As part of Women’s History Month, Jazz at Lincoln Center‘s Voices of Freedom, a virtual concert celebrating the iconic women of jazz, streams tomorrow, Friday, March 26, live from Rose Hall, at 7:30 PM ET. Following the virtual live premiere, ticket holders will have access to the stream through March 31, 2021.
Special guest vocalists include Melanie Charles, Shenel Johns and Ashley Pezzotti, who join Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, to pay tribute to the legacies of Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone. The repertoire will span decades of songs written or made famous by these women, including “Strange Fruit,” “Backlash Blues,” “Tight” and “Droppin’ Things.”
The new, big band arrangements are from music director Chris Crenshaw and other Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra band members. By focusing on these four singers, Jazz at Lincoln Center will highlight the music’s continued legacy of change and of challenging accepted norms. Billie Holiday’s genius of Swing Song–small ensemble vocal jazz–gave every subsequent generation of singer a template for vocal mastery, while her embrace of the song “Strange Fruit” demonstrated to musicians the imperative to harness art for social change, regardless of the risk. Betty Carter is a peerless rhythmic genius, a fearless improvisational spirit, and a tireless mentor dedicated to training subsequent generations of artists to become extraordinary musicians and leaders. Abbey Lincoln, throwing off the torch song marketing of her early career assumed extraordinary risk in her embrace of music for Civil Rights; her career portrayed the rise of a vocalist and a composer willing to challenge the status quo with unconventional music in service of the art’s true message. Nina Simone’s relentless quest to explore and understand new styles of music, crossed musical and social boundaries in celebration of Blackness and in defiance of any system that would oppress others.
Virtual ticket per concert: $20.00
Subscriber Price: $15.00
Member Price: $0 – $15.00
Tickets and more information are available on http://jazz.org/VoicesofFreedom
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