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Uri Caine headlines
Composers OutFront!
at Joe’s Pub Jan. 28
Pianist-Composer performs with
Uri Caine Ensemble
in preview of his Double Trouble
Pianist-Composer Uri Cainewill be the featured Composers OutFront! artist on January 28, 2008 at 7:30pm at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. Tickets are $20.
Uri Caine is known for his improvisational jazz-inflected permutations on music by composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, and Bach. This performance will also include a tribute to modern master Luciano Berio and a preview of Caine’s Double Trouble, a concerto for piano and orchestra that Caine will premiere with American Composers Orchestra on Friday, February 8 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Sunday, February 10 at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
Members of Uri Caine’s ensemble are: Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Joyce Hammann, violin; Moran Katz, clarinet; Jim Black, drums; Uri Caine,piano; and Drew Gress, bass.
ACO’s Composers OutFront! series puts composers on stage and makes connections between their musical roots as performers and their works for the concert hall. By featuring a variety of diverse musical creators-with interests ranging from jazz and improvised music to rock and pop and various world music influences-the series introduces an eclectic array of contemporary musicians to new audiences, extends the network of composers with whom the orchestra collaborates, provides connections with the concerts ACO gives at Carnegie Hall, and establishes a deeper context for audiences to understand the artists’ work.
Uri Caine, pianist-composer
The New York Times has called Uri Caine, “a ferociously versatile jazz musician known for playing fluid funk, fusion and traditional jazz as a fixture in New York’s downtown music scene.”
Early in Uri Caine’s career, he played in bands led by Philly Joe Jones, Hank Mobley, Johnny Coles, Mickey Roker, Odean Pope, Jymmie Merritt, Bootsie Barnes and Grover Washington. Caine’s compositional credits are also strong: he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied composition with George Rochberg and George Crumb.
Since moving to New York City, Caine has recorded eighteen albums as a leader, some featuring his jazz trio, Bedrock, performing arrangements of Mahler, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, and Schumann. His most recent is The Uri Caine Ensemble Plays Mozart (Winter & Winter 2006). Caine’s live performances include his version of the Diabelli Variations with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the CBC Orchestra in Canada, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. In 2006 he was named composer-in-residence for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, premiering his Concerto for Two Pianos and Chamber Orchestra with Jeffrey Kahane in May of that year.
In addition to working with his own trio, Caine has worked in groups led by Don Byron, Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Terry Gibbs and Buddy DeFranco, Clark Terry, Rashid Ali, Arto Lindsay, Sam Rivers and Barry Altschul, the Woody Herman Band, Annie Ross, the Enja Band, Global Theory, and the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Caine’s Upcoming Premiere with ACO
Double Trouble, Uri Caine’s new concerto commissioned by ACO for its Orchestra Underground series, will receive its world premiere on Friday, February 8, 2008, at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. The Philadelphia premiere takes place on Sunday, February 10, 2008, at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. This multi-movement, improvised mini-concerto will showcase Caine’s eclectic array of disciplines and influences, which rest firmly in his classical and jazz training.
Caine says, “I am interested in the relationship between structured music and improvisation. As a composer and also as an improvising performer, I enjoy music that combines fixed musical forms with the freedom to react and play spontaneously in the moment. Double Troublesets up a dialogue between composed music (mostly for the orchestra) and improvisation (mostly for the piano soloist). There is a constant give-and-take between the piano and the orchestra.”
In five short but continuous sections, the piano comments on and seeks to transform musical material presented by the orchestra, especially in the solo cadenzas. Sometimes the piano is part of the ensemble, sometimes it moves in a parallel but distinct musical space, and sometimes it moves in direct opposition and in contrast to the orchestra. The orchestra can function as a sort of rhythm section and set up textures that invite improvisation from the soloist. Caine just completed the score for Double Trouble in December, and he has dedicated the work to Saul Galperin.
Admission & Info
Uri Caine: Composers OutFront! takes place Monday, January 28, 2008, at 7:30pm at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. Tickets are $20 and are available online at www.joespub.com, or by phone at 212-967-7555. Tickets can also be purchased at The Public Theater box office. Seating is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Joe’s Pub is located at 425 Lafayette Street, in downtown Manhattan.