Renaissance is Now: Jazz Appreciation

BAMS Fest and Amazon present season two, episode two of ARTDACITY "Renaissance is Now: Jazz Appreciation."

History has shown, the uprising of a Renaissance is a direct reflection of the time we live in and the experiences we encounter. The Renaissance of the 1920s was most known for reviving and giving birth to the genre of Jazz we’ve learned to love and appreciate. Today, we are experiencing an Arts and Cultural Renaissance which is reflected in the expansion in entrepreneurship, technology, and the arts within our communities.

Our upcoming episode is entitled Renaissance is Now, in which we will celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month by exploring the current cultural and artistic renaissance emerging out of the social justice movement of the 2020s, mirroring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. We will explore the question, why are new and mixed forms of art booming in this decade and how is it shaping the social, political, and cultural landscape today?

Moderator

Amanda Shea | Multidisciplinary Artist 

A multidisciplinary artist residing in Boston, she has performed spoken word poetry at numerous venues throughout Boston, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art. She served as an official host for the 2018 and 2019 Boston Art & Music Soul Festival and the 2019 Arts Equity Summit. She serves as a radio host on Live Free or Die Radio. Shea traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the Peace Institute and the National Press Club in February 2020. Shea was recently named one of WBUR The Artery Top 25 artists transforming the cultural landscape.

Panelists:

Dzidzor | Performance Poet, Educator, Curator & Storyteller

Dzidzor (Jee-Jaw) is a Ghanian- American folklore, performing artist, author, and curator. Dzidzor’s style of call and response has combined traditional storytelling in Afro-folklore and Poetry Slam through a sonic experience. Dzidzor is moved by the responsibility to alarm the power/abundance in the midst of bodies while creating a practice of care and freedom through creativity. Dzidzor is the founder of Black Cotton Club and partners with Grubstreet, ICA Boston, and Boston Public Schools to teach creative empowerment workshops in Boston.

Gregory Groover Jr |  Saxophonist, Composer & Educator

Raised with devotion for music, Gregory George Groover Jr is a twenty-eight year old tenor saxophonist and educator from Roxbury, Massachusetts. His love and pursuit of music directed him to the Boston Arts Academy where he graduated in 2011 as both the Elma Lewis Graduate with distinction and the Louis Armstrong Jazz award. His effort and dedication to music led him to earn a full tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music where he received both his Bachelors and Masters in Music Performance Studies through the Global Jazz Institute, headed by world-renowned artistic director, pianist, and UNESCO Artist for Peace Danilo Perez.

As a performer, Gregory has had the honor to share the stage with prestigious musicians such as Philip Bailey (Earth, Wind, and Fire), Patrice Rushen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, Brian Blade, and Esperanza Spalding. As a bandleader and a sideman, he has performed in music festivals in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.

Currently, Gregory serves as the co-chair of music at his alma mater, the Boston Arts Academy where he provides instruction in Jazz studies to the next generation of artists and scholars. In addition to teaching, Gregory continues to perform regularly with his working bands and is celebrating the release of his second album: the Negro Spiritual Songbook Volume II - “The Message”.

Bill Banfield | Author, Composer, Musician, Professor, Founder/Director of Jazz Urbane

In the past 25+ years, Bill Banfield has produced a body of productive music/ arts scholarship activities, books, compositions, recordings, establishing an active teaching, student and music/ lecture programming development, professional service and creative work, that contributes to contemporary arts leadership.

Banfield was appointed in 2019 as a research associate with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH), one of the Smithsonian’s 12 research and cultural centers. His work focuses on what he identifies as cultural through-lines, delineating the ways in which contemporary artistry and new works harken back and hold onto critical cultural linkages to understand.

Having served three times as a Pulitzer Prize judge in American music (2010, 2016, 2020), Banfield is an award winning composer whose symphonies, operas, chamber works have been performed and recorded by major symphonies across the country. Few have a wider, performed professional composing output, that has had public concert performances, reviews, radio, recordings of some 12 symphonies, 7 opera, 9 concerti, chamber, jazz and popular forms. This alone making Banfield one of the most performed, recorded composers of his generation. 

Banfield has been a national public radio show host having served as arts and culture correspondent for The Tavis Smiley Show. In 2010, he was hired by Quincy Jones to write a national music curriculum and book for schools learning about American popular music culture.

Banfield’s works have been commissioned, performed and recorded by orchestras including; the National, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas, Akron, Detroit, New York Virtuoso, Grand Rapids, Akron, Richmond, Toledo, Savannah, Chicago Symphonia, Indianapolis, Sphinx, Sacramento, San Diego symphonies and the Havana Camerata of Cuba. In 2012, his symphony 10 was commissioned, premiered by the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center with Sweet Honey in the Rock, and his symphony 11 was performed, recorded in Switzerland with the Evoca/ECJ symphony and chorus.