FEB 3-6 | Jazz & Social Justice
Feb 05, 2022
Joe Henderson Lab
PLEASE NOTE:
This page is an archive of a past production
Please visit our calendar for all upcoming SFJAZZ shows.
Original show description below.
JAZZ & SOCIAL JUSTICE WEEK · FEB 3-6
A group of visionary Bay Area artists bring themes of immigration, incarceration and racial inequality into focus during this inspiring week of new works.
ABOUT THIS SHOW
A drummer, educator and bandleader of the first order, San Francisco-raised Jaz Sawyer has worked with many of jazz’s most formidable artists, from Wynton Marsalis, Abbey Lincoln, and George Benson to Bobby Hutcherson, Jacky Terrasson and Dee Dee Bridgewater. He has worked with SFJAZZ as a performer and educator for many years, going back to the SFJAZZ high school program before the inception of the High School All-Stars. In his latest collaboration he joins forces with San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, a spoken-word powerhouse utterly at home in improvisational settings.
Inspired by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal “I Have a Dream” speech, their project is an expanded version of the drums-and-vocals encounter captured on the recent EP One Day, Sawyer’s 20th release on his imprint Pursuance Records. A stirring celebration of the global struggle against all forms of oppression, the interactive work features Sawyer’s original music written for his quartet, a group stocked with undersung Bay Area jazz veterans. The musical setting is an ideal forum for Eisen-Martin, a leading anti-incarceration activist whose latest book, Heaven Is All Goodbyes, was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
A stirring celebration of the global struggle against all forms of oppression, the interactive work features Sawyer’s original music written for his quartet, and Eisen-Martin, a leading anti-incarceration activist whose latest book won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
Mr. Sawyer derive[s] maximum melody from percussion.
The New York Times
Mr. Sawyer derive[s] maximum melody from percussion.
The New York Times
Personnel
Jaz Sawyer drums, percussion
Tongo Eisen-Martin spoken word
Howard Wiley saxophone
Cava Menzies piano
David Ewell bass
Tongo’s poems are places where discourses and vernaculars collide and recombine into new configurations capable of expressing outrage and sorrow and love.
Griffin International Poetry Prize Committee
Personnel
Jaz Sawyer drums, percussion
Tongo Eisen-Martin spoken word
Howard Wiley saxophone
Cava Menzies piano
David Ewell bass
Tongo’s poems are places where discourses and vernaculars collide and recombine into new configurations capable of expressing outrage and sorrow and love.
Griffin International Poetry Prize Committee
Listen
Jaz Sawyer & Wyann Vaughn
Synchronicity
Tongo Eisen-Martin & Chris Peck
Booster
Jaz Sawyer & Wyann Vaughn
Synchronicity
Tongo Eisen-Martin & Chris Peck
Booster
FEB 3-6 | Jazz & Social Justice
FEB 3
Textures, Colors, Tones
Destiny MuhammadFEB 4
Dear Homeland
Diana GamerosFEB 6
American in CAGES Only
Jon Jangtet w/ Paul Flores