Accomplished jazz pianist and composer Helen Sung has had the privilege of working with many of the living jazz greats. A member of Fractured Atlas for the last seven years, she is currently in residence at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, New York, and will perform at the Tokyo Jazz Festival in September.
Our first Member Profile of 2009 spotlights a band that is, at once, active in the here-and-now, having just stepped out of the recording studio, and, according to their website, “envisions an alternative musical history, one in which the dance orchestras that ruled the Swing Era never went extinct, but continued to evolve with the times.” Darcy James Argue, leader of Secret Society and Fractured Atlas member, explains what he and his “co-conspirators” (that is, band members) are up to.
A Philadelphia-area visual artist and member of Fractured Atlas since December 2003, Ellen Priest has taken jazz as the subject of her paintings since 1990. She creates a series of mixed-media paintings based on a single jazz composition. Her recent work has used jazz pianist/composer Edward Simon’s “Venezuelan Suite” as its inspiration.
The great jazz drummer Max Roach died yesterday at 83. Peter Keepnews, in the NY Times obituary, writes:
Mr. Roach’s death closes a chapter in American musical history. He was the last surviving member of a small circle of adventurous musicians - among them Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and a handful of others - [...]
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