EFW Presents: Jamaaladeen Tacuma / James Brandon Lewis — "On Your Shoulders"

Name: EFW Presents: Jamaaladeen Tacuma / James Brandon Lewis — "On Your Shoulders"
Start: 2024-06-22T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center

Schedule

Sat Jun 22 2024 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center | Poughkeepsie, NY

“Jamaaladeen Tacuma: The Pioneer of Free Funk Bass"
— Bass Musician Magazine
“Jamaaladeen Tacuma is the hardest-grooving bass player I've ever worked with or heard.”
— Guitarist Marc Ribot
“Jamaaladeen Tacuma is the rare bass guitarist to have found a unique voice as a jazz musician. His style has been referred to as 'free funk', and that’s true as far as it goes: he plays with the hard groove of a funk player but is rarely confined to a single chord or a simple tonality. But, since his first major gig was with Ornette Coleman in the Prime Time band starting at 19, it is equally true that Tacuma is a searching creator of interesting melodies. He can play with ruminative daring or a nervous hunt for home.”
— Will Layman, PopMatters
“James Brandon Lewis, a jazz saxophonist in his 30s, raw-toned but measured, doesn’t sound steeped in current jazz-academy values and isn’t really coming from a free-improvising perspective. There’s an independence about him, and on “Days of FreeMan” (Okeh), he makes it sound natural to play roaming, experimental funk, with only the electric bassist Jamaladeen Tacuma and the drummer Rudy Royston, and without much sonic enhancement. The record sounds a little reminiscent of what James Blood Ulmer and Ornette Coleman were doing in the late ’70s and early ’80s — on records that included Mr. Tacuma — but it’s not clearly evoking a particular past. Maybe it’s an improvised take on early ’90s hip-hop, as Mr. Lewis has suggested, but it sounds less clinical than that. It sounds like three melodic improvisers going for it.”
— Nate Chinen, New York Times
Elysium Furnace Works is proud to present a formidable, acclaimed new project featuring two renowned musicians: bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, performing as “On Your Shoulders”.
This historic collaboration between the legendary harmolodic bass pioneer from Ornette Coleman's innovative electric ensemble Prime Time Tacuma with the DownBeat Magazine Rising Star on tenor saxophone Lewis is a multi-generational celebration honoring past trailblazers and offering, in Mr. Tacuma's words, "a special thank you to all the mentors and elders in music sharing their knowledge and creativity with the next generation.”
For this performance, Tacuma and Lewis will be joined for a few pieces by drummer Dave Berger.
“On Your Shoulders” will perform at the VBI Theatre of Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, located at 12 Vassar St. in Poughkeepsie, NY, on Saturday, June 22 at 8 PM. Tickets are $30 in advance and $40 at the door — advance tickets are on sale now at: https://jtjbl.eventbrite.com
EFW's momentous 2024 season will also include:
July 13: Matthew Shipp Trio, St. Andrew's & St. Luke's Church, Beacon NY — the renowned, era-defining pianist and composer Shipp returns to this sacred space in Beacon, joined by the world-class rhythm section of Michael Bisio on bass and Newman Taylor Baker on drums, as they celebrate their aptly-titled new recording for ESP-Disk', New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://mstrio.eventbrite.com .
September 21: Peter Evans, VBI @ CHAC — the fearsomely gifted trumpeter Evans astonishes with the sheer multiplicity of sounds and textures he is able to coax from his horn and the staggering inspiration that shapes his fathomless exploration in this rare Hudson Valley solo appearance. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://peterevans.eventbrite.com.
October 19: Yuko Otomo, VBI @ CHAC — in her first solo Hudson Valley appearance, the exceptional poet and writer Otomo brings her revelatory work steeped in humane soul and omniversal epiphany, accompanied by musicians TBA. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://otomo.eventbrite.com.
November 16: AM / FM, VBI @ CHAC — this power duo of guitarist Ava Mendoza and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul synthesize a heady brew of avant jazz, blues and noise, radically upending experimental music(s) past, present, and future. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://amfm.eventbrite.com.
