New Mexico Jazz Festival

18th Annual New Mexico Jazz Festival

Schedule:

7:30 pm - 9:30 pm: Joshua Redman Group Featuring Gabrielle Cavassa at Lensic Performing Arts Center

One of the most acclaimed and charismatic jazz artists to have emerged in the 1990s, saxophonist Joshua Redman is an eight-time Grammy nominated artist who has garnered top honors in critics and readers polls of DownBeat, Jazz Times, Village Voice and Rolling Stone. The son of renowned saxophonist Dewey Redman, Joshua Redman graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. in Social Studies after which he was accepted to Yale Law School. He instead chose to defer Yale for a year to move to New York City and quickly became immersed in the jazz scene, jamming and gigging with artists like Peter Bernstein, Larry Goldings, Kevin Hays and Roy Hargrove and many others. Five months later, he was named the winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition and started touring with jazz masters including his father, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Pat Metheny and several others. Redman has released numerous recordings featuring a wide range of projects and collaborations, “consistently demonstrating how to honor [Jazz] music’s verities while expanding its reach in contemporary settings.” His September 2023 debut release on Blue Note, Where Are We, marks the first time Redman has included a vocalist – Gabrielle Cavassa– on a record and he notes, “I relished the challenge of discovering and inhabiting new musical roles for myself — not only as a featured soloist and “lead” but also as a supportive accompanist and interlocutor.” Gabrielle Cavassais an American vocalist and composer of Italian descent who is garnering attention for her distinctive voice and intimate expression. Crowned a winner of the International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition in 2021, after the independent release of Cavasasa, her critically acclaimed debut album, she grew up in California, and credits the Bay Area music scene as having a significant influence on her development. She moved to New Orleans in 2017 where she would work alongside and become inspired by the city’s most influential voices. Her unique expression “contains a vulnerability that reaches at the crux of our humanity... and her songwriting and interpretation explore moods of sensuality, melancholy, and humor, as though she is reading from a diary.” Rounding out the group tonight is Paul Cornish, piano; Philip Norris, bass & Nazir Ebo, drums.

DOORS 6:30pm

Cost: $45–$69

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