Urban Bush Women "Walking with 'Trane" (9/28/19)

Their CAI residency will also include the "Talk 'Trane" workshop based on the UBW work "Walking with 'Trane" that is inspired by the musical life and spiritual journey of John Coltrane. "Talk 'Trane" will be co-led by UB instructor, jazz pianist and "Walking with 'Trane" co-composer, George Caldwell. UB students and faculty and community members from the greater Buffalo area will be invited into the process that created the choreography and score for this award winning UBW work.

This piece offers two unique experiences, SIDE A and SIDE B, inspired by the musical life and spiritual journey of John Coltrane, a composer at the forefront of jazz innovation in a racially-charged America of the 50’s and 60’s. Informed by the unpredictability of the bandstand, the “Band State,” the scary, risky place that potentially extends into “transcendence,” this ethereal investigation lives within multiple layers of Coltrane’s music, Coltrane’s spirituality, Coltrane’s life…

SIDE A: JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH ‘TRANE, is a conjuring of Coltrane’s essence, based in rooted understandings of his music and “known” traditions pushed into heightened performance “states,” from cool to hot, from ancient field hollers to gospel cadences, strange reed riffs drive a spiraling physical journey through echoes of the blues, bebop, hard bop, free jazz, scored in a dazzling array by Phillip White.

SIDE B: FREED(OM), is a free-fall suite of “states,” exploring the artistic imprint of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, a riff on pursuance, plunging into the depths of Coltrane’s formidable legacy with diagonal pulls, suspended silences, chaotic spirals, and ultimately, transcendence, inside of a masterful musical composition by George Caldwell played live.

Tickets to “Walking with ‘Trane” are $40 for the general public and $20 for students and are available at the CFA box office and online at Eventbrite.

Founded in 1984 by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women has toured five continents and performed at such venues as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center and The Kennedy Center. The group brings the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people to light through dance from a female-centered perspective and as members of the African Diaspora community in order to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond.