Coast Jazz Orchestra

The ensemble is joined by renowned drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara, premiering new music inspired by his grandmother, Shizuko.

Winter 2023

Note: Should tickets be sold out online, there will be a number of students tickets available at showtime in Collis.

The Coast Jazz Orchestra welcomes composer Tomas Fujiwara and an ensemble made up of close collaborators: cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, cellist Tomeka Reid, and vibraphone player Patricia Brennan, with Fujiwara on drums and vibraphone. Fujiwara's group will premiere new music inspired by his grandmother, Shizuko, while the Coast will present collaborations with the guest artists, new student compositions and classics from the jazz canon.

Program

The Project

Hopkins Center for the Arts
at Dartmouth

presents

Coast Jazz Orchestra
at Dartmouth

Taylor Ho Bynum, director

and

Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets/Shizuko

Tomas Fujiwara, drums & compositions
Patricia Brennan, vibraphone
Tomeka Reid, cello
Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet

Thursday, February 16, 7:30 pm
Collis Common Ground • Dartmouth College • 2023

Generously supported by a gift to the Don Glasgo Fund in memory of Alan Gottesman ’13 and Friends of the Coast Jazz Orchestra.

Program
Approximate duration: 90 minutes with a brief intermission

The Coast Jazz Orchestra

St. Louis Train, composed by James ‘Jabbo’ Ware

Pocket Pass, composed by Tomas Fujiwara, arranged by Taylor Ho Bynum

Moanin’, composed by Bobby Timmons, arranged by Quincy Jones

Percussion Piece #7, composed by Tomas Fujiwara, performed by the Coast percussion ensemble, coached by Amy Garapic

Ecuador, composed by Amy Norton ’23

Intermission

Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets/Shizuko
Program to be announced from the stage

Program Notes

I am thrilled to spotlight the work of drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara in this winter’s concert, along with his fantastic collaborators Tomeka Reid and Patricia Brennan. As the Coast has grown to encompass a percussion ensemble and a string quartet along with a full jazz big band, it is fitting we have two percussionists and a cellist of such excellence and accomplishment join us for a joyful week of music and mentorship.

The Coast will begin with a composition by one of my mentors, the composer James ‘Jabbo’ Ware, who passed away on December 29th, 2022, a few weeks after his 80th birthday. We will be celebrating his legacy in greater depth in our fall ’23 concert—for now, we offer a taste with St. Louis Train.

Then we spotlight our guest artist’s music—performing two of Tomas’s compositions, the fractured swing of Pocket Pass and the rhythmic complexity of Percussion Piece #7, bookending a tune that was one of Tomas’s own early entry points into the music: Bobby Timmons’s classic Moanin’. Popularized by the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers (featuring trumpeter Lee Morgan’s iconic solo) in 1959, the Coast will play Quincy Jones’s Basie-ish arrangement.

The Coast’s portion of the evening will close with an original by one of our students, Amy Norton ’23. Her composition Ecuador won her a Downbeat Magazine student composer award while she was in high school, now she has rearranged it for Coast’s unique sound and instrumentation.

Tomas’s ensemble blends two of his ongoing projects: his 7 Poets Trio with Tomeka and Patricia, and his Shizuko band with Tomeka and a gray-bearded cornet player. He will be premiering new music that will be recorded later in the spring. It is a treat and a pleasure to host these musicians as they’ve been developing the music, visiting the jazz history class I’ve been teaching, and spending time with the musicians in the Coast. Thanks to all three of them for their generosity, friendship and artistry. And thanks to you for listening!

Taylor Ho Bynum

About the Artists

Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming,” (Point of Departure) Brooklyn-based Tomas Fujiwara is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation. He leads the bands Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio and Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up; is a member of the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); has a collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum; and engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Matana Roberts, Taylor Ho Bynum, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: You Don’t Have to Try (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and Shizuko. His most recent work is Dream Up, a suite for percussion quartet, commissioned by NYSCA and Roulette Intermedium. “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope” (New York Times).

Vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan “has been widely feted as one of the instrument’s newer leaders” observed The New York City Jazz Record. Growing up in Veracruz, Mexico, Patricia’s childhood immersed her in the rich musical culture that developed her artistic voice. Patricia’s search for freedom in her musical expression led her to extending the range and sonic possibilities through the vibraphone and mallet percussion in improvisational music and composition. Patricia’s first album, the solo album Maquishti, was #4 in the New York Times’s Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2021. Patricia was voted the rising star vibraphonist award on Downbeat magazine’s 70th Critics Poll for 2022, and her newest album, More Touch, released in November 2022, is already receiving accolades from critics. Patricia also works as a side person for renowned artists such as Grammy-winning Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Big Band, the Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble and other bands including the Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus, Matt Mitchell’s Phalax Ambassadors, Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets and Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis amongst other groups and collectives. She is currently on the faculty at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the Jazz Studies program at NYU Steinhardt and has given lectures at several colleges including Manhattan School of Music and UCLA.

Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community. A 2022 Herb Alpert awardee and MacArthur Fellow, 2021 USA Fellow, 2019 Foundation of the Arts and a 2016 3Arts recipient, Reid received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. From 2019-2021 Tomeka Reid held an appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition. Most recently, she was the artist-in-residence with the Moers Jazz Festival 2022. Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary composers like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell and drummer Mike Reed (who both perform with Reid in the collective Artifacts Trio). She also co-leads the adventurous string trio Hear In Now, with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi. In 2013, she launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a semi-annual three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. Reid has also led her critically-acclaimed quartet (with Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke and Tomas Fujiwara) since 2015.

Taylor Ho Bynum is a musician, teacher and writer, with a background including work in composition, performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, production, organizing and advocacy. His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over 20 recordings as a bandleader and over 100 as a sideperson. His past endeavors include his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he traveled to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles) and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation (which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects, including two operas and multiple festivals). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and Wadada Leo Smith, and currently enjoys playing with friends 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, Jim Hobbs, Bill Lowe, William Parker and Bill Cole, 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.

Amy Garapic is a Brooklyn-based sound maker and educator. Through her work as both performer and collaborative creative facilitator, Amy is constantly energized by asking the question: “what are biological functions of the arts, and how can that inform how the arts are taught, shared and valued?” Namely, how artistic practice and creative engagement foster empathy, connection and confidence in makers of all ages. Amy can be found performing and teaching in major concert halls, academic institutions, rock clubs, public schools and parks alike throughout the U.S. and beyond. She is one-third of the powerhouse percussion trio TIGUE; guides international artists through monthlong cultural exchange residencies as facilitator with the State Department supported OneBeat; and teaches percussion at Dartmouth College.

Coast Jazz Orchestra – Spring 2023

Taylor Ho Bynum, director
Percussion ensemble coached by Amy Garapic

Trumpets
Ryan McClure ’23
Amy Norton ’23*
Tucker Stone ’26

French horn
Raegan Padula ’24

Trombones
Denzel Acheampong ’23
Sarah Chacko ’23
Julia Picker ’24
Noah Prescott ’26
Jackson Yassin ’26

Alto saxophones:
Bryden Wright ’23
Mateo Oyola ’24

Tenor saxophones
Ryan Tabibian ’25
Ryan Glenn ’26

Baritone saxophone
Ben Sontag ’25

Guitar
Matt Keating ’23
Aidan Adams ’24
Bo Farnell ’26

Violin
Jessica Wang ’23

Viola
Jehan Diaz TH
Elaine Chi ’25

Cello
Daniel Lin ’23

Acoustic bass
Eli Hecht ’23

Electric bass & keyboard
Daniel Amoateng ’25

Piano
Shania Smith ’23

Drums/percussion
Tony Perez ’23
Kirusha Lanski ’24
Jayanth Uppaluri ’24
Sam Beutner ’25
Tanaka Chikati ’25
Damon Dewitt ’25
Tushar Aggarwal ’26
PJ Griffiths ’26^
Lucy Coleman ‘26^

TH = Thayer
*Coast Ensemble Manager
^Percussion Ensemble only

Upcoming Coast Events

Upcoming Coast Events
On sale week of March 13:

Wednesday, March 1, 8 pm
The Coast combos, coached by Taylor Ho Bynum, Jason Ennis and Michael Zsoldos, at Sawtooth Stage, under Allen St. in Hanover

Thursday, April 6, 7:30 pm
The Coast Jazz Orchestra performs Never Enough Hope, the music of Toby Summerfield, as part of the Dartmouth New Music Festival, Collis Common Ground

Saturday, May 27, 8 pm
The Coast Jazz Orchestra’s 43rd (not quite) annual Senior Feature Concert, location to be determined

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