Thursday Evening, March 31, 2016, at 8:00

Imani Uzuri

Marvin Sewell, Co–Musical Director, Guitars, and BanjoChala Yancy, ViolinGraham Haynes, CornetJames Hurt, PianoJerome Harris, BassSatoshi Takeishi, Percussion and DrumsJarvis C. McInnis, Matthew D. Morrison, Rozz Nash, Guest Vocals

This evening’s program is approximately 75 minutes long and will be performed without intermission.

Major support for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook is provided by Amy & Joseph Perella.

Endowment support provided by Bank of America

This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center.

The Prog

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Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off.

Steinway PianoStanley H. Kaplan Penthouse

American Songbook

We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper mightdistract the performers and your fellow audience members.

In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. Flash photography and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building.

Additional support for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook is provided by The DuBose andDorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, The Shubert Foundation, Jill and Irwin B. Cohen, The G & A Foundation, Inc., Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Friends ofLincoln Center.

Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Artist catering provided by Zabar’s and zabars.com

MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center

UPCOMING AMERICAN SONGBOOK EVENTSIN THE STANLEY H. KAPLAN PENTHOUSE:

Friday Evening, April 1, at 8:00Grace McLean

IN THE DAVID RUBENSTEIN ATRIUM:

Tuesday Evening, April 5, at 7:30Rick Barry

The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse is located in the Samuel B. and David Rose Building at165 West 65th Street, 10th floor. The David Rubenstein Atrium is located on Broadwaybetween West 62nd and 63rd Streets. Shows at the Atrium are free, with seating availableon a first-come, first-served basis.

For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit AmericanSongbook.org. Call the Lincoln Center InfoRequest Line at (212) 875-5766 or visit AmericanSongbook.org for complete programinformation.

Join the conversation: #LCSongbook

American Songbook I Meet the Artists

Vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri (co–musical director) creates musicthat reflects her rural North Carolina roots; she grew up singing spiritualsand line-singing hymns with her grandmother and extended family in theirsmall rural church. Critically praised for her mesmerizing vocals, widerange, and highly personalized compositions, Ms. Uzuri travels internation-ally creating concerts, experimental theater, performance art, and soundinstallations in venues and festivals that have included Joe’s Pub, TheKitchen, Central Park SummerStage, the Whitney Museum, Met Breuer,Museum of Modern Art, and Performa biennial. She has collaborated withartists across various disciplines, including musicians Herbie Hancock,John Legend, and Vijay Iyer; visual artists Wangechi Mutu, Carrie MaeWeems, and Sanford Biggers; choreographer Trajal Harrell; and composerRobert Ashley.

Ms. Uzuri’s work incorporates her interests in world culture, improvisation,and sacred music. Her recent album, The Gypsy Diaries, draws on herroots as well as influences ranging from Sufi devotionals to Romanylaments. She is currently composing a new musical, GIRL Shakes LooseHer Skin, with book and lyrics by playwright Zakiyyah Alexander (featuringthe poetry of Sonia Sanchez). She recently premiered her first orchestralcomposition, Placeless, at Ecstatic Music Festival, drawing critical praise.Ms. Uzuri was a 2015 Park Avenue Armory artist-in-residence, and is com-posing her first opera, Hush Arbor, as a 2015 MAP Fund grantee.

Marvin Sewell

Marvin Sewell (co–musical director, guitars, banjo) is a musician, com-poser, and producer whose sound encompasses a fusion of jazz, blues,funk, alternative, and world music. Born and raised in Chicago, he began

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American Songbook I Meet the Artists

playing guitar with the Malcolm X Community College Big Band in high schooland jammed with many basement bands in the city. From there, he went on toperform with famous local musicians such as Von Freeman, Ramsey Lewis,Billy Branch, Jody Christian, and Big Time Sarah. In 1990 Mr. Sewell moved toNew York City, and in 1995 began a creative collaboration with Grammy-winningrecording artist Cassandra Wilson. Over the next 15 years he would become herlead guitarist, arranger, bandleader, and musical director.

In addition to leading the Marvin Sewell Group, he is a member of Jason Moranand the Bandwagon and travels the globe touring with a host of performingartists, including Angelique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock, Charles Earland, WayneShorter, Chaka Khan, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lyne Carrington, Prince, FredHopkins, Aimee Mann, George Benson, Mark Isham, Jorge Sylvester, BranfordMarsalis, Regina Carter, Dianne Reeves, and Lila Downs.

