A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Anthony Davis (b. February 20, 1951): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
Anthony Davis,
a major composer of the late 20th century, stretches beyond jazz into
modern classical music although he has recorded quite a few rewarding
jazz sessions. He studied classical music as a child and in 1975
graduated from Yale. A member of the New Dalta Ahkri during 1974-1977
(which was led by Leo Smith), Davis moved to New York in 1977, played with Oliver Lake, Anthony Braxton, Chico Freeman, George Lewis, and Leroy Jenkins' trio (1977-1979) and worked often with James Newton and Abdul Wadud. Davis formed an octet (Episteme) in 1981 that played both improvised and wholly composed music. Anthony Davis composed the opera X (based on the life of Malcolm X) in the early '80s and he taught at Yale. Davis has recorded for India Navigation, Red, Sackville, and Gramavision.
The music of pianist, improvisor and composer Anthony Davis eludes
easy categorization. Active in a variety of media, including operatic,
symphonic, choral, chamber, dance, theater, and improvised musics, Davis
has focused upon the integration of improvised and notated expressive
resources. His work embodies an intercultural approach, drawing not only
upon traditional and current African-American sources, but upon the
Javanese gamelan, American Minimalism, and the European and
Euro-American avant-garde.
His fourth and most recent opera,
AMISTAD, based on the slave ship uprising of 1839 and the subsequent
trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November of 1997, with
libretto by Thulani Davis and direction by New York Public Theater
artistic director George C. Wolfe. His first and best-known opera, X:
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X, with libretto by Thulani Davis,
premiered at the New York City Opera in 1986.
Davis's recent
orchestral works include NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, premiered in 1988
at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers' Orchestra; ESU VARIATIONS,
commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad for the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra and premiered in Atlanta in May, 1995; and JACOB'S LADDER,
dedicated to the composer Jacob Druckman, premiered in October, 1997 by
the Kansas City Symphony. His work HEMISPHERES, a collaboration with
choreographer Molissa Fenley, was awarded the first Bessie Award for
Music for Dance. Davis also composed the incidental music for the
Broadway production of Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM
APPROACHES--PART ONE which premiered in May, 1993 and PART
TWO--PERESTROIKA, which debuted in November of 1993. Most recently,
Davis completed a work for the Jose Limon Dancers entitled DANCE, a
collaboration with choreographer Ralph Lemon.
As a pianist, Davis
has collaborated extensively with musical artists working in
experimental forms whose work challenges traditional boundaries between
composition and improvisation. His own performance ensemble, Episteme,
combines disciplined interpretation with provocative real-time
music-making. His latest work for improvisors, HAPPY VALLEY BLUES
(SOUNDS WITHOUT NOUNS), composed for the String Trio of New York,
recently toured throughout the United States and Europe with the
composer at the piano. Davis has performed with a number of improvisors
associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians, including Wadada Leo Smith's ensemble, New Dalta Ahkri, as
well as with the ensembles of Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, and Roscoe
Mitchell. He has also performed and recorded with such improvisors as
David Murray, Abdul Wadud, James Newton, Ray Anderson, Barry Altschul,
and Marion Brown, among many others.
A graduate of Yale University
in 1975 with a BA in Music, Davis taught in music and Afro-American
Studies at Yale from 1981-1982 and was a visiting composer at the Yale
School of Music in 1990, 1993 and 1996. In 1987 he was a senior fellow
at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities, and from 1992 to
1996 he was a visiting lecturer in Afro-American Studies at Harvard
University. In 1995, Davis was a composer-in-residence with both the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra.
In
1996 Davis was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with
its Academy Award. He has also received awards from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation of the Arts, the
Massachusetts Arts Council, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace
Fund/Meet The Composer Fund for Jazz and Opera America. Davis has won
the Down Beat Critics Poll in both pianist and composer categories. The
recording of his opera, X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X, released in
1992 on Gramavision, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary
Classical Composition.
Davis has received commissions from the
American Music Theater Festival, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, the
Lyric Opera of Chicago, the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Kansas
City, Houston, Atlanta and Pittsburgh, and the American Composers'
Orchestra. His compositions and improvisations have been recorded on
Gramavision, Music and Arts, India Navigation, Soul Note and Black
Saint. Davis is affiliated with ASCAP, and his compositions are
published by G. Schirmer. His music is discussed in such standard
reference texts on jazz, improvised music, classical music and opera as
the Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, the Grove Dictionary of
Jazz, the Grove Dictionary of American Music, and the Grove Dictionary
of Opera.
In January of 1998 Anthony Davis joins the faculty of
the UCSD Music Department. Professor Davis comes to San Diego with his
infant son Jonah, and his wife, CYNTHIA AARONSON-DAVIS, a soprano who
has distinguished herself in both contemporary and standard repertoire,
performing with the New York City Opera, the Boston Lyric Opera, Opera
Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Composer and pianist Anthony Davis talks Trump and musical tension
Anthony Davis’s latest work, FIVE, is based on a notorious case of wrongful conviction in which presidential hopeful Donald Trump played an infamous role.
In chamber operas such as X, about the African-American revolutionary Malcolm X, and Lear on the 2nd Floor, which updates William Shakespeare’s King Lear
in the context of today’s Alzheimer’s epidemic, Anthony Davis has shown
a knack for coming up with themes that address the past while dealing
directly with the present. But with his new work, FIVE, which premieres in Newark, New Jersey, in November, he’s going to miss the mark by a scant seven days.
It’s not that FIVE—based on the story of the Central
Park Five, a quintet of young African-American men falsely accused and
convicted of rape and assault after a 1989 attack on a white jogger—will
be any less relevant a week after the U.S. presidential election. The
racism that runs through much of American society will, sadly, ensure
its currency for years to come. But one of Davis and librettist Richard
Wesley’s main protagonists might well be in the dustbin of history by
the time FIVE debuts. If, that is, we’re lucky. “I
hope it’s not president-elect Trump who’s going to be portrayed in the
opera,” says Davis, on the line from his home in San Diego, California.
The connection, he goes on to explain, is that the Republican demagogue
started his political career on the backs of the Central Park Five,
spouting his racist fear-mongering in all the major New York City
newspapers. “I wrote an aria for Donald Trump, because he was
really involved in it, sort of condemning these five young men who were
15 and 16 years old, and calling for the death penalty,” Davis explains.
