BRATTLEBORO — The Vermont Jazz Center presents Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah's Stretch Music on Saturday, Jan. 14, at 8 p.m.
According to a news release, Scott aTunde Adjuah is one of the leading voices of his generation - a composer, a bandleader, a record producer, an educator, an articulate activist championing racial equality and prison reform, and an eloquent speaker whose goals include “reaching a consensus to move forward.”
Scott aTunde Adjuah will perform on trumpet as well as on two custom-designed horns: a reverse flugel and a sirenette. He will appear with the same group that plays on his most recent and highly acclaimed CD “Stretch Music.” The ensemble includes renowned young artist Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Logan Richardson (alto saxophone), Lawrence Fields (acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes), Kris Funn (upright and electric bass), and Corey Fonville on drums.
In The Village Voice, Aiden Levy summarized Scott aTunde Adjuah's chameleon-like ability to represent his generation: “Scott jumps across a range of styles and sounds, channeling everything from hip-hop to On the Corner-style funk and African rhythms. ... firmly establish[ing] him as one of the new young lions of jazz.”
“I have heard some describe our approach as 'stretch,'or calling what we play, 'stretch music,'” Scott aTunde Adjuah explained. “It's true that we are attempting to stretch - not replace - jazz's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic conventions to encompass as many musical forms/languages/cultures as we can.
“My core belief is that no form of expression is more valid than any other. This belief has compelled me to attempt to create a sound that is genre-blind in its acculturation of other musical forms, languages, textures, conventions, and processes. This is done as a means of extending the dialogue of the human condition across the lines of cultural and genre based barriers.”