CVNC: An Online Arts Journal in North Carolina

Chamber Music, Instrumental Ensemble, Music

Duke Performances: Passion for Bach & Coltrane

Imani and Harlem, Together, at Duke - "I will die of nothing that I did / But of all that I did not do."
Chamber Music, Jazz, Poetry Review by John W. Lambert, November 16, 2019

( Sat., Nov. 16, 2019 )

Performed by Imani Winds and Harlem Quartet, A.B. Spellman, poet

Baldwin Auditorium, 1336 Campus Drive, Durham, NC 27708

Program

Jeff Scott, French hornist of Imani Winds, composed Passion for Bach and Coltrane for Imani Winds, the poet A.B. Spellman, Harlem Quartet, and a jazz piano trio. The work synthesizes classical and jazz styles, highlighting the gifts of all the performers onstage.

Inspired by and featuring Spellman’s poetry, Passion for Bach and Coltrane interweaves orated poems with music, in a manner similar to J.S. Bach’s Passion settings. Scott took two masterworks by each composer — Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme" - and imagined what a chance meeting between Bach and Coltrane would have sounded like.