“And now some of the themes of his campaign are the same: ‘othering’
people, and thinking of them as thugs, street thugs.…At the time, it was
basically a cultural assault on what they perceived as the hip-hop
generation. It was the time of Public Enemy and Tone Loc and all that
stuff, so it’s something I refer to in the music, too.” When Davis
comes to Vancouver this week, it’s to help celebrate a smaller but
considerably cheerier historic occasion: the release of a local
artist-run centre’s second archival LP, past piano present: Live at Western Front 1985–2015.
Davis’s “Behind the Rock”, from a 1985 solo performance, is the oldest
piece on the album and its opener, setting the tone with an array of
sounds that don’t seem to have dated a day. We might hear them
differently, though. Then, the low rumble that runs through much of the
piece was probably heard as a nod to the cosmic jazz of pianists Alice
Coltrane and McCoy Tyner; now it seems to draw equally on the symphonic
colorations of Gustav Mahler and Igor Stravinsky. The world, it seems,
has opened up to the visionary synthesis of classical and
improvisational forms that Davis has been exploring all his life. “I
think of the piano as an orchestra, or something that kind of reflects
an orchestra,” the UC San Diego prof explains. “And ‘Behind the Rock’ is
kind of an example of that: the idea of using the different registers
of the instrument; not confining myself to chords in the middle register
of the instrument and treble piano lines. Since then I’ve sort of
liberated myself into really playing with both hands—playing a duet
between the right hand and the left hand. Then I think about contrasting
textures, or sometimes pitting tonalities against each other—things
that can create tension and at the same time a kind of resolution, too.” Davis’s
evolution has progressed to the point where he’s planning to issue a
new solo-piano CD, his first nonoperatic release in more than two
decades, this fall. It will mark a welcome return for a musician whose
personal vision is as compelling as the more public statements he’ll
soon make in FIVE.
Anthony Davis plays the Western Front on Thursday (March 24).
Anthony Davis blurs the lines between jazz, opera, world music, the avant-garde and other styles with unique skill and daring. He has been doing so since even before his first opera, the Grammy-nominated “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” premiered at City Opera in New York in 1986. That was about 15 years after he was invited to become the keyboardist in the Grateful Dead. “It’s
all music to me,” said Davis, who is now completing his ninth opera and
performs here May 2 at Conrad Prebys Concert Hall with contrabass great
— and fellow UC San Diego music professor — Mark Dresser.
Collaborators since the 1970s, when they met while Davis a student at
Yale, the two will perform composed and improvised solo pieces and
duets. “I bring all my experiences as an improviser into composing
an opera,” Davis noted. “I look at it as unified expression. One of the
reasons I was initially interested in opera was to bring improvising in
it. That’s one of the reasons I’ve had Mark play in many of my operas,
which embrace our improvisational traditions.” Davis lives in University City with his wife, noted opera singer
Cynthia Aaronson-Davis. Their son, Jonah, 20, is a junior at UC Berkeley
and is regarded as a Major League Baseball prospect. The other
operas the elder Davis has composed — working with an array of
librettists who put words to his music — are no less ambitious or
provocative than “X.”
They include the science-fiction opus “Under
the Double Moon”; the Patty Hearst kidnapping-inspired “Tania”; the
slaves-in-revolt-fueled “Amistad”; the American Indian-influenced
“Wakonda’s Dream”; the battle-of-the-sexes morality tale “Lilith”; and
the Shakespeare-meets-early-onset-Alzheimer’s-disease-themed “Lear on
the 2nd Floor.”
Davis’ acclaimed operas have been produced by
Spoleto USA Festival, the Vienna Opera in Austria, Lyric Opera of
Chicago, Opera Omaha and other companies in the United States. Several
of his operas have been released as albums. In 2008, he received the
National Opera Association’s “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award, in honor
of his groundbreaking work.
Curiously, though, the San Diego Opera has never
contacted him about a collaboration, even though Davis has lived and
worked here since 1998.
“I’ve tried to reach out to them, but I
haven’t had any luck with the San Diego Opera,” he said. “I have worked
with Los Angeles Opera; I did workshops with them for ‘Dream of the
Spider’ — an opera I was developing about the Cuban Revolution — and
also with the Long Beach Opera.”
Davis lives in University City with his wife, noted opera singer
Cynthia Aaronson-Davis. Their son, Jonah, 20, is a junior at UC Berkeley
and is regarded as a Major League Baseball prospect.
The other
operas the elder Davis has composed — working with an array of
librettists who put words to his music — are no less ambitious or
provocative than “X.”
They include the science-fiction opus “Under
the Double Moon”; the Patty Hearst kidnapping-inspired “Tania”; the
slaves-in-revolt-fueled “Amistad”; the American Indian-influenced
“Wakonda’s Dream”; the battle-of-the-sexes morality tale “Lilith”; and
the Shakespeare-meets-early-onset-Alzheimer’s-disease-themed “Lear on
the 2nd Floor.”
Davis’ acclaimed operas have been produced by
Spoleto USA Festival, the Vienna Opera in Austria, Lyric Opera of
Chicago, Opera Omaha and other companies in the United States. Several
of his operas have been released as albums. In 2008, he received the
National Opera Association’s “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award, in honor
of his groundbreaking work.
Curiously, though, the San Diego Opera has never
contacted him about a collaboration, even though Davis has lived and
worked here since 1998.
“I’ve tried to reach out to them, but I
haven’t had any luck with the San Diego Opera,” he said. “I have worked
with Los Angeles Opera; I did workshops with them for ‘Dream of the
Spider’ — an opera I was developing about the Cuban Revolution — and
also with the Long Beach Opera.”
‘Out of the jazz tradition’
“My ability to
improvise really helps me to try things out and get a sense of the
musical landscape and the overall shape,” said Davis, who graduated from
Yale in 1975 and has won numerous honors, including a 2006 fellowship
from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. “Then, I work mostly on
a Kurzweil synthesizer and headphones at night. When I start composing,
I work with my computer and start looking at the words and setting them
to music. I improvise some more and also think about where the spaces
are, where I need music between scenes, spaces that are not sung and are
just instrumental.” Improvising has always come easy to Davis, who took to the piano and music as a kid and never looked back. His
godfather is the late pianist Billy Taylor, who was one of America’s
pre-eminent jazz educators and champions. While enrolled at Yale. Davis
played with such top bebop saxophonists as Jimmy Heath and San Diego’s
Charles McPherson. Soon he was collaborating with such
cutting-edge visionaries as Sam Rivers, George Lewis, Oliver Lake, James
Newton and David Murray. His seventh solo album, 1981’s acclaimed
“Episteme,” combined sophisticated jazz-fueled improvisations with
minimalism, intricate African rhythmic structures and — in particular —
gamelan music from Indonesia.
