(Bridgefest at Jane Pickens) David Amram: The First 80 Years: Sneak Preview & Live Performance on our stage

Film Overview

Sneak Preview of documentary film and personal appearance and live performance on our stage by David Amram.

The life and times of Classical/Jazz/film score composer/conductor/jazz french hornist/world musician and Beat novelist Jack Keroauc's musical collaborator, David Amram.

David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works,  has written two operas, for the Broadway Theater, and the classic film scores Splendor in The Grass  and The Manchurian Candidate.
A pioneer jazz French horn player, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes, whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries.  He has collaborated with Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Barretto, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, Thelonious Monk, Langston Hughes, Odetta, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Johnny Depp, and with Leonard Bernstein (who chose him as the New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence).   
In 1977, Amram's band, featuring Ray Mantilla, joined Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines and Stan Getz’s bands for an historic concert in Havana Cuba -- the first USA musical exchange since the revolution.  Amram composed "In Memory of Chano Pozo" for the occasion, and was joined onstage by Los Papines, Paquito d'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval.  Amram created a symphonic version of the piece which he has performed for 34 years with orchestras around the world.  It was recently performed by Candido and Bobby Sanabria at Amram's 80th Birthday Celebration (filmed for Lawrence Kraman’s documentary feature David Amram: the First 80 Years).  Acclaimed as a pioneer of World Music, Amram has always championed the marriage of jazz and Latin music as a classical art form for the ages.  
Today, as he has been doing for over 50 years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar and narrator in five languages. He is the author of three books: Vibrations; Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac; and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat. 

Free giveaway with ticket purchase of a sampler CD from the Newport Classic Catalog containing excerpts of operas and cantatas by Handel, Haydn, Schubert and Verdi among others sung by great American vocalists.