ellington jazz series Thomas C. Duffy, artistic director
Linda May Han Oh, double bass The Glass Hours
Friday, February 2, 2024 | 7:30 p.m. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
José García-León, Dean
Artist Profiles Linda May Han Oh, electric & acoustic bass Grammy Award–winning, NYC-based bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh leads this dynamic group of musicians performing The Glass Hours: a collection of works based on abstract themes of the fragility of time and life, particularly exploring the paradoxes and opposites we find ourselves struggling with within our individual and societal values. The music is striking and rhythmically exhilarating, and it explores a wide sonic palette blending acoustic with electric elements, offering a provocative take on contemporary improvisation and composition. Born in Malaysia and raised in Perth, Western Australia, Linda May Han Oh has performed and recorded with the likes of Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Geri Allen, Vijay Iyer, Joe Lovano, and Terri Lyne Carrington. She has composed for various ensembles and short films, is an active educator, and was featured as the bassist in the Pixar movie Soul. Oh has received many awards, such as a 2022 Deutsche Jazz Preis, the JJA Bassist of the Year four years in a row (2018–2021), and most recently, the 2023 Herb Alpert Award. She has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader, and has composed for film and various ensembles – most recently Ephemeral Echoes for percussion trio, piano, bass, and drum set, as well as the solo piano piece Littoral Tales for pianist Gloria Cheng.
Currently associate professor at the Berklee College of Music, Oh received a 2023 Grammy award for Terri Lyne Carrington’s album New Standards Vol. 1, which won the award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album. Sara Serpa, vocals A native of Lisbon, Portugal, Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, and improviser who, through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. Serpa has been working in the field of jazz, improvised, and experimental music since moving to New York in 2008. Literature, film, visual arts, nature, and history inspire Serpa in the creative process and development of her music. Described by the New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook,” and by JazzTimes magazine as “a master of wordless landscapes,” Serpa started her recording and performing career with jazz luminaries such as Danilo Perez, Ran Blake, and Greg Osby. Her ethereal music draws from a broad variety of inspirations including literature, film, visual arts, history, and nature. As a leader, she has produced and released ten albums, the latest being Intimate Strangers (2021) and Recognition (2020). Fabian Almazan, piano & effects Grammy-nominated Cuban-American pianist Fabian Almazan has developed a personal voice through the electric manipulation of the acoustic piano and has toured his music extensively, as well as accompanying artists such as Terence
Blanchard, Gretchen Parlato, Mark Guiliana, and Ambrose Akinmusire. Almazan has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and for film – he also performed on Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna and Kasi Lemmon’s film Harriet. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry doctoral program in the Harvard Department of Music. Almazan is the founder and director of Biophilia Records and has worked diligently toward ensuring a continued dialogue of awareness concerning music and environmental justice. As a performer, Almazan has developed a personal voice through the electric manipulation of the acoustic piano in live and studio settings. Greg Ward, saxophone Greg Ward is a saxophonist and composer born in Peoria, Illinois. Currently based in Chicago, he has had the opportunity to perform and record with artists such as Prefuse 73, Lupe Fiasco, Tortoise, William Parker, Makaya McCraven, Linda Oh, and Mike Reed. As a bandleader, Ward has produced five recordings: Fitted Shards: South Side Story, Phonic Juggernaut, Touch My Beloved’s Thought, Rogue Parade: Stomping Off From Greenwood, and Fitted Shards: High Alert. As a composer, he has received commissions from the Jazz Gallery in New York, the Chicago Jazz Institute, the City of Chicago’s Made in Chicago: World Class Jazz series, Peoria Ballet Company, the Jazz Coalition, and
the B’Town Jazz Festival. He was awarded the New Music USA Van Lier Fellowship in 2012 and DCASE IAP grants in 2017 and 2018. Ward maintains an active international touring schedule and has recently been appointed to the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University as Assistant Professor of Jazz Saxophone. Mark Whitfield Jr., drums Mark Whitfield II was born in Brooklyn and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has been fortunate to be surrounded by music since he was a child. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2011, he attended Manhattan School of Music for a semester before joining saxophonists Myron Walden and Kenny Garrett’s respective bands while still playing around the New York jazz scene. In 2013, Whitfield had the pleasure of recording with Kenny Garrett on his Grammynominated album, Pushing the World Away. In 2014 Whitfield joined Sean Jones’s band and has since been fortunate to perform with Orrin Evans, Wallace Roney, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Aaron Goldberg, Christian Scott, Tia Fuller, Charnett Moffett, Terence Blanchard, Brian Jackson, Nicholas Payton, Chico Freeman, Manuel Valera, Wayne Escoffery, Black Art Jazz Collective, and Jeremy Pelt, among many others. He is now a mainstay in the New York jazz scene while also traveling around the world and the United States. Whitfield is an endorser of Canopus drums.
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For fifty years, the Duke Ellington Fellowship has brought the giants of jazz to Yale’s concert halls and to the city’s public schools. In 1972, Yale’s president Kingman Brewster presented the first Ellington medals to thirty jazz greats, including the Duke himself. That year marked the beginning of a series of extraordinary jazz concerts by Eubie Blake, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Odetta, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus, to name just a few.
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