“I definitely came out of the jazz
tradition,” said Davis, who laments his efforts to join the band of
Charles Mingus never reached fruition.
“And I did a duo concert
with Billy Taylor, here in San Diego at the Old Globe, many years ago.
But, mostly, I’ve been associated with the avant-garde, so I haven’t
done a lot of traditional stuff.” Davis is well aware his operas
are challenging and provocative. His music can be beautiful and lyrical
one moment, then dense, knotty and full of shifting meters the next. The
serious, real-life issues his operas address ups the ante even more,
but doing so is both a creative and cultural imperative for him. “Oh,
yeah, definitely,” Davis said. “You feel like you have to do this, for
many reasons. It’s necessary for developing your art. But, more than
that, it’s about trying to voice something to the world and the
community, and about trying to have an understanding of complex
political and social issues that affect us today. And that, for me —
which is all about: ‘What is your purpose in life?’ — is why I do what I
do. “Finding the artistic vehicle to wrestle with these things,
which affect so many people, has been really rewarding and essential to
my purpose as a person.”
Anthony Davis & Mark Dresser
When: 7 p.m. May 2 Where: Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. Tickets: $10.50 (UC San Diego faculty/staff/alumni); $15 (general public) Phone: (858) 822-3725
Anthony
Davis had already been singled out by several critics as the most
accomplished and impressive young pianist in jazz when he moved to New
York City from New Haven, Conn., in 1977. As he has continued to
demonstrate, most recently in a program of Thelonious Monk's
compositions at Columbia University, he retains a formidable grasp of
the varied resources available to jazz pianists, from the earliest
styles to the most modern.
But
''Episteme,'' Mr. Davis's new album on the Grammavision Label, has at
least as much to do with the complex rhythmic structures of African and
Southeast Asian music and the intense, droning repetitions favored by
contemporary composers such as Steve Reich as it does with jazz. Some
listeners would say it isn't jazz at all, and Mr. Davis, who is now in
his early 30's and divides his time between composing and playing in New
York and teaching at Yale, his alma mater, would agree. To him, calling
the music on ''Episteme'' jazz would be limiting and inaccurate; it's
simply music.
Mr.
Davis introduced the group he calls Episteme and the music it plays
last year at the Kitchen, the performance loft at Broome and Wooster
Streets in SoHo. The Kitchen used to be a showplace for experimental
music in the tradition of John Cage and La Monte Young, but with the
composer and trombonist George Lewis as its musical director, it has
included jazz-based composers and various ethnic strains in its
increasingly adventurous programming. Mr. Lewis, whose jazz experience
includes stints as a trombonist with Count Basie and Anthony Braxton,
was Anthony Davis's classmate at Yale. And like Mr. Davis, Mr. Lewis
writes music that many people would hesitate to call jazz. In fact, the
closest thing to ''Episteme'' on records is ''Chicago Slow Dance,'' Mr.
Lewis's recent album on the Lovely Music Label.
The
music on ''Episteme'' is scored for violin, cello, a flutist doubling
on bass clarinet, George Lewis's trombone, Mr. Davis's piano, and three
percussionists. It utilizes interlocking rhythms in several different
meters and a number of mallet instruments to build up a hypnotic,
shimmering sound that is very reminiscent of the gamelans or percussion
orchestras that are traditional in Bali and Java. Mr. Davis has even
underlined the similarities by calling his composition ''Wayangs,'' a
technical term associated with gamelan music.
But
the listener who stops at these similarities and concludes that Mr.
Davis's entrancing music is nothing more than a gloss on gamelan music
will miss the point. For one thing, much of the music's forward momentum
is supplied by a jazz drummer, Pheeroan Ak Laff, who plays a standard
drum kit and freely accentuates the written parts played by the other
instruments. And the written music leaves room for improvisations that
do more than mark time or weave variations on the written themes. Like
the jazz composers he most admires -Ellington, Monk, Mingus, John Lewis -
Anthony Davis writes music that forges composition and improvisation
into what he calls ''a seamless and coherent musical structure.''
Seen
from this viewpoint, the music on ''Episteme'' is more closely linked
to the jazz tradition than one might have thought. Jazz has always drawn
its inspiration from whatever was at hand. Jelly Roll Morton improvised
variations on themes from marches and light opera during the earliest
years of jazz, and today world music is as readily available for
scrutiny as marches and operas were in Morton's turn-of-the-century New
Orleans.
Growing
up in Connecticut, the son of a Yale professor, Mr. Davis heard
ensembles from the ethnomusicology department at nearby Wesleyan
University perform South East Asian and African traditional music. It is
natural that these influences should crop up in his music. But it is a
mark of Mr. Davis's talent that he has transformed his original sources.
His ''Wayang No. II'' and especially the new album's longest piece,
''Wayang No. IV,'' bring the improvisational talents and rhythmic acuity
of some first-rate jazz players to bear on some ingenious and utterly
bewitching repetition music. The album concludes with ''Walk Through The
Shadow,'' an atmospheric piece for solo piano and a reminder that Mr.
Davis is also impressive as a virtuoso instrumentalist.
George
Lewis's ''Chicago Slow Dance'' is performed by two reed and wind
players, Richard Teitelbaum on synthesizer, and Mr. Lewis on trombone
and electronic instruments. There are no overt references to specific
world music traditions here, and without a drummer or a bassist the
music lacks the forward thrust Pheeroan Ak Laff brings to ''Episteme.''
But Mr. Lewis has written an intriguing piece. It begins with a kind of
moody stasis, sustained by non-Western reed instruments and subdued
electronics. The musicians play back their parts on portable tape
recorders, radically altering the mood. An unaccompanied saxophone solo
from Douglas Ewart leads into a storming, free-for-all conclusion.
Again, ideas that are readily identifiable as jazz - the saxophone solo,
the collective improvising -have been integrated into a more broadly
referential composition.
But
isn't that precisely what jazz composers do? Duke Ellington's early
uses of extended compositional forms and his celebrated tone poems for
orchestra were attacked by some jazz partisans, and when Charles Mingus
began directing his reed players to squawk through their mouthpieces,
some listeners thought that wasn't jazz, either. The strength of the
jazz tradition is its ability absorb influences from the most far-flung
sources and still retain its identifying characteristics -
improvisation, rhythmic momentum. The strength of ''Episteme'' and
''Chicago Slow Dance'' is that they combine the essence of jazz with
repetition, electronics, process structures, and other elements that
have been alien territory for most jazzaffiliated composers. The
listener does not have to limit them by calling them jazz, or anything
else. They can be enjoyed as music that is both sensuous and
intellectually engaging, and that's exactly what their composers seem to
have intended.
