Harlem is…..Music Exhibit
FEBRUARY 8, 2006
HOWARD MANDEL
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
February is Black History Month, black history is made in Harlem, and “harlem is. . . Music.” Or so says an celebratory exhibition of photography, writing and music performance which opened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (at Lincoln Center) on Monday, to run through April 17.
The fourth annual “harlem is . . .” campaign—bigger than just a production—is created by the citywide arts and education organization Community Works. This year’s exhibit looks at Uptown-oriented jazz, blues, R&B, hip-hop and rap, gospel, classical, Latin and fusion genres through such historic images as James Reese Europe conducting his orchestraat the Clef Club in 1910 and Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge and proprietor Teddy Hill standing in front of Minton’s Playhouse, bebop’s birthplace, circa 1940. There are also contemporary graphics, writings by Amsterdam News music journalists Ron Scott, Raoul Abdul and Charles Rogers, and poetry by school kids responding to visits with such current jazzers as saxophonist Andrew Lamb and percussionist Eli Fountain.
There’s more, however, to “harlem is . . .Music” than will fit on the exhibit’s 20 oversized (but built to travel) panels. Loren Schoenberg, tenor saxophonist and executive director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem, will screen films of Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Bobby Short, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and Billy Strayhorn at the Museum of the City of New York at 3 p.m. on Sunday, February 12, then play with a trio inspired by Harlem Renaissance photographer Carl Van Vechten’s portraits, which will hang nearby. Craig S. Harris, trombonist-composer, will conduct the High Society Orchestra of Waseda University (Japan) at the Schomburg Center at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 24. Calvin Earl, a storyteller and musician, recalls slave and plantations songs at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, February 28 at the Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center. All these programs—and many related others—are free or cheap, but require reservations and are expected to be SRO, so call Community Works at (212) 459-1854 for further info.
Volume 19, Issue 6
© 2006 New York Press
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i need to come up to see my boy thelonious….good post
Someday I will get an opportunity to visit New York and see everything including the harlem area….