a West African religion (choose one) mask ceremony, did the musical-play unfold to challenge your memories-passions-likes and dislikes. Was this "concert" a means to engage ,revive and unearth your concerted effort to bury pain, to bury dashed and scattered hope,to remember your daily resurrection, doctrine or no doctrine? We do revive each day and this journey of immersion in sheets of sound, perhaps was designed to enable us to pull off the sheets, to see what was not seen before, to hear what was not heard before to write , what was not written before
(June 23, 2009 at 6pm & 9pm
Jason Moran - IN MY MIND: Monk At Town Hall 1959
DURATION 1 hour 40 minutes
LOCATION Long Wharf Theatre, Mainstage, 222 Sargent Drive
Prodigy pianist, gifted composer, and heir to the tradition of Thelonious Monk, Jason Moran brings his eight-piece band—The Big Bandwagon—for a full-length, original multimedia piece based on Monk’s first show with a big band at Town Hall in 1959. Moran’s creative rereading incorporates live performance, projected video, and recorded music samples to reflect on Monk’s historical legacy.
“One test of good composition is how well it stands up to reinterpretation. This music truly does.” NPR Jazz )
http://www.jasonmoran.com/home.html
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