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A version of this review appears in print on November 15, 1981, on Page 2002027 of the National edition with the headline: ANTHONY DAVIS- BEYOND JAZZ. Order Reprints|Today's Paper
WHEN
he emerged on the New York jazz scene in 1977, Anthony Davis was known
as a pianist. He still plays that instrument. But as indicated by his
appearance Friday night with a group of musicians that he calls Episteme
in the Public Theater' new-jazz series, he is really now more of a
composer.
His
idiom is unusual, one that he has perhaps not yet firmly focused. It
embraces elements of classical music (formal notation and complex,
predetermined forms, as well as the repetitive structuralism of the
Minimalists), jazz (improvisation and the personal styles and
backgrounds of most of his players) and Balinese gamelan (many of his
titles, and the repetitive structures that also occur, sometimes
similarly inspired, in the Minimalists).
What
this meant Friday was some 90 minutes of music for an ensemble
consisting of Mr. Davis, George Lewis, trombonist; J.D. Parran, on
winds; Shem Guibbory, violinist; Abdul Wadud, cellist; Mark Helias, on
string bass and conductor for one piece, Pheeroan Ak Laff, drummer, and
Wilson Moorman and Warren Smith, on percussion, which included a lot of
gamelanlike use of vibes, marimba, glockenspiel and xylophone.
Part
of all this was very beautiful, sections and effects here and there.
Mr. Davis sounds at times as if Keith Jarrett had discovered the 20th
century - the same consonant lushness, but with fresher, more up-to-date
idioms. The final piece seemed particularly eloquent, with an extended
piano solo at the beginning; throughout, one wished for more piano, and a
more audible piano during the ensemble passages.
But
too often Mr. Davis's ideas sounded studious and exploratory rather
than finely wrought. Pieces that fuse (rather than juxtapose) classical
and jazz elements can work brilliantly; Mr. Lewis and Leroy Jenkins,
among others, have proved that. Too much of the improvisation Friday
sounded constrained, and too much of the ensemble work was executed with
insufficient precision and panache. To these ears, on this occasion at
least, there seemed more potential than actuality. But the potential is
most definitely there. John Rockwell
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A version of this review appears in print on October 19, 1981, on Page C00020 of the National edition with the headline: JAZZ: A NEW ANTHONY DAVIS. Order Reprints|Today's Paper
For the past several decades, UCSD
music professor Anthony Davis has consistently broken new ground as one
of the nation’s foremost jazz-and-beyond pianists and as a composer of
cutting-edge operas, symphonies and choral and chamber works.
What
is less known is that Davis, who performs an all-star 60th birthday
concert Feb. 20 at downtown’s all-ages Dizzy’s, was approached as a
young man to play with a band that would have taken him on a much
different artistic journey: The Grateful Dead.
The year was 1971 and Davis, then a 20-year-old student at Yale, was spending his summer vacation at the University of Iowa, where his father, Charles T. Davis, was a professor. After
watching the Dead perform, Davis went to a campus-area club to play
electric piano with his summer band, which specialized in what he
describes as “post-‘Bitches Brew’ Miles Davis” fusion jazz. Members of
the jazz-loving Dead came to the club that night and were suitably
impressed by his virtuosic keyboard playing and highly advanced harmonic
approach.
“The gist of the story is they asked me to join,” Davis recalled of
his live Dead encounter. “I didn’t do it, because my parents said I had
to finish school. I was bummed: ‘What a great opportunity — I can go
play with Jerry Garcia!’ ” Davis,
who at the time sported an Afro “as big as Angela Davis’,” offered a
pragmatic observation when asked how he now feels about this missed
chance.
“I didn’t know if I would have survived,” he replied,
“because nearly every piano player in the Dead (fatally) OD’d. So,
maybe, my parents saved my life!”
Contrabass great (and fellow UCSD professor) Mark Dresser first
collaborated with Davis in 1975 and will perform with him at Dizzy’s.
Dresser didn’t blink years ago when he first learned of the Dead’s
invitation to Davis.
“It surprises me now, but — back then — it
wouldn’t have,” Dresser said. “Anthony can really play, and the Dead
were fine musicians themselves who were really into an improvising
tradition. They were the original jam band, and Tony can stretch (on
solos) for days. He has perfect pitch and has incredible ears.
“Anthony is a great American composer who has created a
significant body of work in opera. And he has brought all kinds of
disparate musical elements together — from Indonesian and African music
to Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington — that he’s synthesized in a really authentic and original way.”
EPIPHANY IN ITALY
It
was hearing an album by Monk, the great pianist, composer and band
leader, that provided a key musical epiphany for Davis, who was 15 at
the time. Ironically, this epiphany took place in Italy, where his
father was teaching American literature at the University of Torino on a
Fullbright Fellowship.
“I had studied classical piano since second grade and was playing (works by) Schumann and Beethoven,” Davis recalled.
“Some
family friends gave my dad the album ‘Monk in Italy,’ and I fell in
love with it. Hearing Monk, I realized you could play piano and be a
composer, too, and create original music.”
Davis still speaks fondly of his year in Italy with his parents and younger brother. It was an ear- and eye-opening experience.
“I’d go to the Steinway piano store in Torino and play on
their Steinway C’s and B’s. I found they would let me play longer if I
played jazz, like Monk’s version of ‘Body and Soul,’ ” Davis said.
“Being
in Italy, I realized I was African-American and what our music meant. I
also became aware all the classical piano music I was playing was by
white Europeans and became aware of wanting to be who I was. At the same
time, I was reading ‘The Invisible Man,’ Kierkegaard’s ‘Either Or’ and
Nietzsche’s ‘Birth of Tragedy,’ which got me interested in opera.”
Davis has been his own man — and has created strikingly original music — ever since.
He
enrolled at Yale in 1969, where his father became the chairman of the
Black Studies Department in 1973. Davis spent three years studying
philosophy and English. The fact that he was spending five hours a day
at the piano prompted him to change his major.
ON RECORD
He
made his recording debut in 1974 on trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s album
“Reflectativity.” His first album under his own name was 1977’s “Past
Lives.” A solo piano work, it featured Davis’ original music and his
version of Monk’s knotty ‘Crepescule With Nellie.’”
