JAZZ WINNIPEG ADDS ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT,
JIMMY GREENE TO WINTER CONCERT LINE-UP

Jazz Winnipeg is happy to announce the addition of two more world-class concerts to an already jam-packed concert season.

Blue Note recording artists The Robert Glasper Experiment, and saxophonist Jimmy Greene have been scheduled to play Winnipeg as a part of a busy winter concert season that already includes Raul Midón, Ron Sexsmith, The Al Simmons Band, Anna-Lisa Kirby, and the 2011-2012 edition of the Nu Sounds Series!

ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19
8 PM
WEST END CULTURAL CENTRE
(586 Ellice Ave.)

The Robert Glasper Trio performed a sold out show at this summer’s Jazz Festival, and now the New York-based keyboardist returns to Winnipeg with his electric neo-soul/funk quartet, the Robert Glasper Experiment!

Growing up in Houston, Texas, Glasper had a strong musical influence in his mother, who played piano and sang gospel music in church as well as in jazz and blues clubs in Houston. By the age of twelve, he was playing piano in church and often accompanied his mother in clubs. Raised on gospel, Motown, and R&B, by his teens he was listening to jazz, rock, pop and hip hop. He attended the Houston High School for the Performing Arts and moved to New York City to study at New School University. While still in school he was already playing with Christian McBride and Kenny Garrett, and went on to play with Nicholas Payton, Terence Blanchard, and Roy Hargrove.

After releasing his debut album Mood on the Fresh Sound label in 2003 followed by two buzzed about Blue Note albums with his acoustic Trio – Canvas (2005) and In My Element (2007) – Glasper perfectly captured his unique duality with Double-Booked (2009), an album that juxtaposed his Trio and Experiment bands, and earned the keyboardist his first Grammy nomination.

He’s worked extensively with Q-Tip, playing keyboards on the rapper’s Grammy-nominated 2008 album The Renaissance and co-writing the album single “Life Is Better” which featured his labelmate Norah Jones. Glasper also serves as the Music Director in rapper Mos Def’s touring band, and has toured with the multi-platinum R&B singer Maxwell.

On February 28, the Robert Glasper Experiment will release Black Radio (Blue Note Records/EMI), an album that boldly stakes out new musical territory and transcends any notion of genre, drawing from jazz, hip hop, R&B and rock. The album features many of Glasper’s famous friends from the spectrum of urban music, including Erykah Badu, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco,Mos Def, Musiq Soulchild, Meshell Ndegeocello, and more.

JIMMY GREENE: NEW WORK
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
8:00 PM
PARK THEATRE
(698 Osborne St.)

For this special perfomance, saxophonist, composer, and educator Jimmy Greene augments the instrumentation of his typical quartet with the addition of guitar, keyboards, and vocals to create a bold, modern, electro-acoustic sound. The group will premiere brand new music written by Greene, commissioned by the University of Manitoba’s Creative Works Grant Program.

In the past decade, the Hartford, Connecticut native has emerged as a positive young force in the jazz world. Greene’s eight solo recordings, including his latest, Live at Smalls, have been met with much critical acclaim. In fact, Jazzwise Magazine calls Greene “one of the most striking young tenors of recent years.”

Greene has performed at the Village Vanguard, Smalls, and Smoke in New York, and has performed at festivals and jazz venues worldwide, including tour dates throughout the US, Italy, Russia, Israel, Canada, Brazil, and Uruguay. As a sideman, Greene appears on 70 recordings, and has toured the world and recorded with the bands of Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Harry Connick, Jr., and Avishai Cohen, among many others.

Greene is assistant professor of jazz saxophone at the University of Manitoba’s Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music, where he leads the Jazz Lab Orchestra and teaches jazz saxophone, arranging, and composition. He has also served as visiting assistant professor of music at Purchase College (State University of New York), as lecturer at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School (University of Hartford), and as instructor at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.