TURNmusic September performances at The Phoenix
September 6, 2024 | By Waterbury RoundaboutFall is in the air and events at The Phoenix Gallery and Music Hall are back inside with TURNmusic in September.
Here’s the rundown on three upcoming performance dates. Some even dare to mix jazz with poetry.
Saturday, Sept. 14: Haiku Jazz Trio + The Untempered Small Unit
The Haiku Jazz Trio: Ras Moshe Burnett, Emily Lanxner, Michael Close. Courtesy photo
Haiku Jazz Trio features Michael Close, Emily Lanxner and Ras Moshe Burnett. Their interactive performance combines cello, steelpan and saxophone. The audience is encouraged to create spontaneous Haiku poetry to lend to the musicians’ improvisation.
The Untempered Small Unit is a variation of Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble creating spontaneous music via jazz/free jazz/world music.
Gallery opens at 5:30 p.m.; music at 6 p.m. Suggested donation: $15.
Untempered Small Unit is Ras Moshe Burnett, Taylor Ho Bynum, Bill Cole, Daniel Lin. Courtesy photo
Wednesday, Sept. 18: Jazz Jam
Local jazz players, singers and fans are invited to a jazz jam at The Phoenix starting at 6 p.m.
Players can join in on the songs others bring, and/or can bring a copies of music for tunes they want to call. The Real Books is a popular source. Singers should bring copies of lead sheets or sheet music for their tunes in their key. Organized by TURNmusic Director Anne Decker and musician Nina Towne. For more information about the jam call Nina Towne at 802-461-5339.
Showtime: 6-9 p.m. Singers join in at 7:30 p.m. Suggested donation: $5. BYOB and bring a snack/dessert to share.
Saturday, Sept. 21: Replaying the Tape
Poet Penny Boxall. Courtesy photo
Replaying the Tape is a collaboration between women practitioners Penny Boxall, an award-winning poet, New York-based composer Jane Boxall, and palaeontologist Frankie Dunn from the University of Oxford.
Their new piece blends poetry, live percussion and tape tracks as it considers the role of chance in evolution and conjures an imaginary menagerie of animals that might have existed had the dice-throw of evolution fallen differently.
Replaying the Tape premiered in New York in November 2023 and this summer toured in the UK including at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Wytham Woods.
Another stop was Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, England an internationally important archaeological site with fossils over 600 million years old.. Selections feature new music Boxall composed for tape and live percussion layered with Penny Boxall’s poetry. Tape recordings also include field sounds from Frankie’s research trips, found sounds, and altered samples from the poetry.
The performers:
Composer Jane Boxall. Courtesy photo
Jane Boxall is an adventurous composer-percussionist who works across diverse musical genres as a soloist, collaborator and session player. She has performed in concert halls, art galleries, cafes, castles, kindergartens, hospitals, universities, forests and festivals from Cyprus to San Francisco, India to Quebec, and Manhattan to France. She is dedicated to new music, specializing in contemporary art music on marimba and vibes, and rock and hip hop drumkit for original artists. Born in England and raised in Scotland, Jane completed her BA and MA in Contemporary Music at the University of York, and her doctorate in Percussion Performance & Literature at the University of Illinois.
A palaeobiologist based at the University of Oxford, Frankie Dunn received her undergraduate degree from the University of Warwick and her PhD from the University of Bristol. Now a senior researcher at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, she focuses on the rise of animals studying the history of life and evolution from first-time organisms that diversified into a myriad of forms.
A poet with multiple published collections, Penny Boxall has won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award – Scotland’s largest poetry prize – and the Mslexia/PBS International Women’s Poetry Prize. She is the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, and has held fellowships/residencies in Estonia, England, Scotland, Wales and Switzerland. Her work has been adapted for choir performances. She also writes children’s fiction.
Gallery opens at 7 p.m.; performance at 7:30 p.m. Suggested donation: $15-30; free for students 21 and under.