Chala Yancy

Chala Yancy (violin) enjoys a career as a chamber musician, studio violinist, andearly childhood music educator. She plays with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s andInternational Street Cannibals new music ensemble. Ms. Yancy has appeared onstage with performing artists such as Adele, Johnny Mathis, Il Volo, Mos Def,Don Omar, Beres Hammond, David Broza, and Kanye West. Television appear-ances include Good Morning America, Today, The Tonight Show, and Late Nightwith Seth Meyers. On Broadway Ms. Yancy has performed in Young Franken -stein, Motown: The Musical, and Amazing Grace. She has also performed at theKennedy Center during the DC Jazz Festival and at Tanglewood Jazz Festivalwith Paquito D’Rivera, Mike Mossman, Nnenna Freelon, and Mike Garson.

Ms. Yancy can be heard on recordings by A Great Big World, Alicia Keys, JamesCarter, Regina Carter, and Papo Vazquez’s Mighty Pirates Troubadours, as wellas on Tania León’s Inura, which was nominated for a Grammy and LatinGrammy. She received her bachelor of music degree from New York Universityand her master’s from the Manhattan School of Music.

Graham Haynes

Graham Haynes (cornet) is regarded as an innovator on cornet and flugelhorn,and an emerging force in contemporary electronic music and world music. As aleader he has recorded 15 critically acclaimed CDs, including ¿What Time It Be!,Nocturne Parisian, and Tones for the 21st Century, which layers sound effects,textures, drones, and samples over electronically manipulated horn. Mr. Hayneshas also collaborated on numerous CDs as a side person with such artists asSteve Coleman, Roy Haynes, Ed Blackwell, Abbey Lincoln, and Cassandra Wilson.Since 2013 Mr. Haynes has been a member of the Vijay Iyer Sextet.

Also a composer, Mr. Haynes has written for theater, dance, and film, includingFlag Wars, a film funded by PBS, and an original soundtrack for the short filmThe Promise. Throughout his career, he has brought together different musicaltraditions from Africa, Asia, and Arabic countries, and has been a perennialguest at the Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival in Morocco.

James Hurt

James Hurt (piano) is a conductor, arranger, composer, drummer, and pianist.His collaborations include working with Rashid Ali, Antonio Hart, Russell Gunn,DJ Logic, Meshell Ndegeocello, Q-Tip, Bernie Worrell, Maceo Parker, andBuster Williams. Mr. Hurt served as guest conductor and arranger for both TessMarsalis & the Swing Daddies at the Iridium and the Jason Lindner Big Band atSmalls. As a pianist Mr. Hurt played in the Oliver Lake Big Band at the KnittingFactory, and on electronics, laptop, and keyboards in Butch Morris’s Nublu andLucky Cheng’s orchestras. As a recording artist he can be heard on such labels as Atlantic, Impulse,Motown, High Note, Fresh Sounds, and Innerscope. He has also recorded onGrammy-nominated albums for Antonio Hart (Here I Stand ), Abbey Lincoln(Wholly Earth), and Russell Gunn (Ethnomusicology, Vol. I). He released his ownalbum, Dark Grooves—Mystical Rhythms, on Blue Note Records. Mr. Hurt alsoteaches both privately and through the New School’s jazz department.

Jerome Harris

Jerome Harris (bass) has won recognition as a versatile and penetrating styliston both guitar and bass guitar. From 1988 to 1994 he was Sonny Rollins’s gui-tarist, and appears on five of his recordings. Since then, Mr. Harris has recordedand performed on six continents, with Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, DavidKrakauer, Paul Motian, Ray Anderson, Don Byron, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake,Amina Claudine Myers, Bob Stewart, George Russell, and Julius Hemphill,among others. His extensive international work includes stints in Japan withRollins, as well as touring in six African countries, sponsored by the U.S. StateDepartment, with saxophonist Sam Newsome and guitarist Marvin Sewell.