By the time
his eighth album, “Episteme,” came out in 1981, Davis was well on his
way to becoming a singular voice in American music. “Episteme” showcased
his skill at seamlessly blending meticulously composed music and
improvisational daring. The album, which also drew heavily from
Indonesian gamelan music, still sounds fresh and vital today.
“Anthony is an amazing visionary in contemporary music,” said fellow
pianist Vijay Iyer, 39, a current Best Jazz Album Grammy Award nominee.
“He’s somebody who doesn’t get his due recognition in the jazz world,
partly because he’s navigated between the jazz world and other worlds.
I’ve always been inspired by him.”
Davis’ first opera, “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X,”
had its sold-out premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986. His
recording of “X” received a Grammy nomination. It also earned rave
reviews for his unique, genre-leaping musical vision, as did his
subsequent operas.
Those operas include: the
science-fiction-fueled “Under the Double Moon”; the Patty
Hearst-inspired “Tania”; the slaves-in-revolt-themed “Amistad”; the
American Indian-inspired “Wakonda’s Dream”; and “Lilith,” a
battle-of-the-sexes morality tale that debuted at UCSD in 2009 and
featured Davis’ wife, veteran opera singer Cynthia Aaronson-Davis, and their son, Jonah, now 14.
Before
coming to UCSD in 1997 at the invitation of his longtime friend and
collaborator, George Lewis, Davis taught at Yale, Harvard and Cornell.
He is now at work on several new operas, including one set in the wake
of the Cuban revolution.
“We all use different means to find great music,” Davis noted.
An Early Interest in Jazz and Classical Music Created His Own Jazz Ensemble Created Opera About Malcolm X Selected works Sources In the 1980s and early 1990s Anthony Davis,
an award-winning composer and jazz pianist, became known for his
unique, challenging, and ingenious operas. In addition, he has written
three film scores, one of which was awarded an Oscar in 1980. He is also
an educator, having taught music and Afro American studies at several
universities, including Yale and Harvard. As a composer and pianist,
Davis has been labeled too intellectual by conventional jazz musicians
and too jazz-oriented by classical musicians. His compositions are
notated, yet improvisational in tone and are often built around
complicated, constantly changing atonal lines. Davis studied classical music in college, but his music has been
heavily influenced by the African American tradition of swing and bebop.
As a composer and pianist, Davis has been labeled too intellectual by
conventional jazz musicians and too jazz-oriented by classical
musicians. His compositions are notated, yet improvisational in tone and
are often built around complicated, constantly changing atonal lines.
Davis often struggled to conform his musical style to well-established
norms. Eventually, he created his own niche. “I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out I didn’t want to fit,” Davis said in the New York Times. “I
knew I could never be accepted as a straight-ahead jazz musician, nor
would I accept myself as that. I would never be accepted as a
minimalist. I wouldn’t be a “downtown” composer. Because I find all orthodoxies, all doctrines, to be ultimately banal.”
Anthony Davis was born on February 20, 1951, in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in a family with a long history of academic achievement. His father was the first black English professor at Princeton University and later became the first chairman of Afro American studies at Yale University. Several of his ancestors founded the Hampton Institute, one of the oldest black colleges in the United States.
Although he was a gifted child, Davis often felt lonely growing up as a
black youngster in predominantly-white college towns. This was
particularly true when his father taught at Penn State University in
1961. “I was in a community where everyone was listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” Davis recalled in theNeu; York Times. “I was the only one who listened to Temptation records. But the isolation gave me a freedom to explore things for myself.”
Born Anthony Davis, February 20, 1951, in Pater son, NJ; son of Charles Twîtcheli and Jeanne Davis; married Deborah Atherton; children; Timothy, Education:Yale University, B.A. in music, 1975. Composer, pianist, educator. Co-founded Advent, (a free-jazz group),
1973. Played with New Dalta Ahkri, 1974-77, Leroy Jenkins Trio, 1977-79;
member of duo and quartet with James Newton, 1978-; Episteme, founder,
1981—; Yale University, teacher of music and African American studies, resident fellow of Berkeley College of Music, 1981-82; Cornell University, senior fellow of the Society of the Humanities, 1987; Yale University School of Music, teacher, 1990; Harvard University, visiting lecturer, faculty member, 1992-; creator of several operas incIudingX, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, 1986, Under the Double Moon, 1989, Tania, 1992. Awards: Bessie and Esquire Registry awards, 1984. Member: ASCAP; Parabola Arts Foundation, Inc. (member, board
of directors); National Youth Sports Coaches Association (panelist),
1983-85.
Addresses:Office-do American International Artists, 515 East 89th Street, Suite 6B, New York, NY 10128.
Davis was exposed to jazz at an early age because his father loved
music and was acquainted with several jazz musicians, some of whom
performed at the Davis home. Davis taught himself to play jazz tunes and
composed his first piano piece, A Pirate’s Song,
before the age of six. He took piano lessons and temporarily gave up
studying jazz in favor of classical works by Beethoven, Mozart, and
Chopin. By the age of 15, Davis’s interest in jazz had returned and he began listening to the music of jazz artist Thelonious Monk, who became his role model.
Davis attended college at Yale University. While he was a student, he and several other musicians formed the group “Advent,”
which played free jazz concerts at the university. Davis met jazz
trumpeter and composer Leo Smith in 1974 and became a member of Smith’s
band, New Dalta Ahkri. He also collaborated with Smith on two
recordings. In 1975, Davis graduated from Yale with a B.A. in music. After completing college, Davis continued to perform with Leo Smith and other musicians such as Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton,
and Marion Brown. He also formed his own quartet with musical artists
Jay Hoggard, Mark Helias, and Ed Blackwell. In 1977, Davis moved to New York and played concerts at jazz lofts, nightclubs, and colleges. He gigged with violinist Leroy Jenkins’s
trio from 1977 to 1979 and with flutist James Newton. Davis often
played his own adaptations of compositions by jazz artists such as Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Cecil Taylor. He released his first albumsPast Lives, Of Blues and Dreams, and Crystal Texts in 1978. In 1979 his album, Hidden Voices, was released for the first time on an American record label. Davis also composed musical scores for movies.
In 1981, Davis formed “Episteme (“knowledge”
in Greek), an ensemble of flute, piano, bass, clarinet, trombone,
violin, cello, and three percussion instruments. Members of the ensemble
included trombonist George Lewis and cellist Abdul Wadud. The group’s first album, Episteme, contained compositions that blended jazz with African and Southeast Asian musical rhythms. Two of these compositions,” Wayang 2” and “Wayang 4,” were named for a word or phrase connected with music played by percussion orchestras in Bali
and Java. Members of Episteme initially wanted to experiment with
different musical styles. However, they eventually devoted themselves to
playing Davis’s
compositions exclusively, which made use of improvisation and notat-ed
forms, blended jazz, non-Western music, and classical avant-garde music.
