New England Conservatory Presents Student Honors Ensembles Great on Paper and Choro Bastardo

Each year, an audition committee of professional musicians
selects a few exceptional student ensembles to represent the New England
Conservatory Honors Ensemble Program. 
Two of these ensembles — Great
on Paper and Choro Bastardo
perform on Tuesday, April
1 at 8 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA.
It is free and open to the public. For more information, log on to http://www.necmusic.edu/great-paper-choro-bastardo
or call 617-585-1122.

Great on
Paper is the jazz honors
ensemble coached by faculty member Ted Reichman and featuring saxophonist Kevin Sun, keyboard player
Isaac
Wilson,
double bassist Simón Willson, and drummer Robin Baytas. Founded on the principles of equality, freedom of speech, and reckless
exploration, Great on
Paper is an improvised, four-person party that goes into musical
situations without an exit strategy. Featuring a typical jazz quartet
configuration with a distinctly atypical bent towards the avant-garde and the
folkloric, GOP taps into the jazz tradition without getting too ideological or
self-conscious about it.  They’ll
be performing Carla Bley
King Korn; Isaac
Wilson Sincere; Kevin
Sun Straight Face, The Wide
One, Nomad; Simón Willson October 2013; Angelo Badalamenti arr. Kevin Sun Laura Palmer’s Theme
from "Twin Peaks.”

GOP performs
mostly original music that is somehow both formally sophisticated yet, in
moderate doses, pleasant to listen to. With numerous musical influences that
range from Steve Coleman to Paul Bley to Stevie Wonder, GOP has no interest in
disguising its catholic tastes, and the band’s co-mingling of diverse musical
sensibilities allegedly lend it an air of refinement and worldliness. As one
anonymous reviewer has said, “At their show in December, that new band GOP
really put the ‘Status’ in ‘Status Quo!’” Call them what you will—a
postmodernist mélange, abstract sound-fashioners, jazz charlatans—GOP takes no
prisoners and doesn’t apologize when it steps on your feet; it just keeps on
moving right along.

Choro Bastardo features harmonica player Ilya Portnov, violinist Ben Andrews, pianist
Henrique
Eisenmann, and Cristian Budu on pandero, coached by faculty member Amir Milstein. Choro is the traditional
Brazilian instrumental music from the beginning of the 20th century. Choro
Bastardo combines the traditional
Choro style with each of the band members' different musical and
cultural backgrounds to create a sonority that is different from the original,
yet loyal to the playful spirit of that music. Using Baroque, early Jazz, and
Contemporary Classical music as springboard, Choro Bastardo explores the
different streams of music that can somehow share elements with the Choro
tradition, recreating the atmosphere of cabarets and vaudeville in Rio de
Janeiro. Mixing Jelly Roll Morton and Pixinguinha, Darius Milhaud and Ernesto
Nazareth, John Cage and Jacob do Bandolim, Choro Bastardo represents a
groundbreaking transformation in the realm of Contemporary Improvisation
associated with neo-folklorist practices. 

Choro
Bastardo will be performing the following music Pixinguinha Vou Vivendo, Ignez; Jacob
do Bandolim Santa Morena; Jelly
Roll Morton Sidewalk Blues;
Henrique Eisenmann Piangerito;
Johann Sebastian Bach
arr. Choro Bastardo Allemande from Partita in A Minor for Solo Flute,
BWV 1013; Francisco Mignone Valsa de Esquina No. 5; Darius Milhaud arr. Choro Bastardo Copacabana from
Saudades do Brasil, Op. 67; Sivua/Glorinha Gadelha Feira de Mangaio/Forro na Penha;
and Ernesto Nazareth Apanhei-te
Cavaquinho.

NEC’s Jazz Studies Department was the first fully
accredited jazz studies program at a music conservatory. The brainchild of
Gunther Schuller, who moved quickly to incorporate jazz into the curriculum
when he became President of the Conservatory in 1967, the Jazz Studies faculty has included six MacArthur "genius" grant
recipients (three currently teaching) and four NEA Jazz Masters, and alumni
that reads like a who’s who of jazz. Now in its 44th year, the
program has spawned numerous Grammy winning composers and performers. As Mike
West writes in JazzTimes: “NEC’s jazz studies department
is among the most acclaimed and successful in the world; so says the roster of
visionary artists that have comprised both its faculty and alumni.”  The program currently has 114
students; 67 undergraduate and 47 graduate students from 12 countries. 

Founded in 1972 by musical visionaries Gunther Schuller and Ran Blake, New England Conservatory's Contemporary
Improvisation program is “one of the most versatile in all of music education”
(JazzEd).  Now in its 41st
year, the program trains composer/performer/ improvisers to broaden their
musical palettes and develop unique voices.  It is unparalleled in its structured approach to ear
training and its emphasis on singing, memorization, harmonic sophistication,
aesthetic integrity, and stylistic openness.  Under Blake's guidance for its first twenty-six years, the
program expanded its offerings under subsequent chair Allan Chase and current
chair Hankus Netsky. Alumni include Don Byron, John Medeski, Jacqueline Schwab,
Aoife O'Donovan and Sarah Jarosz; faculty include Carla Kihlstedt, Blake,
Dominique Eade, and Anthony Coleman. “A thriving hub of musical exploration,”
(Jeremy Goodwin, Boston Globe), the program currently has 43 undergrad and
graduate students from 14 countries. 

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