MUSIC

Nameless Sound is Houston’s most vital presenter of cutting-edge creative music, free improvisation, avant-garde jazz, electro-acoustic improvisation, new music and uncategorizable sound-making. This season opens with three Nameless Sound premieres, representing a wide range of world-class artists.

Friday, December 11 2009 Nameless Sound presents: Dave Burrell. (Philadelphia) – Piano, at 8pm (please note: Doors open at 7:30pm. Concert begins promptly at 8pm) at Latham Hall, Christ Church Cathedral, 1117 Texas Ave.

An artist of singular stature on the contemporary music scene, Dave Burrell authentically represents jazz’s essential functioning axis: the point where deeply rooted tradition meets innovation and the avant-garde. The virtuosic pianist was a key collaborator to many of the most inspiring and radical voices of the 1960’s “New Thing” (Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Sonny Sharrock, Sunny Murray, Roswell Rudd). But Burrell is known for a wide range of expressions: beautiful workings of repertory (Jelly Roll Morton, stride and boogie styles), lyrical tellings of popular song (themes from “West Side Story”), and a distinct intellect that he brings to collaborations across mediums (his opera “Windward Passages” and his project “Syllables of the Poetry of Marianne Moore”).

It’s not so much that Burrell displays an ability to traverse the worlds of “inside” and “outside” playing. His heartfelt sincerity and remarkable abilities reveal that there really is no difference. Real jazz always comes from a deep root in the tradition, and always stands for (and fights for) the freedom to move forward. Dave Burrell may be one of the few artists still standing in that axis.

For more information:
www.daveburrell.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Burrell