Jazz-Punk-Funk Fusion Legend Joe Bowie Leads Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble in Winter Carnival Concert

HANOVER, NH—The Hop’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble rocks Dartmouth’s Winter Carnival for the 36^th year straight, this time with the help of jazz-punk-funk fusion prince Joe Bowie, on Saturday, February 11, at 8 pm, in Spaulding Auditorium of the Hopkins Center.

Youngest sibling of an illustrious royal family of jazz, bandleader and trombonist Bowie and his legendary group Defunkt have merged avant-garde jazz and funk and pop music grooves for more than three decades, recording 15 albums and performing throughout the world. Performing both at jazz festivals and in rock and soul venues, they have shared the stage with such popular artists as James Brown, David Byrne and Talking Heads, The Clash, Isaac Hayes, Prince, and Maceo Parker. Wrote The Irish Times, “When Joseph Bowie and friends start to blend their walloping bass, perky percussion and bold, brash brass into edgy, fulsome workouts, anyone who does not feel like getting up and dancing would be advised to seek the comfort of the nearest exit.”

Bowie is also a veteran music educator, leading ensembles in schools, colleges and communities throughout the world in digging deeply into the jazz, blues and funk traditions and heighten their ability to play as an energized, improvising “collective.” His teaching and performing is deeply informed by the Buddhism he has practiced since the 1980s, he wrote in 2003: “Previously, Defunkt Music was primarily concerned with concerts, club dates and the illusive reward of commercial success. Now, we turn our complete energy and focus towards developing creative workshops to share and communicate with as many people, in as many situations as possible, throughout the world. We especially want to reach and share positive energy and valuable life experience with young people of all ages and cultural backgrounds. The children are our future.”

Born in 1953, Bowie is the youngest son of a music teacher and the younger brother of saxophonist and arranger Byron Bowie and the late Lester Bowie, an internationally acclaimed jazz trumpeter. Wrote Joe Bowie in 2004, “I began playing trombone in 1964 as a matter of default. My eldest brother was Lester Bowie, world renowned trumpeter, and the middle son Byron was a multi-reed player and accomplished arranger. Nine years younger than he, 11 years old, and faced with the dilemma of instrument choice, posed by my elementary school music teacher, I chose the trombone. In my mind, this completed the horn section in the family.”

Bowie founded Defunkt in 1978 to take a danceable approach to jazz, and the band soon proceeded to create some of the most adventurous sounds of the last quarter of the 20th century. Wrote the blog Uppity Music (upppitymusic.com) in 2006, “The downtown scene of New York City circa 1982 was the nexus of punk, jazz and dance music yet few artists attempted to compile all three styles into one mega-style, citing reasons such as ‘technically impossible’ and ‘virtually unlistenable.’ Enter trombonist Joseph Bowie, who developed the Voltron-like powers to merge these genres into one sound with his group Defunkt…[which] stacks fast and furious funk grooves on top of one another—horns colliding with guitars crushed by percussion—until every sonic cavity is bursting with sound, and then Joseph Bowie sings on top of that. If the orchestral funk of Earth Wind & Fire walks with military precision, Defunkt moves like a prison break: quick and focused but chaotic and angry.”

Defunkt’s first three albums—Defunkt, Razor’s Edge, and Thermonuclear Sweat—made them leaders of New York’s radical underground music scene. Commercial success eluded them, however—especially as hip-hop swept through the music industry—and they disbanded in 1983. Reforming three years later, Defunkt recorded an additional six albums, including A Blues Tribute: Jimi Hendrix & Muddy Waters and In America. Along with Defunkt, Bowie also founded and leads the ensemble Kosen-Rufu (a Buddhist term meaning “to declare and spread widely”). In 2003 Bowie moved to The Netherlands, where he lives in the small town of Gorinchem and works with a number of ensembles and also tours with his ensembles and workshops.

The Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble is the student jazz ensemble of Dartmouth College, specializing in the music of the African-American and Afro-Caribbean jazz traditions and contemporary Creative Music.  Bowie is only the latest esteemed jazz artist to come to Dartmouth for a week-long residency with the BCJE, engaging in rehearsals and coaching sessions, meeting informally with students, and playing with them in the culminating Saturday-night concert. Other artists who have worked with the ensemble include Omar Sosa,  Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, Peter Apfelbaum, Steven Bernstein, Joseph and Lester Bowie, Cecil Bridgewater, Don Cherry, Dexter Gordon, Joe Gonzalez, Slide Hampton, James Harvey, Jimmy and Percy Heath, Julius Hemphill, Adam Klipple, Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Frank Morgan, Butch Morris, David Murray, Arturo O’Farrill, Eddie Palmieri, Michael Ray, Ivan Renta, Sam Rivers, Max Roach, Kermit Ruffins, Maria Schneider, Woody Shaw, Sun Ra, Clark Terry and “Papo” Vasquez.