This event is part of our celebration of B lack History Month\, this year focusing on the arts. We are thrilled to ho st a conversation around Henry Threadgill's latest work\, "Easily Slip Int o Another World: A Life In Music". The program will start with a reading o f selections from the book by the author\, followed by a conversation with coauthor\, and jazz historian Brent Hayes Edwards. This conversation will be followed by a live jazz performance. Don't miss this unique opportunit y to delve into the world of jazz music.
\nThis program sponsored by The DC Public Library Foundation\, and the Anaco stia Community Museum. 50 copies of Easily Slip Into Another World will be donated to select audience members by the DC Public Lib rary Foundation.
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For reasonable accommodations\, p lease contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@d c.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation\, please allow at least seven (7) days notice.
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\nHailed by the \;New York Times \ ;as &ldquo\;perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation\,&r dquo\; Henry Threadgill has been celebrated for over forty years as one of the most original\, forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists in American music. His four-movement work\, \;In for a Penny\, In for a Pound\, received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016\, one of only thr ee jazz compositions to ever be so honored.
\n​A Chicago nati ve\, Mr. Threadgill studied at the city&rsquo\;s American Conservatory of Music\, majoring in composition\, piano\, and flute. A Vietnam veteran\, h e performed with the U.S. Army Concert Band. Mr. Threadgill is an early me mber of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)\, dedicated to the performance of its members&rsquo\; original music. Mr. T hreadgill has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship\, the Aaron Copland Aw ard\, and the Doris Duke Impact Award. \;Down Beat \;magazine&rsqu o\;s International Jazz Critics Poll has five times distinguished him with its Best Composer Award. The Jazz Journalists Association honored him wit h its 2002 Composer of the Year Award and its Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Threadgill has released over thirty critically acclaimed albums.
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\nMr. Threadgill&rsquo\;s orchestral pieces\, 1987&rsquo \;s \;Run Silent\, Run Deep\, Run Loud\, Run \;and 1993&rsquo\;s&n bsp\;Mix for Orchestra \;premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. H is many commissions include Mordine &\; Co. Dance Theater\, Carnegie Ha ll\, the New York Shakespeare Festival\, Talujon Percussion Ensemble\, Jun ge Philharmonic Salzburg Orchestra\, the Biennale di Venezia\, and the Ame rican Composers Orchestra. He has been composer in residence at University of California-Berkeley and the Atlantic Center of the Arts. Through the y ears\, Mr. Threadgill has led\, performed\, and recorded with numerous gro ups\, most recently Zooid and the Double Up Ensemble. In 2015\, a two-day festival at New York&rsquo\;s Harlem Stage celebrated works spanning Mr. T hreadgill&rsquo\;s career performed and reinterpreted by an all-star colle ction of musicians.
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Brent Hayes Edwards is &ldquo\;that rare academic whose work demands atten tion outside of experts in the field\, without sacrificing tone or complex ity\,&rdquo\; the Nation noted in a review of Epistrophies: Jazz and the L iterary Imagination (Harvard University Press\, 2017).
\nThe book&rs quo\;s title nods to Thelonious Monk&rsquo\;s 1941 composition &ldquo\;Epi strophy\,&rdquo\; itself in turn a reference to epistrophe\, a rhetorical device in which the same words are repeated at the end of successive phras es for emphasis and rhythm. Epistrophies takes that heuristic (a musical c omposition finding a structural model in literary form) as a starting poin t for a probing critical meditation on the relationship between jazz and l iterature\, a subject which has long occupied Edwards\, a wide-ranging and accomplished scholar known for his interdisciplinary writing on African d iasporic literature\, music\, black intellectual history\, interwar Paris\ , cultural theory\, experimental poetics\, and translation studies.
\n< p>Edwards is also the author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature\, Tra nslation\, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard\, 2003)\, which studies the links between intellectuals in New York and their Francophone counterparts in Paris during the Harlem Renaissance and the early years o f Né\;gritude. The book was awarded the John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Soci ety for French Historical Studies\, and named a runner-up for the James Ru ssell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association. Other recent projec ts include editing a scholarly edition of Amiable with Big Teeth (Penguin Classics\, 2017)\, a long-lost novel by Harlem Renaissance writer Claude M cKay\; and translating a new edition of Michel Leiris&rsquo\;s 1934 classi c of &ldquo\;surrealist ethnography\,&rdquo\; Phantom Africa (Seagull Book s\, 2017)\, for which he was awarded a 2012 PEN/Heim Translation Grant.\nEdwards was born in Chicago and grew up in Illinois\, Michigan\, Mas sachusetts\, Belgium\, and Washington\, D.C. He earned a B.A. in Literatur e from Yale and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbi a. He taught at Rutgers before returning to Columbia in 2007 to take up hi s current position as Professor of English and Comparative Literature.
