The Jazz Arts Group’s Inside Track series welcomes two-time Grammy-nominated jazz musician Dave Douglas and his electric sextet Keystone to the Lincoln Theatre stage Saturday, February 5 to present their latest multimedia project, Spark of Being.
Dave Douglas is arguably the most prolific and original trumpeter-composer of his generation. From his New York base, where he has lived since the mid-1980s, Mr. Douglas has continued to earn lavish national and international acclaim including prizes from such organizations as the New York Jazz Awards, Down Beat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, and the Italian Jazz Critics Society. His solo recording career began in 1993 with Parallel Worlds on Soul Note Records, and he has since released more than 30 recordings. This year brings a new collection of work by Keystone titled, Spark of Being, a retelling of the Frankenstein myth in collaboration with award-winning experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison.
On the 100th anniversary of the first Frankenstein film, Dave Douglas and Bill Morrison unveiled their multimedia collaboration Spark of Being at Stanford University. On film, it stands as a reinterpretation of that Frankenstein myth using new, archival, and distressed footage. The themes, penned by Douglas for his Grammy-nominated band Keystone, integrate electronics seamlessly into the improvised music, piecing sounds and movement together to make three strikingly different “creatures.”
Stanford University, which commissioned the soundtrack, gave Douglas the key to the computer-music department’s mammoth library of samples—a morgue of “dead” sounds, as it were. As JazzTimes describes “DJ Olive, the turntablist in Douglas’ longstanding Keystone sextet, grabbed those sounds, chopped them up, stitched them together, wrapped them in echo and zapped them with lightning to make them move with the tentative motion and eerie otherworldliness of Shelley’s monster.”
In conjunction with Dave Douglas’ concert at the Lincoln, Jazz Arts Group is partnering with the Gateway Film Center (1550 N. High Street) to present the Columbus premiere of the Bill Morrison film Spark of Being on Thursday, February 3 at 7:30 PM.
Morrison re-imagines Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein using pieces from other films to create a new living, breathing film. Spark of Being begins just as Shelley’s novel does – with footage of a voyage to remote glaciered waters – but Morrison goes one step further, beyond simply reiterating the story. Blending sound synthesis, visual media, and live performances from Dave Douglas & Keystone, this new multimedia project explores the intersecting relationships between art and technology within the context of the classic tale.
Dave Douglas Tickets
Single tickets for the Dave Douglas concert and all Inside Track performances are on sale now for $25 (orchestra) and $30 (loge) and are available by phone at 614-469-0939 and through all Ticketmaster outlets. Student tickets are also available for $15 with student ID at the door only. Tickets for the movie screening of Spark of Being at the Gateway Film Center are $9, or $6 with an advance ticket for the Dave Douglas concert. Visit www.gatewayfilmcenter.com or www.jazzartsgroup.org for more information.