December 7: Harriet Tubman (Ross / Gibbs / Lewis), VBI @ CHAC — EFW closes out our monumental season with the fiery intensity of the long-running eclectic, electric collective Harriet Tubman, comprising the insanely talented, accomplished trio of guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer JT Lewis, rounding out 2024 on a monstrously high, heavy note. Advance tickets on sale now at: https://harriettubman.eventbrite.com.
Biographies of Jamaaladeen Tacuma and James Brandon Lewis follow below.
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Jamaaladeen Tacuma is an American jazz funk avant-garde bassist , composer and producer born in Hempstead, New York. He was a bandleader on the Gramavision label and worked with Ornette Coleman during the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in Coleman's Prime Time band.
Tacuma showcased a unique style of avant-garde jazz on Coleman's 1982 album Of Human Feelings, and became widely viewed as one of the most distinctive bassists since Jaco Pastorius. He formed his own group, and recorded albums that incorporated commercially accessible melodies while retaining Prime Time's elaborate harmonies.
Tacuma, raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, showed interest in music at a young age, performing with the organist Charles Earland in his teens. Through Earland, Tacuma came to know the record producer Reggie Lucas, who introduced Jamaaladeen to Ornette Coleman in 1975 at age 19. As the electric bassist for Coleman's funky harmolodic Prime Time group, Tacuma rose to prominence quickly; guitarist Bern Nix was another band member. While with Prime Time, Tacuma relied mostly on traditional technique, picking with his fingers. His later work revealed a master improviser and showcased a more rhythmic, thumb-slapping funk approach.
The first three Prime Time recordings (Dancing in Your Head, Body Meta, and Of Human Feelings, all recorded in the late 1970s) feature Tacuma's work on a Rickenbacker bass, a model popular among progressive rock musicians, but rarely used on jazz recordings. He switched to a Steinberger bass in the 1980s, an instrument that helped him create his readily identifiable sound.
Tacuma's work with Prime Time landed him his most high-profile gig to date: an appearance with the band on Saturday Night Live on April 14, 1979, which Tacuma later cited in Musician magazine as his "best live performance ever". Besides the work with such musicians as James "Blood" Ulmer, Walt Dickerson, Chuck Hammer, and David Murray, he collaborated with the upcoming artists of the New York Downtown scene like Kip Hanrahan, David Moss, Bill Laswell and Anton Fier (The Golden Palominos, 1983) that further heightened his reputation. Tacuma's first solo album, Show Stopper, came in 1983 on the Gramavision label; the album grew out of the harmolodic jazz-funk style he developed in his work with Coleman. His other works as leader at Gramavision followed that formula.
In the 1980s, he started to perform in a relatively straightforward funk/R&B setting with his group Cosmetic. He was frequently featured in music magazines thanks to his aggressive, driving playing style and his angular fashion sense. In 1981, Tacuma received the highest number of votes ever for an electric bassist in the "talent deserving wider recognition" category of the DownBeat magazine critics poll.
Since the early 1990s, he has remained active but has maintained a lower profile. He has made numerous solo and collaborative recordings, including several CDs of duets with saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig. AllMusic cited Mirakle, a recording that features Tacuma, drummer Grant Calvin Weston, and guitarist Derek Bailey as one of the "most important recordings of year 2000." In 2006, he returned to the jazz spotlight with an appearance on the World Saxophone Quartet's Political Blues.
In 2007, he joined with Weston and guitarist Vernon Reid (known for his work in Living Colour and with Ronald Shannon Jackson) to form the power trio Free Form Funky Freqs. He has also recorded two albums with Basso Nouveau, a group that features multiple bassists playing together on a variety of instruments, including electric bass, upright bass and acoustic bass guitar, and that also includes bassist Gerald Veasley.
He has received the following awards and fellowships : "Parallel Culture" Award 2009, Marcus Garvey Foundation 50th Anniversary Award 2011, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts 2011 and The Uptown Theater Hall of Fame Award in 2014, Gerald Veasely's Bass Boot Camp "Living The Dream Award - 2016, The Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz Best Bassist 2017. He has received The MacDowell Colony 2011, Headlands Center for the Arts 2012 and Civitella Ranieri 2014 residency fellowship. In 2017 he received The Philadelphia Club Club of Jazz Best Bassist Award, in 2018 he received the City of Philadelphia's Benny Golson Award, The Benny Golson Award includes a City proclamation and the Liberty Bell award - one of the highest honors from the City of Philadelphia . Since 2015, Tacuma presents the annual Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival in Philadelphia and continues to tour, produce and record worldwide.
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James Brandon Lewis is a New York-based tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His instrumental voice marries the emotional power of gospel and the grit and groove of blues and R&B to the modal and vanguard influences of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins' expressive melodic and tonal discipline. Moments, Lewis' 2010 debut, was followed by two outings for Sony Masterworks' revived OKeh imprint: Divine Travels in 2014 and the widely celebrated Days of Freeman the following year. After working American stages and clubs, he toured and played European and Asian festivals. Radiant Imprints, a duo outing with drummer Chad Taylor, appeared in 2018 and was followed by the quintet album An Unruly Manifesto a year later. In 2021, after being selected a Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist in the Downbeat International Critics Poll, Lewis formed the Red Lily Quartet to record Jesup Wagon, his breakthrough album. The live, digital-only MSM Molecular Systematic Music followed in 2022. His regular quartet released Eye of I for Anti- in March 2023. Lewis followed it in September by releasing For Mahalia, With Love, an album-length tribute to the iconic gospel singer performed by Red Lily Quintet. In 2024, Lewis released a collaborative album with the Washington, D.C.-based experimental rock trio the Messthetics.
Lewis was born in Buffalo, NY. Raised in the church, he was exposed to gospel, blues, and R&B early on, and studied music with Carol McLaughlin. He attended the Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, and upon graduation continued his studies with Charlie Young at Howard University. While at Howard, Lewis was able to study and perform with jazz artists including Geri Allen, Benny Golson, Wallace Roney, and Bill Pierce. He was a member of the Howard University Jazz Ensemble, which toured Japan under the direction of Fred Irby, and performed at the Kennedy Center Honors backing John Legend, k.d. lang, and Vanessa Williams. After graduating from Howard in 2006, Lewis moved to Colorado, where he became active in the gospel music community, performing with Albertina Walker and other luminaries. He also performed on the Word television network and won an award for Best Instrumentalist at Dorinda Clark-Cole's singers and musicians conference in 2007.
Once he had established himself as a gospel musician, Lewis sought to expand his musical horizons. He attended CalArts, where he studied with Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Vinny Golia, and Alphonso Johnson. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2010. Moments, his debut album, was independently issued the same year.
Lewis attended the Banff Jazz Residency, where he worked with Dave Douglas, Angelica Sanchez, Joshua Redman, Hank Roberts, and Tony Malaby. It was there that he encountered the dynamic universe of free jazz. He was invited to participate in the Atlantic Center for the Arts residency by pianist Matthew Shipp and made more than an impression. Urged on by the pianist and others in the New York jazz community, Lewis relocated to New York City in 2012. He began woodshedding with a host of veteran musicians including Marilyn Crispell, Charles Gayle, Karl Berger, and Eri Yamamoto, to name a few. He was especially fond of playing with bassist William Parker and drummer Gerald Cleaver.
With the latter two musicians, Lewis released Divine Travels on Okeh in February 2014 and achieved instant acclaim for his ability to embrace and update the sounds of his influences with a unique, utterly contemporary voice. The following year, he issued the conceptual suite Days of Freeman for the label, leading a trio composed of drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma. The set won international acclaim for the saxophonist's writing as well as his playing, providing Lewis the ability to play the European festival circuit as a bandleader for the first time.
