The Vijay Iyer Trio will perform free show at Harlem Stage Gatehouse as part of Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival
Multiple locations in Harlem
Through May 10, free – $45
www.harlemjazzshrines.org
This year’s annual Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival continues through May 10 with great events at historic locations, celebrating the theme “The Prestige of the Past with the Pulse of the Present.” As Columbia professor Robert G. O’Meally writes in “Harlem Shrines”: “One of the mysteries in the music made famous in these Harlem Jazz Shrines is that it has never been enough for musicians who would capture the spirit of Harlem music merely to re-create — however lovingly – the styles of yesteryear’s great ones. For what makes the term ‘shrine’ so appropriate here is that this music at its best is fluently improvised — and thus truer to its particular moment than to any other time; it is music created devotedly ‘in the moment,’ as the musicians say. Further, artists in this tradition are ever in search of their own ways of playing, their own voices in music.” Among those musicians sharing their voices while honoring tradition are Aruán Ortiz and Manuel Valera in a Latin double bill at Harlem Stage Gatehouse (May 7, $10, 7:30), Kimberly Thompson at Showman’s Jazz Club (May 7, two-drink minimum, 8:30, 10:00, 11:30), T. K. Blue at Ginny’s Supper Club as part of the Jazzmobile’s New Legends on the Bandstand series ($10, food & drink minimum, 10:00 & 11:30), the Christian aTunde Adjuah Double Quartet at Harlem Stage Gatehouse performing “Stretch Music in Tribute to Clark Monroe’s Uptown House” (May 8, $10, 7:30, followed by a Q&A), Jazmyn at Showman’s (May 8, two-drink minimum, 8:30, 10:00, 11:30), the Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band at the Apollo Theater as part of Apollo School Day Live (May 9, $7, 11:30 am), the Vijay Iyer Trio featuring Stephen Crump and Marcus Gilmore at the Marian Anderson Theater at Aaron Davis Hall (May 9, free with advance RSVP, 7:30, followed by a reception), Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra at the Apollo (May 10, $10-$45, 8:00), and the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra at MIST Harlem for the finale, “Jazzmobile Celebrates Frankie Manning’s 100th: Lindy Hopping at the Savoy” (May 10, $10-$20, 10:00).