6pm EST
$15 suggested donation
THE LOCKDOWN SESSIONS - Every Monday at 6pm. Each musician presents a short set of music recorded from their homes, and joins us for the culminating concert & hang.
Clarence Penn is one of the busiest jazz drummers in the world, a leader of multiple bands, a composer, a prolific producer, and an educator.
Since 1991, when he arrived in New York City, Penn has placed his unique blend of mega-chops, keen intellect, and heady musicianship at the service of a staggering array of A-list artists—a chronological short-list includes Ellis and Wynton Marsalis, Betty Carter, Stanley Clarke, Steps Ahead, Makoto Ozone, Michael Brecker, Dave Douglas, Maria Schneider, Luciana Souza, Richard Galliano, and Fourplay. Penn’s impressive discography includes several hundred studio albums (including the Grammy-winning recordings 34th and Lex by Randy Brecker and Concert in the Garden and Sky Blue by Maria Schneider) representing a 360-spectrum of jazz expression, and he’s toured extensively throughout the United States, the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia. He’s composed music for films and commercials, and produced tracks for numerous singers in the pop and alternative arenas. He earned a “Ten Best of 1997” accolade from the New York Times for his first leader recording, Penn’s Landing.
Whether Penn is leading his own band or performing as a sideman, he brings to the table unfailing versatility and professionalism, an ability to find creative ways to interpret a global array of styles and idioms, and a stated intention “to play music that’s warm and organic for the people and for myself.”
Los Angeles based pianist Paul Cornish strives to inspire freedom and collaboration in his music and community. Currently the pianist for the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance, he regularly performs at premier venues around Los Angeles and has been heard on stages around the world from Europe, Australia, and South America to Carnegie Hall. He is the winner of the 2018 American Jazz Piano Competition. Also an accomplished composer and educator. He was a finalist in the ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Competition and is on faculty at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Growing up in Houston, Texas and attending the world-renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Paul follows a lineage of top pianists from Houston such as Jason Moran, Robert Glasper, Helen Sung, and James Francies.
He has performed and worked with artists Herbie Hancock, Gary Bartz, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Steve Lehman, Kanye West, Terrace Martin, Mary Stallings, Thumpasaurus, Louis Cole, John Legend,Theo Croker, Sara Gazarek, David Binney, and many more.
Simona Premazzi
"Her composing style stays modern without ever being airless and swing-deficient, open without getting lost in harmony and sentimentality. And her soloing is special” [Ben Ratliff – New York Times].
New York based pianist Simona Premazzi has developed an impressive body of work as a composer and bandleader. Originally from Italy, Premazzi hails from a small town in the outskirts of Milano, where she began playing piano at age 8. A gifted musician, Simona is a graduate of the conservatory of music in Udine. She followed up her studies in Milano, by enrolling in the International Academy of Music and CPM music school, studying under the incomparable supervision of two of Italy’s formidable jazz masters, Massimo Colombo and Franco D’Andrea.
“Simona Premazzi is one of the more exciting and poignant pianists on the current NewYork scene” [Gary Heimbauer – Jazz Inside magazine]
Noah Becker is an alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer based in New York. His recent musical activities include releasing Retumbra, the eponymous debut from a band he co-leads; recording another record with Underthought (as a leader), soon to be released; ethnomusicological studies in Israel, in preparation for a long-term project that will use Jewish musics to combat antisemitism in the United States; and TRUMP: An Unspoken Truth, a solo project that explores and reimagines the evil words of Donald Trump to present a greater truth.
Raised in Philadelphia, Noah studied in his teen years with Anthony Tidd (of Steve Coleman’s Five Elements) via the Kimmel Center’s Creative Music Program. The program fosters some of the best young musicians in the city, and he experienced tremendous growth from this critical exposure at a young age. Noah moved to New York in 2015 to more aggressively pursue his formal and informal creative education. He has since performed at a number of venues in the city, recorded with working bands in New York and surrounding areas, and studied with musicians such as Michaël Attias, Henry Threadgill, Darius Jones, Andrew Cyrille, Steve Coleman, Will Vinson, Ralph Alessi, and Andy Milne. He has also toured with his own bands and music in the western U.S. and Europe.
Noah’s main project as a leader is Underthought, a laboratory for original music and various modes of improvisation, featuring Alex Levine on guitar, Tyrone Allen on bass, Stephen Boegehold on drums. Noah's music incorporates stark melodies and harmonies, strong rhythmic independence of voices, sinewy orchestrations, and a discerning awareness of music's ability to shape and alter our experience of the passage of time. He often employs extended and unconventional forms, and the traditional (false) division between composition and improvisation is quick to dissolve inside his sound-world. He is attuned to the interplay of the vibrations of sound, and the different ways we relate to them—through our bodies as resonant listeners, and our minds as co-creators of music and art.