Philadelphia » Calendar » Practitioner at The Rotunda

Practitioner at The Rotunda

Courtesy of Mark Christman | Posted on February 7, 2018

Where

The Rotunda
4012 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA
Map
215-573-3234

When

Fri, April 27, 2018
8:00 pm

Musicians

About

Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present the Philadelphia premiere of Practitioner, performing the music of Steve Lacy’s 1986 album “Hocus Pocus.”

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg’s studies and friendship with the late, great Steve Lacy became a deep, rich well of inspiration that he has continued to draw on for decades. The two met in Paris in 1985, while Goldberg was on tour with The Klezmorim. Goldberg hectored the soprano great until Lacy conceded to give him a lesson, at the end of which Goldberg walked away with a gift: a new record called Hocus Pocus. The album consists of six etudes for solo soprano saxophone, each dedicated to a single artist and discipline that Lacy found inspirational - from Harry Houdini (magic) to James P. Johnson (classic jazz piano) to Sonny Stitt (bebop). Lacy wrote that these pieces were “deliberately made so as to be hard to play. [T]hey also contain many of the characteristic 'licks' which comprise the language that I use." Under the name Practitioner (borrowed from the umbrella title for Lacy’s collection of music studies, of which “Hocus Pocus” is one book), Goldberg and pianist Michael Coleman perform this notoriously challenging music in homage to and celebration of Lacy’s contributions....

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