7PM Montclair Public LIbrary & Foundation
Jun 29, 2016
Music for your ears,
Science for your mind.
FREE.
Outdoors.
This ain’t grandma’s jazz. (Although she’s welcome.)
Seed Artists and the Adult School Department of the Montclair Public Library present an evening of adventurous jazz and a journey through the neuroscience of music. Free and open to the public, a summer’s night on the library plaza.
The trio of Pheeroan akLaff (drums), Scott Robinson (reeds, brass, woodwinds, theremin…) and Julian Thayer, Ph.D. (bass), have been pushing the boundaries of jazz for 25 years. Between them, they have recorded and performed with everyone from Ella Fitzgerald, Sting and Vernon Reid to avant-garde icons Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. With the help of three very special guests—Nat Adderley Jr. (piano), Aska Kaneko (violin), Julius Tomkins (guitar)—they will take the audience on a wild musical ride that starts with jazz and ends wherever their collective creativity takes them.
Dr. Thayer, an eminent cognitive scientist at Ohio State University, will intersperse the concert with an engaging discussion of the neuroscience of music and the nature of improvisation.
FuturePresent is the latest Seed Artists project to introduce audiences to boundary-pushing jazz and its vanguard musicians. Like all of Seed’s programming, this concert is intended to enrich the cultural fabric, encourage curiosity, and build community through the arts. And as always, children are welcome.
Seed Artists began presenting children’s music and art programming at the library via the Youth Services Department in May. This is our first collaboration with the Adult School.
The concert is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs and from the Reberta C. and Louis F. Albright Foundation.