\n\;Edwards is at work on three different projects. &ldquo\;Black Radicalism and the Archive&rdquo\; considers the collecting activities of black artists and intellectuals including Arturo Schomburg\, Hubert Harris on\, Ada &ldquo\;Bricktop&rdquo\; Smith\, Alexander Gumby\, and C. L. R. J ames. Edwards describes the book\, an early version of which he presented as Du Bois Lectures at Harvard in 2015\, as an exploration of the larger q uestion of &ldquo\;what it means to consider archival practice &ndash\; a commitment to historical documentation and preservation &ndash\; as an int egral element of political radicalism.&rdquo\;
\n\;Edwards is a lso working on a book-length cultural history of the downtown New York &ld quo\;loft jazz&rdquo\; scene in New York in the 1970s\, when musicians suc h as Ornette Coleman and Sam Rivers opened their own performance spaces in SoHo. And finally\, he is writing a study called &ldquo\;Art of the Lectu re\,&rdquo\; a book project he began during his tenure as a 2015 Guggenhei m Fellow.
\n\;Edwards began his career in the dance world\, and from 1992 to 1996 he co-directed\, choreographed\, and danced in the coll aborative company 8 Lives Dance Collective\, which performed at Jacob&rsqu o\;s Pillow and the Merce Cunningham Studio\, among other venues. He curre ntly resides in Harlem with his family.
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Paul CarrHouston native\, Paul Carr<
/strong>\, known as the Real Jazz Whisperer\, is a saxophonist\, educator\
, and curator.
He has been recognized by:
â– Howard Univers
ity\, his alma-mater\, as a Benny Golson Jazz Master in 2014\,
â
– Montgomery County Maryland as teacher of year in 2015 and\,
â
– The Jazz Journalist Association as a Jazz Hero in 2019.
SaxophonistPaul has released 9 recordings\, many of which reached the top 10 rank ing on the Jazz Week chart. His most recent recording is Paul Carr Legacy Quartet\, featuring the great Bassist Buster Williams\, pianist Bruce Bart h\, and renown drummer Lewis Nash. Paul Carr has performed worldwide inclu ding South America\, Europe\, and the Middle East. He had the great honor of performing at many of President Clintons&rsquo\; private events and for the late King Hussein and Queen Noir of Jordan at their residence in Aqab a\, Jordan. He leads five band configurations: the Paul Carr Quartet that showcases Paul&rsquo\;s traditional jazz recordings\; Paul Carr Legacy Qua rtet\, featuring renown musicians that he admires\; Paul Carr Collective\, wherein Paul collaborates with various musicians to present member origin als and covers arranged by the members\; Carr-Keys\, a collaboration with Paul Carr and Marshall Keys which melds traditional and contemporary jazz styles designed to expand audience appreciation for both styles\; and fina lly the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Orchestra which celebrates the big band.
\nCu
rator
Paul established the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival
(MAJF) in 2010 serving as its Executive and Artistic Director. The MAJF s
howcases national and regional talent and includes a huge jazz education c
omponent. The awe-inspiring Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival is held every Presi
dent&rsquo\;s Day weekend in Rockville\, Maryland where over 3\,000 attend
ees travel from across the nation. Paul also serves as consultant/advisor
to the DC Jazz Festival\, Silver Spring Jazz Festival and True-Blue Jazz F
estival.
Educator
As founder of the Paul
Carr Jazz Academy of Music\, Paul has been a distinguished educator for ch
ildren and young adults\; many of whom have been admitted to and attend pr
estigious institutions such as Juilliard\, Manhattan School of Music\, and
Berklee College of Music. Several of Paul&rsquo\;s private students are s
tars on the jazz scene today including Braxton Cook\, Peter and William An
derson and Jason Marshall\, to name a few. Paul also mentored\, trumpeter
and Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University\, Terell Stafford and al
to saxophonist Bruce Williams. Paul served as Professor and Jazz Band Dire
ctor at Gettysburg College until 2021. He frequently serves as guest condu
ctor and clinician at high school jazz band festivals in the Mid-Atlantic
region from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Paul is currently writing a book to
codify his teaching techniques\, &ldquo\;The Theoryless Approach to Jazz I
mprovisation&rdquo\;. He presented the techniques and philosophies contain
ed in the book at the Jazz Education Network (JEN) Conference in San Diego
to a standing room only crowd and was subsequently asked to present to th
e students at Michigan State University.
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