Creation Suite: New Compositions for Small Improvising Ensembles.

On Thursday there’s a FREE concert at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center [map] in which the Dave Douglas Quintet (with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, James Genus, and Clarence Penn) perform as well as the 11 participants in the Weill Music Institute Young Artists Workshop.

Friday at Zankel Hall [map] [tickets] is a concert dedicated to the Young Artist original works. Dave, Uri, Clarence will be hanging out and might play a little bit.

Young Artist Workshop participants and players:
Eden Bareket, Baritone Saxophone
Johannes Dickbauer, Violin
Philip Dizack, Trumpet
Sam Harris, Piano
Kristijan Krajncan, Drums
Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Saxophones
Hui-Chun Lin, Cello
Rizpah Lowe, Harp
Nadje Noordhuis, Trumpet
Linda Oh, Bass
Dan Peck, Tuba

In the artist’s own words:

In this concert, you will hear original music written and developed by the players.

In a way, this idea is part of our own tradition—musician-composer-performers coming together to create a program of new music that includes the improvised voices of each player. The jazz tradition is where this concept has most recently flourished, and all the musicians on this stage are certainly educated and influenced by the great jazz musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. But influence is a slippery thing, and you’ll certainly hear shades of all sorts of music on this program. The inclusion of many sources is not approached as eclecticism; rather, it seems to be the natural way that young musicians react to the profusion of musical languages and to the challenges of making personal and powerful music in the current age.

Tradition can be defined as an established method or style. The tradition present in this concert is not so much in the sense of a style, but in the practices of certain kinds of musicians.

Player-composers who improvise tend to learn from one another: writing music for each other to play, learning each other’s practices, listening, exchanging feedback, thinking about what the music means to them and where they fit into it. This music is neither all improvised nor all composed. The amount of improvisation varies from moment to moment and is developed collaboratively by the musicians as part of a charged process that is both intuitive and well considered.

In presenting this original music, the musicians situate themselves in a tradition of creativity—of collaboration, personal investigation, and making the most engaging music in a human and interpersonal context.

Tradition can also be defined as the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. With that transmission, ideas grow and change; new musical forms emerge with each generation. In preparation for this concert, the musicians shared their sense of musical custom and belief in the creation of a new body of work. We are thankful to the Weill Music Institute for giving us this opportunity to find out where tradition will take us next.

-Dave Douglas