UPTOWNflavor

This week the National Jazz Museum in Harlem focuses yet again on the career and music of the magnificent Dr. Billy Taylor, a jazz ambassador and educator bar none, who embodies the best of the jazz tradition and exhibits the history of jazz piano every occasion he performs. See below for details of this special Jazz for Curious Listeners session (and mark your calendar: Dr. Taylor will be present at the August 26th session.)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
7:00pm
A Celebration of Dr. Billy Taylor

Location: NJMIH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online <http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/readers.html>

Instructor: Greg Thomas

Last week Greg Thomas played selections from Dr. Taylor’s vast body of recordings in a demonstration of his long-time mastery of jazz piano—solo and ensemble settings—as well as styles from stride, bebop and blues to ballads, waltz, Latin and soul/gospel. The audience at the new National Jazz Museum in Harlem Visitors Center also listened to Dr. Taylor’s interpretation of jazz standards early in his career to more recent times, and several of his most popular and acclaimed compositions.

This week, Thomas will highlight Dr. Taylor’s work in a trio setting over a fifty year span, and will share some of the piano master’s longer compositions, such as “Suite for Jazz Piano and Orchestra.”