Although some conservative jazz critics chastised Davis’s
work, his reputation as a composer and performer continued to grow. He
was commissioned to create pieces for dancer and choreographer Molissa
Fenley, the Laura Dean Dance Company, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
Several of Davis’s works received critical acclaim and “Wayang 5,” which he created for the San Francisco Symphony in 1984, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
In 1983 Davis, his brother Christopher, and their cousin, poet Thulani Davis, decided to compose an opera entitled X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, about the life of black activist Malcolm X. The opera, which dealt with Malcolm’s life from his childhood in Omaha, Nebraska to his conversion to Islam
and assassination in 1965, took three years to complete. The musical
score was written for a full orchestra and incorporated elements of
jazz, African American, and popular music to dramatize the controversial
leader’s life and times. In the fall of 1986,X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
was performed before four sold-out audiences at the New York State
Theater. It was only the second opera by a living black composer to
debut in a leading American opera house.
In 1987, Davis began working on another opera, Under the Double Moon. He was compelled to compose the opera after reading science fiction
stories written by his wife, Deborah Atherton. The libretto, which was
written by Atherton, tells the story of telepathic twins who live on a
planet that is nearly underwater. The twins must decide whether they
want to remain above water or opt for a more spiritual existence below
the ocean. The music in Under the Double Moon was written for
full orchestra and incorporated elements of gamelan, Indonesian
orchestral music heavily influenced by gongs, xylophones, and drums. Under the Double Moon premiered at the Opera Theater of St. Louis in 1989 and received mixed reviews.
Davis’s third opera, Tania, told the story of the Sym-bionese Liberation Army’s kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. This opera raised several controversial issues concerning race, gender, and identity in the United States. Tania received some negative criticism following its premier at the American Music Theater Festival in 1992. A reviewer in Common weal remarked,”
The opera is serious about the problem of identity, not only for
Tania/Patty, but within the society at large; but it is never as funny
or as frightening as it ought to be to make so complex a point… . Nonetheless, it is theatrically fascinating because Davis’s eclectic score (his conscious use of jazz and popular music), Paul Steinberg’s sets, and Robert Wierzel’s lighting suggest a cohesiveness that the work as a whole never quite achieves.”
In addition to his operas, Davis composed the music for the Broadway production of Angels in America, Part I: Millenium Approaches, which premiered in 1993. He created a work for the String Trio of New York entitled Sounds Without Nouns,
performed at Pennsylvania State University in November of 1995. He has
also been commissioned to work on another opera entitled Amistead, about a slave rebellion and mutiny in 1839. It is scheduled to premier at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997. Davis is also working on The Circus of Dr. Lao, a music theater production for the Public Theater.
X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, premiered at New York City Opera, 1986. Under the Double Moon, premiered at the Opera Theater of St. Louis, 1989. Tania, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival, 1992. Other works have included the musical composition for the Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part I: Millenium Approaches, Angels in America, Partll: Perestroïka, Sounds Without Nouns, commissioned for New York’s String Trio; Amistad, an opera in collaboration with director George C. Wolfe; The Circus of Dr. Lao, a music theater work commissioned by the Public Theater in New York City; and recordings including Of Blues and Dreams, Hidden Voices, Lady of the Mirrors, Variations in Dreamtime, Episteme, I’ve Known Rivers, Hemispheres, Middle Passage, Undine, and Under the Double Moon.
Common weal, August 14, 1992, pp. 27-28. Down Beat, August 1981, p. 54; January 1982, pp. 21-23, 68; May 1984, pp. 6, 65; January 1986, p. 10. Fanfare, January-February 1993. Horizon, June 1986, pp. 34, 36. High Fidelity, April 1984, p. 13; July 1985, p. 24. Jazziz, February/March 1993, pp. 14, 16, 26. Nation, December 6, 1986, pp. 651-652. New Republic, December 8, 1986, pp. 30-32. Newsweek, December 14, 1981, pp. 119; November 28, 1983, pp. 98-99. New York, October 13, 1986, p. 98. New York Times, January 15, 1994, Sec. A, p. 11; October 28, 1994, B9. New Yorker, October 27, 1986, p. 118,120; July 31, 1989, pp. 67-69. Opera News, June 1989, pp. 24, 26-29. People Weekly, October 6, 1986, pp. 129-130. Time, May 16, 1988, p. 88. U.S. News & World Report, November 3, 1986, pp. 73-74. —Alison Carb Sussman
Practically
every work by composer Anthony Davis could have been composed today.
Long, overlapping rhythmic patterns and formulas that pit portions of
the orchestra against each other, as harmonically rich and textured as
the doleful tapestries of inequalities in the United States, is a
central component of Davis’ oeuvre. What Davis calls his “clones,”
cyclical structures and serpentine lines that undergo little internal
change, are laid end to end, becoming long chains, moving at contrasting
speeds against each other. Davis’ music thrives on these simultaneously
complicated and transparent stratifications, at times sublime, at times
thunderous and swarming. Yet, there is a sense of progress and freedom
within these webs of sound that exhibit clarity and immediacy, with
Davis’s work sounding consistently new and novel. Three of Davis’s works are presented on a 2014 Boston Modern Orchestra Project release – titled Notes from the Underground –
in a beautiful package with confident and robust performances from BMOP
under Gil Rose, with an effortless, incisive, and chillingly present
performance by clarinetist J. D. Parran. Composer George Lewis provides
an exceptional and insightful critical essay in the liner notes, and
Davis himself provides extensive program notes for each work, clarifying
for a listener his compositional approaches and motivations. With two
works from the 1980s (Wayang V, Notes from the Underground) and a more recent, streamlined, and poignant work from 2007 (You Have the Right to Remain Silent), the recording is a glimpse of the composer’s roots and his developed voice. Wayang V (1984) is the oldest work on the recording, though a
freshness of harmony and playfulness, assisted by Davis himself with a
warm, easy performance on piano, helps the work transcend era. Wayang V
is one of many such works, a kind of concerto between both the piano
and orchestra, and within the orchestra itself, inspired by the music of
Indonesia – indeed, the final movement “Kecak” owes its techniques,
vibrant colors, and rhythmic energy to the eponymous Balinese chant.
