IN/TER\SECT at Bryant Park features Ethan Iverson, anagrams, July 15

Fri - July 15, 2016, 9:00 pm

 

IN/TER\SECT at Bryant Park features Ethan Iverson, anagrams, July 15

IN/TER\SECT gives New Yorkers the rare opportunity to experience some of the best players in jazz and classical music, all under one bill. This Friday, Ethan Iverson (set begins at 9pm) will perform Hall Overton's Piano Sonata No. 1 among many other works. With five ensembles each night -- including internationally renowned veterans such as Chris Potter, Andy Akiho, Dan Tepfer and Ethan Iverson, as well as many of NYC's most talented and exciting up-and-coming artists.  The three-evening series features standards and new works, including commissions and world premieres, and is produced with Chamber Music America and curated by composer and saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli.

Bryant Park is situated behind the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, between 40th and 42nd Streets & Fifth and Sixth Avenues.Subway B, D, F, or M train to 42nd Street/Bryant Park or the 7 train to 5th Avenue.

Program:

Program:

Heliotrope Bouquet (1907) Scott Joplin
Little Joe From Chicago (1939) Mary Lou Williams
Carolina Shout (1918) James P. Johnson

I’d Love A Rag (2015) Ethan Iverson
Iverson works on early jazz to deepen his practice of modern-day piano. Reasonably authentic renditions of rag, boogie, and stride are followed by Iverson’s own pastiche from the suite Easy Win written for Dance Heginbotham.
 
South Hampton (2012) Ethan Iverson
A blues written with Hampton Hawes in mind: Iverson has played it with Paul Motian, Tootie Heath, and Billy Hart.
 
Re-Elect That (2011) Ethan Iverson
Written for The Bad Plus, also works as a chaotic solo number.
 
Apollo (1988) Pat Zimmerli
Iverson and the curator of IN/TER/SECT have known each other a long time. Iverson first played the bebop-to-the-future Apollo in a 1992 jam session with Zimmerli and Thelonious Monk, Jr. 
 
Hall Overton was Thelonious Monk’s arranger for the celebrated big band concert at Town Hall and this is why Overton’s name is remembered today. However, his more significant original creative output was in modernist composition: teaching at Juilliard, getting significant commissions, recording for CRI. The Piano Sonata is nine minutes in one rhapsodic breath. The style starts like neo-Copland but soon becomes quite dense and polytonal. Themes intertwine and there’s a transfigured recapitulation in the final pages but there is no conventional sonata form. 

Another Tonal Salvo (2016) Ethan Iverson
Straight up jazz composed as a companion piece for the recent 21-century premiere of the above Overton: the title is an anagram of “hall overton sonata.” 

Music Without Metaphor (2013) Scott Wollschleger
It is difficult to play solo piano in an urban outdoor setting. This luscious ambient work by a major young Brooklyn composer will embrace the nightlife of Bryant Park.

Carpenter’s Kit (2016, composed especially for IN/TER\SECT) Ethan Iverson
Another excuse to play jazz, and another excuse to anagram: the title is jumble of “intersect park."
 
New URL for Iverson's award-winning music blog, Do the Math: ethaniverson.com