Arts & Entertainment

Jazz Talk and Performance Sunday in Dobbs

Hastings resident Tim Armacost and his band will perform Sunday at South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, followed by an opportunity to talk to the artists about their craft.

Announcement courtesy of RiverArts: 

RiverArts and present the New York Standards Quartet celebrating the release of their latest album, UNSTANDARD at 5  p.m. on Sunday, March 27 at in Dobbs Ferry.  

Hastings resident and group founder Tim Armacost and quartet members David Berkman and Gene Jackson will perform with guest Harvie S on bass. An opportunity to meet the musicians during a RiverArts Artist Conversation will take place after the performance. The Release Party continues at in Dobbs Ferry.

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UNSTANDARD is the band's second album, recorded last June in Tokyo during their fifth tour of Japan.

The New York Standards Quartet originated six years ago when four friends, already well-established individually as jazz performers, composers and teaching artists, came together to play familiar melodies from the American songbook and to put them into unfamiliar contexts. Berkman notes that jazz standards “give the musician tremendous freedom of interpretation [and they] provide a bridge to the jazz listener – the musicians might be playing something extremely abstract, altering the harmony and sliding in and out of time, but once the listener recognizes a piece of the melody...[the] unapproachable is familiar: there is a frame to it.

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Tim Armacost broke into the jazz scene in Los Angeles as a teen playing the tenor saxophone, and has studied and performed around the world including Tokyo, New Delhi, and the Netherlands where he headed the Sweelinck Conservatory’s saxophone department.  A leader with six highly regarded albums, Armacost records widely with a long list of recognized jazz artists, including playing with Hornz in the Hood, Ray Drummond’s Excursion Band, and with Craig Bailey co-leads the Brooklyn Big Band.

Award winning pianist David Berkman has four Palmetto recordings to his credit, tours in the US, South America and Europe, and is an associate professor at Queens College. Drummer Gene Jackson played a decade long gig with Herbie Hancock, and has toured with artists such as Dianne Reeves, Hugh Masekela, Elvis Costello and Art Farmer. The album’s bassist, Yosuke Inoue, is also a leader who has performed in New York at The Blue Note, Sweet Basil and Carnegie Hall.  He has been voted Japan’s number one bassist in the Swing Journal since 2007. Hastings resident and celebrated bassist Harvie S joins the group for this event.  His 2008 release Now Was the Time with pianist Kenny Barron topped the Jazz Week charts for five months.

The band is just returning from a Midwest tour where they played concerts, clubs and university campuses in Illinois. Their tour included an engagement at the Great Green Mill, Al Capone's old club in Chicago, down the street from Wrigley field.  In concerts and teaching, working with students from middle school to college on their tour, the band infuses American standards with a richness derived from decades of collaborating, composing and performing with fine musicians from around the world.

Suggested contributions for the event are $15 for adults and $10 for students. For information and reservations contact RiverArts, PO Box 60, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 10706.  (914)  412.5120; or info@riverarts.org.  


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