Since 1994, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey has brought their impressionistic and improvisational vision from the Midwest to many of the world’s finest music festivals and clubs. Music lovers and critics are blown away by JFJO’s instrumental virtuosity and creativity, musical risk, and near telepathic communication on stage.
JFJO has also frequented the jazz festival circuit, performing across the globe from Berlin to Brazil to Finland and back. In recent years the band has performed some of their highest profile festival performances to date, such as the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival, and the Cork Jazz Festival in Ireland, where the band won a Guinness Jazz Award. These four musicians are musical chameleons who can move crowds in small jazz clubs, big rock clubs and performing arts theaters. Flourishing in the “jam” scene as well, the band has opened for Mike Gordon of Phish, Sound Tribe Sector Nine (sts9), Les Claypool, and held main-stage slots at many of the scene’s largest festivals.
Tulsa’s Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey features a core quartet of Brian Haas on piano, Chris Combs on lap steel, Jeff Harshbarger on bass, and drummer Josh Raymer. These musicians regularly tap into the roots of their musically rich region to inform their forward-thinking sound. Their tour-de-force Race Riot Suite has garnered critical raves for the savvy way it draws from the traditions of the great Territory jazz bands of the 1920s and 1930s while focusing on the infamous 1921 Tulsa race riot that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of black Tulsans and the destruction of an entire city district, the prosperous Greenwood community, then known as the black Wall Street.
Written, arranged, and orchestrated by Chris Combs, the suite (which was released on CD last year) is performed here by JFJO joined by guest tenor sax player Mark Southerland and a horn section from Ohio State’s School of Music.
Here are excerpts from two more raves for The Race Riot Suite.
”The 12-part suite pinballs between majestic melodies, free improv, and ragged New Orleans rhythms, sometimes all within the same song…. Expect a heavy dose of history, but an even heavier dose of forward-looking, down-home jazz.”—Time Out New York
“Rather than simply evoking Greenwood’s destruction, however, the suite encompasses the region’s creative ferment…. The score captures the energy of Greenwood’s fervent churchgoers and the rollicking territory dance bands that crisscrossed the Southwest.”—Los Angeles Times
By the way, if you remember the Wexner Center’s 2010 Mark Bradford exhibition, you might be interested to know that Bradford’s 2006 painting Scorched Earth, which was featured in the show, was inspired by the same 1921 race riot in Tulsa. Here’s a bit more historical background, from the interpretive material of the Bradford show: Over the course of three days, a rumor of an assault on a young white woman inflamed racial tensions and ended in the virtual destruction of Greenwood, home to Tulsa’s black community, which had previously been one of the most successful in the country. A mob of thousands of white men burned more than 30 city blocks to the ground, leaving an estimated 300 African Americans dead and thousands more homeless. Some survivors claim the National Guard dropped a bomb on Greenwood in order to stop the rioting.
Wexner Center
Sat, May 12, 2012 | 8:00PM
Performance Space
CABARET-STYLE SHOW