Davis claims a mantle from many places; in Wayang V, the clearest influences are Bali, Lou Harrison, and Messiaen. Notes from the Underground (1988), premiered by the American
Composers Orchestra, has its origins in Duke Ellington, though contains
as many inflections of jazz as it does colotomic structures. As Davis
explains, the work ignites in the relatively short “Shadow,” with a
complicated polyrhythmic, palindromic, multi-phrased system unfolding in
“Act.” Superimposing 20/8 and 11/9 patterns along with 12, 25, and/or
27 beat patterns, Davis creates a world of multiple moving parts clearly
moving with and against one another. A lesser orchestra would likely be
muddled, but Gil Rose’s direction heightens and clarifies this action,
to where we can almost see both the web and every strand in the web that
Davis weaves. The effect is insistent, static, clever, and anxious –
and fantastically performed.
Anthony Davis
The most recent work You Have the Right to Remain Silent
(2007) is unique for its small chamber size (flute, oboe, bassoon, horn,
trumpet, trombone, 3 percussionists, harp, single strings) and its
featured soloists: Earl Howard gives a magical and colorful turn on a
Kurzweil synthesizer, and J. D. Parran gives us a lesson on how to make
practically every sound imaginable on both the clarinet and the
contra-alto clarinet. You Have the Right… is, as George Lewis
puts it, a kind of shadow theater where Davis is pulling the strings in
what is very much a sadly repeated scenario: pursuit, arrest,
confinement, refusal, and repetition. The work, of course, takes its cue
and inspiration from the Miranda Warning, and fragments of the
paragraph, ubiquitous in cop dramas and civics textbooks, appear
throughout the work. The piece also plays upon the Cageian concept of
“Silence” – here rephrased and repurposed as a form of privilege,
evoking Martin Luther King’s statements about silence being betrayal and
continued allowance of oppression.
You Have the Right is alarmingly prescient. For those who
may not be familiar with Anthony Davis or his work, Davis is black. In
the landscape of American art music composition, black voices are far
too few, and political perspectives from this unique vantage point are
achingly rare. New York City’s controversial “Stop and Frisk” policy
remains on the books; “Stop and Frisk” overwhelmingly targeted
minorities – young black men being the most-often targeted. As I write
this review, the Ferguson, Missouri police are only now backing down
after the killing of Michael Brown, Jr., an unarmed black man, at the
hands of a police officer. I first listened to this recording within
hours of learning about Eric Garner, an unarmed New York man and
asthmatic who died due to compression of the neck and chest due to force
applied by NYPD officers. During 2005 and 2006 – presumably close to
when Davis composed You Have the Right – numerous unarmed black
men and women met their fate as Brown and Garner have (The Danziger
Bridge incident; Timothy Stansbury; Sean Bell; Aaron Campbell; the list,
sadly, continues), at the hands of the uniformed officers who are
oath-sworn to protect them. To say that You Have the Right… is a direct statement of
activism may be presumptuous, but the evidence points to a compelling
case. The usage of the Kurzweil synth in the work is striking – at times
for its somewhat dated timbres, at others how it samples and mimics and
distorts the clarinet and percussion, and mostly how Earl Howard
mercurially shifts between the two worlds (and how Davis structures
these shifts) and seamlessly interacts with the worlds. Mediator, judge,
helpful attendant, or something far more sinister? We’re not sure.
Parran’s brilliant playing elicits shrieks of terror, delight, fury, and
more, and the primal vocalizations and clarinet multiphonics point to a
neglected, wrongly-accused suspect, mistreated and misunderstood by the
“authorities.” The “authorities” here is the chorus of voices of the
chamber ensemble that flatly proclaim vestiges of the Miranda text:
initially, the rhythmic chanting of the Miranda warning comes off as
uncompelling, dry, flat. But that too is a pernicious vision: what
should be a guarantee of sacred Constitutional rights comes off as
routine, devoid of passion, like those uttering it no longer care about
it, and those hearing it have no reason to ever believe it. It becomes a
plaything in the mouths of the orchestra and something tossed as
carelessly about as a purse, or keys, or a jacket. The effect of You Have the Right… as a whole is psychologically terrifying, initially subtly; only after ample circumspection can the full weight be felt. George Lewis, in his included essay, claims that Davis’s music
“points the way to an American musical culture that can connect its
classical music with an African diasporic sonic culture. […] More
broadly, this music poses the question of what a new classical music
might sound like in a post-colonial world. The work exhibits a
heterogeneity that references a complex mix of cultures and traditions.”
I should perhaps underscore the usage of the word complex, for
Davis’s work, as presented on this album, reflects uniquely American
aspirations – the “melting pot” (though it be cliché) idea, equal
treatment and honor of source material, preservation of one culture
while advancing it – and uniquely American traits (vis-à-vis jazz,
structured improvisation, blues), while making pretty clear statements
about the American present. Davis’s music points to who we are, who we
should be, and who we were; Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra
Project do faithful justice to Davis’s work, giving it a clear and
present voice, moving and compelling. https://avantmusicnews.com/2017/12/30/anthony-davis-discusses-his-upcoming-opera/
“I’m very concerned about the future,” says composer and UCSD professor Anthony Davis,
who has never shied away from controversial subjects. “That’s why it’s
important for me to continue to write about political events because I
believe the country is in peril. We could easily fall into a plutocracy,
and it’s an open question whether our institutions will survive.” Davis
has been scoring his latest opera, Darkest Light in the Heart, to
premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2020.
“I’m very concerned about the future,” says composer and UCSD professorAnthony Davis,
who has never shied away from controversial subjects. “That’s why it’s important for me to continue to write about political events because I believe the country is in peril.
We could easily fall into a plutocracy, and it’s an open question whether our
institutions will survive.”
Davis has been scoring his latest opera, Darkest Light in the Heart, to premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2020. That location has a special significance.
“[The opera is] about the church shootings that [white supremacist] Dylan Roof committed — although I don’t actually use his name. He’s a character, kind of a specter, but he
doesn’t say anything, which is appropriate, because he didn’t say much when he
was shooting everybody. The opera isn’t really about him — I didn’t want to give
his ideas a voice — you see him with his gun but he’s really kind of a ghost.”
Davis believes this opera represents an opportunity to examine larger issues
and painful truths.
“It’s about how the black community responded to this atrocity and the
ongoing atrocities they’ve had to endure, and how to move forward.
It’s told from the perspective of a survivor whose mother was killed and
how she came to forgive the shooter.
