Thursday Apr 16th – 8pm                                 Purchase Tickets Here!

• Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, tenor
• Angela Keeton, soprano
• Seth Keeton, bass-baritone
• Anthony Cox, bass/cello
• Jeremy Walker, piano
• Brandon Wozniak, saxophone
• Tim Zhorne, drums

Ancient poetry meets classical voice and jazz instrumentation in an evening of musical drama composed by Jeremy Walker and Anthony Cox.

In this world premiere performance of “The Rage of Achilles,” the voices of Twin Cities performers—Minnesota Public Radio’s Tesfa Wondemagegnehu and husband-and-wife opera singers, Seth and Angela Keeton—blend with jazz piano, bass, cello, saxophone and percussion, resulting in a tumultuous and innovative take on epic literature.

About Jazz in the Target Atrium

Curated by composer and local jazz impresario Jeremy Walker, the four-concert series pairs jazz masters with the local Atrium Jazz Ensemble, all performing new music for audiences in the intimate setting of the Orchestra’s Target Atrium.

Please note: all seating is general admission. This concert will be approximately 70 minutes in length without intermission.

This week the BRIDGE Series features the Eric Kamau Gravatt Quartet.  Show begins at 7pm. 4/10/15

An alum of Weather Report and the bands of McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Blue Mitchell and others, Eric Kamau Gravatt essentially has had two careers in jazz with a couple decades of separation. Like John Coltrane and long-time associate McCoy Tyner, he is a native of Philadelphia. Originally a conga player, Gravatt taught percussion and music in Philadelphia and Washington, DC in the 1960s. Miles Davis invited him to join his band, but Gravatt turned down the Prince of Darkness to follow Wayne Shorter into Weather Report, with whom he toured and recorded. But Gravatt’s sound was not exactly what WR founder Joe Zawinul had in mind, and after a while Gravatt was replaced in favor of a more “bottom heavy” drummer. He moved on to the fusion band Natural Life (with Bobby Peterson and Bob Rockwell), a move that brought him to the Twin Cities some 30 years ago. Demands of family and a desire for financial stability took Gravatt out of fulltime music and into fulltime work as a guard at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Lino Lakes. “I had kids, and Corrections were the only thing being offered that paid that good, and they had (benefits) you couldn’t get in jazz,” Gravatt told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Only after retiring from Lino Lakes did Gravatt return to his calling, touring again with McCoy Tyner for about ten years, performing with his band, Source Code, and recently engaging in some more experimental improvisations with Adam Linz and Brandon Wozniak, and in duo with Dean Magraw that yielded a new recording, Fire on the Nile.

Featuring:
Eric Kamau Gravatt – Drums
Brandon Wozniak – Saxophone
Zacc Harris – Guitar
Ron Evaniuk – Bass

The BRIDGE Series provides a forum for audiences to connect and interact with top-notch Twin Cities artist-presenters who perform live at Jazz Central Studios each Friday. You can hear and engage with these cutting-edge jazz artists as they bring their improvisational passion and unique compositional approaches to Jazz Central Studios. The Bridge Series performances start at 7:30 pm. In order to provide you access to these excellent performances, we ask for a (strongly) suggested donation of $10 per person. A different cast of exemplary musicians will assemble each week to further the reach of jazz presentation in the Twin Cities jazz community.

Steve Kenny’s Saturday Night Jazz at the Blackdog presents DD7.  The Charles Lincoln group will open and thanks for supporting this series.