Mr. Harris’s scholarly work includes an essay, “Jazz on the Global Stage,” pub-lished in the anthology The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective(Garland/Taylor & Francis). He has taught courses on the history and social con-text of jazz and blues at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Afterearning a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and social relations at HarvardCollege in 1973, Mr. Harris attended New England Conservatory of Music forjazz guitar.

American Songbook I Meet the Artists

American Songbook I Meet the Artists

Satoshi Takeishi

Based in New York City since 1991, Satoshi Takeishi (percussion, drums) hasperformed and recorded in variety of genres, from world music, jazz, and con-temporary classical music to experimental electronic music. He continues toexplore multicultural electronics and improvisational music with local musi-cians and composers.

Jarvis C. McInnis

Jarvis C. McInnis (guest vocals) is an interdisciplinary scholar of AfricanAmerican and African diaspora literature and culture, with research interestsprimarily in the American South and Caribbean, music and sound studies, per-formance studies, and visual culture. He is currently a postdoctoral researchassociate in the Department of African American Studies at PrincetonUniversity, where he is working on his first book project, tentatively titled TheAfterlives of the Plantation: Aesthetics, Labor, and Diaspora in the GlobalBlack South. A graduate of Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, Mr.McInnis was a featured soloist and panelist at the Imani Uzuri Curates: Sinnersand Saints festival in Brooklyn in 2013.

Matthew D. Morrison

Matthew D. Morrison (guest vocals) is an assistant professor in the CliveDavis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of theArts. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Columbia University, a master’s inmusicology from the Catholic University of America, and was a Presidentialmusic scholar at Morehouse College, where he studied violin and conducting.Mr. Morrison has served as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed music journalCurrent Musicology, where he published a special issue on race, sound, andperformance in spring 2012. He is currently the dean of faculty and academicaffairs for the W.E.B. DuBois Scholars Institute at Princeton University. Hisbook project, American Popular Sound: From Blackface to Blacksound, consid-ers the implications of positing sound and music as major components in bothindividual and societal identity formations, particularly the construction of race.Mr. Morrison also curates and contracts a variety of performances featuringsome of the most dynamic musicians in the New York City area.

Rozz Nash

Musician, choreographer, and theater director Rozz Nash (guest vocals) hasperformed and taught in New York City for over 20 years. She is the foundingartistic director of the Caras Dance Ensemble, a youth contemporary dancecompany in Williamsburg. She has directed and choreographed musicals and

dance works for the Possibility Project, Marymount Academy, and ColumbiaUniversity, among others. Now based in her native Bay Area, Ms. Nash is cur-rently the director of performing and visual art at Roses in Concrete CommunitySchool in Oakland. She also consults for the San Francisco Opera as a leadinstructor. Ms. Nash is also an internationally touring artist and can be seen withher music project Coulon when she is in New York at the Blue Note, Joe’s Pub,and Rockwood Music Hall.

American Songbook

In 1998, Lincoln Center launched American Songbook, dedicated to the celebra-tion of popular American song. Designed to highlight and affirm the creativemastery of America’s songwriters from their emergence at the turn of the 19thcentury up through the present, American Songbook spans all styles and gen-res, from the form’s early roots in Tin Pan Alley and Broadway to the eclecticismof today’s singer-songwriters. American Songbook also showcases the out-standing interpreters of popular song, including established and emerging con-cert, cabaret, theater, and songwriter performers.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: pre-senter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and com-munity relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter ofmore than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educationalactivities annually, LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and festivals includingAmerican Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln CenterOut of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and theWhite Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award–winning Live From LincolnCenter, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus,LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and the 11resident organizations. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation,completed in October 2012.

American Songbook I Meet the Artists

American Songbook

Lincoln Center Programming DepartmentJane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic DirectorHanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music ProgrammingJon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary ProgrammingJill Sternheimer, Director, Public ProgrammingLisa Takemoto, Production ManagerCharles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary ProgrammingMauricio Lomelin, Producer, Contemporary ProgrammingRegina Grande, Associate ProducerAmber Shavers, Associate Producer, Public ProgrammingNana Asase, Assistant to the Artistic DirectorLuna Shyr, Senior EditorNick Kleist, Company ManagerOlivia Fortunato, House Seat Coordinator

For American SongbookRocky Noel, Lighting DesignScott Stauffer, Sound DesignKyle Moore, Sound Engineer