“She has to wrestle through all these emotions, from hate and wanting revenge —
all very natural responses — until she finally gets to this place of forgiveness.
God and Satan appear as two African-American guys on a park bench —
and they have a wager over whether she’ll keep her faith.
It’s all about how you deal with the aftermath of a tragedy.”
Davis has witnessed the ebb and flow of the struggle for civil rights in the black community.
“We’ve made some progress in the last 50 years,” he said.
“But we are also experiencing a serious backslide.
If you look at the economic gains in the African-American community,
there hasn’t been much progress. I think Trump’s election was
emblematic of racial resentment.”
The composer is excited to get the ball rolling. “I’m working with a playwright
named Steven Fechter who wrote the libretto; we just had a reading in the fall.”
Davis finds meaning in the intersection of music and politics:
“Ever since my first opera [written about Malcolm X] it’s been
my life’s purpose to illuminate these political moments that I think are
I have been busy orchestrating FIVE and I am excited that the
piano-vocal score is complete and we are moving forward to the
rehearsals this Fall. The opera features Donald Trump as a character.
His political career really began with his actions against the Central
Park Five in 1989 and his all too familiar campaign of racial and
cultural division was evident in his response to the Central Park jogger
case. I am excited to collaborate with some outstanding improvisers
including Earl Howard on the Kurzweil, who will collaborate with me on
the sound elements in the piece, J.D. Parran on contra-alto clarinet and
clarinet, Mark Helias on bass and Pheeroan Aklaff on drums. The opera
is conceived for chamber orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus. I would
like to thank New Music USA for their support of the project as well as
the Map Fund and Kevin Maynor and Trilogy: An Opera Company.
More Updates ▼
Overview
FIVE is an opera with a libretto by Richard Wesley that
investigates the Central Park Five, the five young African American boys
who were falsely convicted of the rape and assault of a young white
woman in Central Park. The piece will be created with the Newark Boys
Choir and the Trilogy Opera Company and will involve my interaction with
teenagers in the African American communities in Newark. Recently the
Newark Boys choir participated in an initial workshop with Trilogy
Opera. The music in the opera will draw from a wide range of influences
from the funk of Sly and the Family Stone to the early hip hop of Public
Enemy, the Jazz expression of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Miles
Davis to the operatic influences of Stravinsky, Berg and Britten all in
my uniquely individual voice. I am hoping that this piece will play an
important role in understanding where we are after “Ferguson” and how
such incidents of racial injustice are rooted in racial fear and hatred. In my career as a composer I have devoted myself to the creation of
works that bring to light issues of political and social significance.
Particularly my operas have addressed pivotal events and figures in
American history with a focus on the issues of race and justice. My
first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X premiered at New York
City Opera in 1986 and was a revolutionary work both in subject matter
and musical content. The work treated Malcolm X as a tragic hero who
negotiates profound changes of identity from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X
and El Hajj Malik el Shabazz. The music revealed Malcolm’s odyssey
through the parallel evolution of African American music drawing from
the music of the 1940’s to the Avant-Garde expression of the 1960’s all
synthesized into an original, singular musical voice. An opera on this
scale integrating Jazz and Classical music within a powerful theatrical
experience had never been attempted before. I continued to explore the political realm in several of my other
operas, including Tania, based on the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst,
Amistad, based on the rebellion and subsequent trial of Mende captives,
Wakonda’s Dream based on the trial of Standing Bear in the 1870’s and
Lilith, a meditation on Adam’s first wife and the eternal conflict of
man and woman. It should be noted that both operas X and Amistad
preceded the films by Spike Lee and Stephen Spielberg. All these works
indicate my continued and sustained concern with our ongoing political
struggle. These pivotal events in our history offer windows into
understanding who we are today and how we arrived at our present
situation. The slogan, “Black Lives Matter” is not only an important
political statement but it also the central focus in my work as an
artist and composer.
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Act I, Scene 3 "You Want the Truth, But You Don't Want to Know," Malcolm's Aria. Malcolm
Little is under interrogation by the police for robbery. There is a
spotlight on him as he sits in a chair. There are no questions as he
tells his story. The aria ends Act I.
“They Come As If From the Heavens, Act II, Scene 6 from the opera Amistad
This is Act II, Scene 6 from a live performance of the opera
Amistad by Anthony Davis and Thulani Davis sung by Florence Quivar with
the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The Goddess of the Waters tells the story of
the “Middle Passage” from the perspective of the ocean as she receives
the bodies of slaves tossed overboard. For the Goddess these actions not
only are immoral but literally a violation of her body. The aria moves
through contrasting musical sections from the orchestral introduction to
recitative and aria in a dramatic musical narrative.
You Have the Right to Remain Silent, Mv. II (Loss)
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This is the 2nd movement, LOSS, from YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO
REMAIN SILENT, my concerto for clarinet/contra-alto clarinet, Kurzweil
and ensemble featuring J.D. Parran on contra-alto clarinet, Earl Howard
on Kurzweil, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project with Gil Rose,
conductor. The piece is conceived in two contrasting sections bridged by
an improvised duet with J.D. Parran and Earl Howard. The piece is an
example of how I integrate improvisation in my compositions. The last
section of the piece starting at 4’14” is a homage to Charles Mingus.
Opera News has called Anthony Davis, “A National Treasure,” for his
pioneering work in opera. His music has made an important contribution
not only in opera, but in chamber, choral and orchestral music. He has
been on the cutting edge of improvised music and Jazz for over four
decades. Anthony Davis continues to explore new…
I would like to thank New Music USA for the support. FIVE, a
production of Trilogy Opera, will premiere on November 12th, 2016 at the
New Jersey Performing Arts Center. I would also like to thank Kevin
Maynor for his ongoing advocacy of African American artists and Richard
Wesley for his powerful libretto.
THE MUSIC OF ANTHONY DAVIS: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH ANTHONY DAVIS:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Practically
every work by composer Anthony Davis could have been composed today.
Long, overlapping rhythmic patterns and formulas that pit portions of
the orchestra against each other, as harmonically rich and textured as
the doleful tapestries of inequalities in the United States, is a
central component of Davis’ oeuvre. What Davis calls his “clones,”
cyclical structures and serpentine lines that undergo little internal
change, are laid end to end, becoming long chains, moving at contrasting
speeds against each other. Davis’ music thrives on these simultaneously
complicated and transparent stratifications, at times sublime, at times
thunderous and swarming. Yet, there is a sense of progress and freedom
within these webs of sound that exhibit clarity and immediacy, with
Davis’s work sounding consistently new and novel.
