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).
The only real problem with Speak the Music: Robert Mann and the Mysteries of Chamber Music, an engaging look at the violinist extraordinaire, is its brevity, clocking in at just under an hour. Oscar-winning documentarian Allan Miller, who has made films about Isaac Stern, Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, John Cage, Eubie Blake, and other musicians, gets up close and personal with Robert Mann, a cofounder of the Juilliard String Quartet and an enthusiastic teacher at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, who was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1920, is shown discussing his love of fishing and how he wanted to be a forest ranger; playing at the White House and the Library of Congress; performing with his wife and son; and talking about how watching waves crash against an Oregon cliff helped him understand “the slow growth of musical intensity.” Among those singing his praises and hailing his influence are Perlman, conductor Seiji Ozawa, composer Elliott Carter, pianist Stephen Hough, and cellist Joel Krosnick. But the film really shines when Mann is seen teaching the Amphion Quartet, the Ars Nova Quartet, and others, flailing his arms about, trying to get the musicians to go deep inside themselves and the music and not to play like they’re pounding on a typewriter. Of course, the film is also filled with lots of beautiful chamber music by Beethoven, Haydn, Bartók, etc., from rare archival footage to more contemporary performances, concluding with Mann in a lovely rehearsal of the third movement of Mozart’s Quintet in G Minor, making sure every note and pause is just right, not merely mechanical but intensely emotional and heartfelt, lovingly putting bow to strings. Speak the Music opens at the Quad on May 2, with Miller participating in Q&As following the 6:30 screenings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
