The Event
This presentation features a concert (up to two-hours in length) by the New-Trad Octet, showing the importance of church music in the development of jazz and other American musical styles as well as the vital role that late nineteenth-century Brooklyn composers played in the church repertoire. A presentation of this program is perfect for church events (including outdoors) as well as schools where American music and its sources are being studied.
The Music
The program consists of the New-Trad Octet's post-modern arrangements of traditional hymns associated with the sacred music that influenced early jazz. The centerpiece of the presentation is a six-movement suite, entitled "Hymn Pan Alley" which incorporates melodic material from hymns written by turn-of-the-20th-century Brooklyn composers such as Robert Lowry, Ira Sankey, Cleland McAfee and Fanny Crosby. This concert represents a continuation of the New-Trad's mission to examine the roots of American music, to infuse them with the modern elements that have evolved from those roots (as well as with modern Caribbean, African, and world music influences), and to present the result as public "edu-tainment." These exciting presentations give audience members a sense of their own cultural history and its connection with contemporary life and culture.