In 2018, Lewis and drummer/percussionist Chad Taylor issued the improvised Radiant Imprints for Belgium's Off label. He also appeared on guitarist Marc Ribot's widely celebrated Songs of Resistance 1942-2018, the William Hooker-led Pillars...At the Portal, and on Allen Lowe's Jews & Roots: An Avant Garde of Our Own -- Disconnected Works, 1980-…. Lewis released An UnRuly Manifesto for Relative Pitch Records in 2019, leading a quintet that included guitarist Anthony Pirog, trumpeter Jaimie Branch, drummer Warren G. Crudup III, and bassist Luke Stewart. The set drew rave reviews for the finesse in Lewis' playing and his canny interactions with Pirog. The same year, Lewis and the U.K. rhythm section of bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders issued the improvised digital outing 4.2.19 on Otoroku. He appeared on saxophonist Michael Eaton's Dialogical and on the digital Ropeadope-released Tenor Triage, with saxophonists Eaton and Sean Sonderegger appearing alongside him with the rhythm section of bassist Brad Jones and drummer Calvin Weston.
Though the world was shut down for much of 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis and Taylor's concert performance at Switzerland's annual jazz festival the previous fall was released as Live in Willisau by Intakt, as was the studio quartet outing Molecular with Jones, Taylor, and pianist Aruán Ortiz. To debut his new compositional strategy, Lewis dubbed the album "Molecular Systematic Music." That year, he was voted Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist in Downbeat's International Jazz Critics Poll.
Though he couldn't tour in 2020, Lewis was able to write and record. He conceived of a suite of compositions inspired by the life and work of George Washington Carver. In the fall of 2020, he assembled the intergenerational Red Lily Quintet -- Taylor on drums, William Parker on bass, Kirk Knuffke on cornet, and Chris Hoffman on cello -- to record it while socially distanced at the Park West Studio in Brooklyn with engineer Jim Clouse. Titled Jesup Wagon after the Carver-invented vehicle used in the Tuskegee Institute's Movable School program, the album was released by Whit Dickey's Tao Forms label in May 2021. It was greeted by universal acclaim from critics and musicians and again placed in the year's end list of best recordings by Downbeat. Saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, one of Lewis' greatest influences, was bowled over by it and told him: "When I listen to you, I listen to Buddha, I listen to Confucius...I listen to the deeper meaning of life. You are keeping the world in balance."
Lewis issued the live, kinetic MSM Molecular Systematic Music in 2022 on Intakt. A quartet album, it again featured Taylor as well as pianist Aruan Ortiz and bassist Brad Jones. In February 2023, Lewis released Eye of I, his debut album for indie Anti-. He was signed to the label after guitarist Marc Ribot actively encouraged Anti's A&R team on his behalf (Lewis appeared with the guitarist live and on his widely acclaimed Songs of Resistance 1942-2018). The saxophonist's outing pared down his ensemble down to a trio with Chris Hoffman on electric cello and pedals and Max Jaffe on drums. In early January, a four-track pre-release titled "Send Seraphic Beings" for the album's single appeared. The other tunes -- also drawn from the album -- included the originals "The Blues Still Blossoms" and "Fear Not (featuring the Messthetics)." Both the album and single also included Lewis' stirring cover of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free." In September, For Mahalia, With Love appeared on Whit Dickey's Tao Forms label with the Red Lily Quintet. The track list comprised spirituals long associated with Jackson. Her impact on the development of gospel music was paramount: she influenced virtually every gospel singer who came after her. Further, she employed spirituals in concert to participate in and support the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s.
Lewis had collaborated on several occasions with guitarist Anthony Pirog, recording a few tracks with Pirog's group the Messthetics, an adventurous experimental rock band featuring Joe Lally and Brendan Canty of Fugazi. In March 2024, Lewis and the Messthetics issued a collaborative album, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, which was released by Impulse. Recorded in just two days, the music was a bracing meeting between the power of rock and the exploratory imagination of jazz.
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Elysium Furnace Works is a cooperative project co-led by Mike Faloon and James Keepnews. EFW seeks to present the work of vanguard artists in settings as dedicated and uncompromising as the art itself, focusing primarily although not exclusively on live music performances in and around New York's vibrant Hudson Valley. Follow us on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/elysiumfurnaceworks — and on Instagram @elysiumfurnaceworks.