Performance

Winter 2024

Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth

featuring Angela Morris & Anna Webber

February 18, 2024

This event occurred as part of the 23/24 Hop Ensemble season. This is an archived view.

The Coast dives into the music of saxophonists and composers Angela Morris and Anna Webber, including a commissioned premiere from each composer.

23/24 Hop Ensemble

Taylor Ho Bynum, director

Morris and Webber are the leaders of the Webber/Morris Big Band, one of the most exciting contemporary large ensembles on the NYC music scene. The evening's program will also feature new compositions and arrangements by students Amy Norton '23 and Tanaka Chikati '25, plus some special surprise guests.

Photos: Ben DeFlorio

The Hop Presents

Coast Jazz Orchestra
at Dartmouth

Taylor Ho Bynum, director

with

Angela Morris, composer and saxophone
Anna Webber, composer and saxophone

plus special guests
Tomeka Reid, cello
Jessica Pavone, viola
and members of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra

Sunday, February 18, 4 pm
Rollins Chapel • Dartmouth College • 2024

Generously supported by the Dartmouth Class of 1975, the Bruce Webb Eaken 1926 Memorial Fund and Friends of the Coast Jazz Orchestra.
We thank Mrs. Selma Bornstein for her generous donation of the Petrof Concert Grand Piano, given in loving memory of her husband Dr. Murray Bornstein and used for tonight’s concert.

Program

Approximate duration: 75 minutes

The Coast Jazz Orchestra
Joyspring Clifford Brown, arr. Amy Norton ’23
Unonzani? Tanaka Chikati ’25

The Coast with Angela Morris and Anna Webber, tenor saxophones and flutes
Microchimera Angela Morris
World premiere, Hopkins Center commission
Hudson Lowry Anna Webber
World premiere, Hopkins Center commission
Coral Angela Morris
Everything Immoderation Anna Webber

The Coast with Anna Webber and Angela Morris
plus Jessica Pavone, viola, Tomeka Reid, cello, and members of the DSO
Conducted improvisation + Give Me a Moment James “Jabbo” Ware

Coast Jazz Orchestra – Winter 2024

Taylor Ho Bynum, director, cornet and flugelhorn

Flute Jessica Yang ’25 Alto saxophone Ryan Tabibian ’25 Devan Amin ’27 Tenor saxophone Ben Sontag ’25 Eliza Gould ’27 Baritone saxophone Mateo Oyola ’24 Trumpet Amy Norton ’23* Tucker Stone ’26 Horn Raegan Padula ’24 Trombone Julia Picker ’24 (+voice) Noah Prescott ’26 Jackson Yassin ’26 Nico Bezzerides ’27

Violin Katie McCabe ’21 Gracie Kim ’25 Cello Daniel Lin ’23 Guitar Bo Farnell ’26 Piano Jordan Jones ’24 Bass Witt Lindau ’27 Drums and percussion Kirusha Lanski ’23 Jayanth Uppaluri ’24^ Sam Beutner ’25 Damon Dewitt ’25 P.J. Griffiths ’26 Tabla Tushar Aggarwal ’26 Mbira, vibraphone and voice Tanaka Chikati ’25

* Coast librarian/copyist
^ Coast ensemble manager

Special thanks to IIP faculty Amy Garapic and Tim Sessions for their sectional coaching support this term

Program Notes

In February’s dark winter days it is good to celebrate new growth, and this concert is full of the new. We start with two works by student composers. Amy Norton’s original arrangement of the classic Joyspring by the legendary trumpeter Clifford Brown is properly joyous, and particularly appropriate to debut on Max Roach’s centennial year (the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet first recorded the piece in 1954, less than two years before Brown’s death in a car accident at age 25). Tanaka Chikati’s Unonzani? brings her voice and mbira (an instrument using plucked metal and a resonant gourd, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe) to the front of the ensemble, offering the big band version of a piece first recorded on her debut EP Midzi (under her artist name “SunniChi”).

Angela Morris and Anna Webber are two exceptional saxophonists and composers, who lead the Webber/Morris Big Band, one of the most exciting contemporary large ensembles currently on the New York scene. Their work stretches at the boundaries of genre and style while simultaneously celebrating the roots of the jazz big band and creative music orchestra traditions. It’s been a profound pleasure to not only dig deeply into their sound world with the Coast, but to present two commissioned world premieres—happily soon to be recorded by their own big band, keep an eye out for their next album!

Composition and improvisation are too often presented as a dichotomy, whereas many of us in this music see them as an interwoven continuum of structure and vocabulary, navigation and inspiration. Anna and Angela are both fantastic instrumentalists and improvisers—as are the two living composers whose work was performed by the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra last night, cellist Tomeka Reid and violaist Jessica Pavone. For our final number, all four artists join the Coast, expanded by members of the DSO, for a closing improvisation that will lead into the well-titled Give Me a Moment, a brief reprise of our fall spotlight on the late great composer James ‘Jabbo’ Ware.

Thank you for listening and please enjoy.

Taylor Ho Bynum

About the Artists

Taylor Ho Bynum is a musician, teacher and writer. His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer and conductor, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over 20 recordings as a bandleader and over 100 as a sideperson. Bynum has worked with legendary figures such as Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor and enjoys playing in collective ensembles like his duo with Tomas Fujiwara, Illegal Crowns (with Fujiwara, Benoit Delbecq and Mary Halvorson) and Geometry (with Kyoko Kitamura, Tomeka Reid and Joe Morris), and as a sideperson in groups led by Fujiwara, Reid, Jim Hobbs, Bill Lowe, Bill Cole and William Parker, among others. His writings on music have been published in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Point of Departure and Sound American, and he has been leading the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth since 2017.

Angela Morris is a Brooklyn based multi-instrumentalist and composer whose work sprouts in the creative ground between avant-jazz, new music and pop. Known mostly as a saxophonist, she also performs on her first instrument, violin, and has performed throughout North America and Europe everywhere from DIY basements to arenas. Her compositions for improvisers and classical musicians have been performed worldwide. The Webber/Morris Big Band, her 18-piece jazz big band, performs original compositions by Morris and co-leader Anna Webber. Their debut recording Both Are True (Greenleaf Music) was featured on several Best of 2020 lists including The New York Times, Bandcamp and NPR Jazz Critics Poll. Their music has been described as “riveting and mercurial”, “singular and compelling,” and “tightly arranged and gorgeously free” (by Downbeat, Avant Music News and PopMatters, respectively). As a composer and arranger, Morris has been commissioned by the WDR Big Band in Germany, Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music in California, Nouveau Classical Project in NYC and Brooklyn Youth Music Project.

Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a flutist, saxophonist and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her new album, Shimmer Wince, explores Just Intonation in a jazz setting, and is a follow-up to her critically-acclaimed release Idiom. That album earned Webber the accolade of being named the top composer of the year by JazzTimes in 2021. Her music has been called “visionary and captivating,” (Wall Street Journal), and “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body” (NPR). Her album Clockwise was voted #6 Best Album of 2019 in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll, and her 2020 release, Both Are True (Greenleaf Music), co-led with saxophonist/composer Angela Morris, was named a top ten best release of 2020 by The New York Times. She was recently named a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and was voted the top “Rising Star” flutist in the 2020 Downbeat Critic’s Poll.

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