Music in the Gallery
Solo Performance with Oliver Lake
Date: Saturday, June 29 |
Time: Two shows: 7 pm and 9 pm
Cost: $20.00
Location: Healdsburg Center for the Arts, 130 Plaza St., Healdsburg
Phone: 707-431-1970
Tickets: For sale online or at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts during business hours (daily 11 am – 5 pm). Advance purchase recommended.
Accomplished poet, painter and performance artist, Oliver Lake will perform a solo concert of saxophone, flute and poetry, surrounded by a gallery of his visual works on June 29 at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts as part of an ongoing series produced by Healdsburg Jazz.
Even though Lake’s extraordinary talents as composer, saxophonist, flutist and bandleader have brought him world-renown, extremely few artists embrace such a diverse array of musical styles and disciplines.
Lake is not only able to thrive in all of these environments, but does so without distorting or diluting his own remarkable artistic identity. His art work is the anchor of the current show at the Art Center, “Flying Home/Inspired By Jazz: a visual exploration of jazz.”
Whether composing, arranging or performing, Lake views it all as parts of the same whole. Among his writing efforts, he’s composed major commissioned works for the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and created chamber pieces for the Arditti and Flux String Quartets, the Amherst Sax Quartet and the San Francisco Contemporary Players. His arrangements include for pop diva Bjork, rocker Lou Reed and rap group A Tribe Called Quest; and his collaborations range from working with poets Amiri Baraka and Ntozake Shange, choreographers Ron Brown and Marlies Yearby, Native American vocalist Mary Redhouse, Korean kumongo player Jin Hi Kim, and Chinese bamboo flute player Shuni Tsou.
Lake has also made unique performances with MacArthur Award recipients, actress/author Anna Devere Smith and writer/law professor/political commentator Patricia Williams; shared the stage with hip-hop artist Mos Def and pop star Me’shell Ndegeocello; and led his own Oliver Lake Steel Quartet, Big Band and cooperative ensembles the World Saxophone Quartet and Trio 3. If you’re looking for a single category for his talents, there isn’t just one, but Dixieland, be-bop, soul, rhythm & blues, cool school, swing, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, rock and jazz rock.
Born in Marianna, Arkansas in 1942, Lake moved to St. Louis at the age of two. He began drawing at the age of 13 (and paints daily, using oil, acrylics, wood, canvas, and mixed media), and soon after began playing cymbals and bass drum in various drum and bugle corps.
At 17, he began to take a serious interest in jazz. Like many other members of the Black Artists Group (BAG) and its Chicago-based sister organization, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Lake moved to New York in the mid-’70s, working the fertile ground of the downtown loft scene and quickly establishing himself as one of its most adventurous and multi-faceted artists.
A co-founder of the internationally acclaimed World Saxophone Quartet with Hemphill, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray in 1977 (and recently celebrating its 30th anniversary with an album of Jimi Hendrix pieces for Justin Time Records), Lake continues to work with the WSQ and his own various groups – including the groundbreaking roots/reggae ensemble Jump Up – and collaborating with many notable choreographers, poets and a veritable Who’s Who of the progressive jazz scene of the late 20th century, performing all over the U.S. as well as in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.
For more information visit www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org