UK Singletary Center for the Arts
Coming Soon
Joe Lovano
Saturday, January 30, 2010
7:30pm
Active during a period of jazz history when it seemed radical innovation was a thing of the past, Joe Lovano nevertheless coalesced various stylistic elements from disparate eras into a personal and forward-seeking style. While not an innovator in a macro sense, Lovano has unquestionably charted his own path. His playing contains not an ounce of glibness, but possesses in abundance the sense of spontaneity that has always characterized the music's finest improvisers. Lovano doesn't adopt influences -- he absorbs them -- so that when playing a standard, he exudes the same sense of abandon as when playing totally free (which, it should be pointed out, he does well, if infrequently). Lovano's most significant achievement is his incorporation of free and modal expressive devices into traditional chord-change improvisation.
Lovano has split his time in the studio between releasing impressive original recordings and albums reinterpreting the work of artists who have influenced him, including vocalist Frank Sinatra on 1996's Celebrating Sinatra, various bop-era stalwarts including pianist Tadd Dameron on 2000's 52nd Street Themes, and opera tenor Enrico Caruso on 2001's Viva Caruso. In 2004, the always unpredictable reedman released the ballads album I'm All for You, featuring journeyman pianist Hank Jones. Joyous Encounter followed in spring 2005 with Streams of Expression appearing on Blue Note a year later. Lovano once again paired up with Jones for the live duets album Kids: Duets Live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in 2007. His 1996 album Quartets: Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note) was named Jazz Album of the Year by readers of Downbeat Magazine.
Lovano is the son of the respected Cleveland saxophonist Tony "Big T" Lovano. Joe started playing alto sax as a child, taught by his father, who also introduced him to jazz. In his youth, Joe would hear many of the prominent jazz artists who passed through town, including Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Lovano began playing in jam sessions around Cleveland while still in his teens. Although thoroughly steeped in bebop, he also developed an interest in the jazz experimentalism of the 1960s, listening to such musicians as John Coltrane, Jimmy Giuffre, and Ornette Coleman. Following high school, Lovano moved to Boston and attended the Berklee School of Music. Fellow students included such future collaborators as John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Kenny Werner. While at Berklee, Lovano discovered modal harmony and opened up to the broad areas of tonal freedom that he found so attractive in the music of John Coltrane, among others."
Sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Cultural Center.