God’s Trombones – December 22nd and 23rd, 2016
God’s Trombones is coming back home to Harlem this holiday season. Craig Harris will be performing his powerful musical interpretation of James Weldon Johnson’s Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, published in 1927. The collection of poems that refigure inspirational sermons by itinerant Negro preachers. There will only be two performances December 22nd and December 23rd, 2016.
Musicians
Craig Harris – Trombone
Alfred Patterson – Trombone
Art Baron – Trombone
Joe Daley – Euphonium
Bob Stewart – Tuba
Adam Klipple – Keyboards
Tony Lewis – Drums
Vocalists
LaTanya Hall – Principal/Vocals
Sam McKelton – Vocals – Tenor
Charlotte Small – Vocals – Soprano
Craig Harris, a trombonist, composer and longtime Harlem resident. When Craig Harris exploded onto the jazz scene in 1976, he brought the entire history of the jazz trombone with him. From the growling gutbucket intensity of early New Orleans music through the refined, articulate improvisation of the modern era set forth by J.J. Johnson, into the confrontational expressionism of the ‘60s avant-garde, Craig handled the total vernacular the way a skilled orator utilizes the spoken word. He has performed with a veritable Who’s Who of progressive jazz’s most influential figures, and his projects display both a unique sense of concept and a total command of the sweeping expanse of musical expression. It is those two qualities that have dominated Craig’s past forty years of activity, bringing him far beyond the confines of the jazz world, into the sphere of multimedia and performance art as composer, performer, conceptualist, curator and artistic director.
“Under Harris’s direction, the highly talented performers blended art and spirituality in a way that brought the house down. The experience might best be described as a baptism in glorious sound.”
Daily Challenge – Joan H. Allen
“The audience wasn’t sure if they should holler “amen” or clap: they did both.”
New York Amsterdam News – Ron Scott
Price: $40
House doors open at 7:15p.m.