About Talkin' Jazz
Jazz Arts Project, in partnership with the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, is hosting a series of free “Talkin’ Jazz” lectures on October 12, October 29, and November 12, 2024. These discussions explore a range of topics about the history, importance, influence, and cultural significance of Jazz with expert musicians, educators, and community icons.
Presentations will be live at the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center:
94 Drs. James Parker Boulevard in Red Bank, New Jersey at 7:00 pm EST.
Seating is limited and registration is required.
Dates & Times
October 15, 2024
7:00 PM
Latin Music Week - Zaccai Curtis
Celebrating Latin Jazz Week and National Hispanic Heritage Month : Zaccai Curtis is a talented artist and a professor of music at Univ. of Hartford and Univ. of Rhode Island. He authored two books: “Art of the Guajeo” and “Theory of the Common Voicing.”
October 29, 2024
7:00 pm
The Singer's Art - Lezlie Harrison
The Singers Art: Lezlie Harrison is a vocalist extraordinaire, curator and presenter at WBGO Jazz Radio, founding member of JAZZ GALLERY, and actress vital to Jazz. Check out her latest release,
“Let Them Talk,” on all streaming platforms.
November 12, 2024
7:00 PM
Roy Hargrove Legacy with
Jason Marshall and
Aida Brandes-Hargrove
Jason Marshall (RH Factor, Roy Hargrove Big Band, Crisol, Roy Hargrove Quintet) and Aida Brandes-Hargrove (Roy Hargrove Legacy, Director of Roy Hargrove Big Band) explore how late great trumpeter Roy Hargrove helped shape the modern musical landscape of jazz, Afro-Cuban, R & B, and hip-hop.
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About Jazz Arts
Jazz Arts Project is a non-profit, 501(c)3 that presents, performs,
educates and preserves the legacy, influence and role of jazz music in all its forms, for the enrichment of diverse local, regional, and statewide constituencies through community outreach efforts, high quality professional performances, educational workshops, and youth programs.
Get To Know The Speakers
Zaccai Curtis
Zaccai Curtis moved to New York City in 2005 where he’s connected with and regularly performed with artists such as: Lakecia Benjamin, Christian Scott, Donald Harrison, Cindy Blackman Santana, Eddie Palmieri, Brian Lynch, the Mambo Legends, Abraham Burton, Ralph Peterson, Ray Vega, and Avery Sharpe among others.
Currently Zaccai is a professor of music at the University of Hartford: Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division and University of Rhode Island. Besides being an educator Zaccai authored two books “Art of the Guajeo” and “Theory of the Common Voicing” which are meant to aid students in their Jazz and Latin Jazz education. Zaccai composes and arranges for his own quartet and trio as well as for artists such as Little Johnny Rivero, Steve Kroon, Sonido Solar and more. In 2003 he was chosen as a winner of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s competition and each year consecutively through 2006. Zaccai and his quartet were selected by the U.S. State Department to be in the American Music Abroad (Jazz Ambassadors) program two times in 2006. They performed in Bangladesh, Calcutta, Bangalore, Mumbai, Sri Lanka and Maldives. In 2007 Zaccai Curtis was awarded the ‘Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Artist Fellowship’ for ‘original composition.’ In 2017 Curtis became a Chamber Music America: “New Jazz Works” grant recipient. In 2020 Zaccai was voted as the Rising Star in the Critics Poll for Downbeat Magazine. Most recently, Curtis has been invited to be the special guest director for 2023 CMEA Southern Regional High School Jazz Band.
When Zaccai is not busy being a sideman, he performs his own music with his group ‘Zaccai Curtis Quartet’ and ‘Sonido Solar’ and after five successful releases; He recently released his recording “Cubop Lives” (2024) which has charted number 1 on national jazz radio for 4 weeks in a row. Zaccai, along with his brother Luques, has developed the record label TRRcollective which is a collective of musicians that produce their own music and release it together. He is also proud to have produced and released the GRAMMY nominated album, ‘Entre Colegas’ by Andy González (2016).
Lezlie Harrison
Lezlie Harrison, vocalist extraordinaire, is always in a state of development, always raising the bar higher, pushing the limits of her God-given vocal gift. As a vocalist, she is both bold and subtle in her approach to the music she loves. Her vulnerability attends to the fragile matters of our collective human experience, while her optimism inspires us to rise above any of life's tribulations, to rejoice. Whether taking on a classic Jazz tune, Blues, Gospel, Soul, tracks from the American Song Book, or an original composition, Ms. Harrison imbues each note, each line of a song with her very own styling and personalized delivery.
She carries that over to her regular spot on WBGO, the global leader in Jazz radio, where she is a regular curator and presenter, revealing the love and pride with which she regards America's music. A permanent fixture on the New York and global Jazz scene, Lezlie Harrison is among the three founding members of New York's world-renowned JAZZ GALLERY that includes the late Dale Fitzgerald and trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
On occasion Lezlie lends her regal presence to the stage as an actress, bringing to those endeavors, the same organic sensibility that she brought to the runways and photo studios of Paris some years back. A product of two contrasting communities -- New York and North Carolina, Lezlie Harrison has been shaped by both and educated by her global experience.
Lezlie Harrison has absorbed every lesson along her life’s journey and has been deeply impacted by the elders she has had an opportunity to spend time with and explore. Ms. Harrison now walks in their footsteps while breaking new pathways. An elegant artist with a most compelling voice. Check out her latest release “Let Them Talk” on all streaming platforms.
Roy Hargrove
Legacy
Roy Anthony Hargrove was an incisive trumpeter who embodied the brightest promise of his jazz generation, both as a young steward of the bebop tradition and a savvy bridge to hip-hop and R&B.
A briskly assertive soloist with a tone that could evoke either burnished steel or a soft, golden glow, Hargrove was a galvanizing presence in jazz over the last 30 years. Dapper and slight of build, he exuded a sly, sparkling charisma onstage, whether he was holding court at a late-night jam session or performing in the grandest concert hall. His capacity for combustion and bravura was equaled by his commitment to lyricism, especially when finessing a ballad on flugelhorn.
Hargrove is also known for his vital presence in the turn-of-the-century movement known as neo-soul. He made crucial contributions to Voodoo, the epochal album by D'Angelo, released in 2000. He appeared the same year on Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun and Common's Like Water for Chocolate, and later formed his own hybrid project, The RH Factor, with the aim of furthering the dialogue between modern jazz, hip-hop and R&B. But Hargrove always maintained his foothold in the mainstream jazz tradition; he saw his forays into other forms of black music as an extension of, rather than any departure from, that tradition.
Hargrove was a two-time Grammy winner, in two illustrative categories: best jazz instrumental album in 2003 for Directions in Music, featuring a post-bop supergroup with pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Michael Brecker; and best Latin jazz performance in 1998 for Habana, a groundbreaking Afro-Cuban project recorded in Havana.
Early in his New York experience, in 1992, Hargrove and his business partner, Dale Fitzgerald, signed a lease on a loft in Lower Manhattan with the intention of finding a place for practicing and rehearsals. Three years later, Hargrove and Fitzgerald partnered with Lezlie Harrison to convert it into a nonprofit performance space, The Jazz Gallery. Though it moved to a new location in 2013, The Jazz Gallery continues to be an integral hub for the music. Hargrove continued to play there, just as he never stopped being a late-night fixture at Smalls.