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2024 Convergence Project
June 15 @ 7:30 pm
Eugene Uman is the director of the Vermont Jazz Center and performs as a pianist in numerous projects. His annual June concert is a representation of a year’s worth of composing and collaborating with various musicians and an opportunity for him to assemble a dream band that manifests his vision and unites his musical influences. Uman’s energetic playing and writing style is flavored with the Latin rhythms that he has absorbed during his tenure living in Colombia where he initiated the jazz studies programs at la Universidad de EAFIT and el Colegio de Música de Medellín. Several of his compositions employ forms and grooves adapted from Colombian music such as cumbia, pasillo, puya, bambuco, and currulao. They are also strongly influenced by his bebop mentors: Sheila Jordan, Howard Brofsky, Mike Longo and Jimmy Heath as well as by the sounds of his youth when he played in rock and blues bands. Uman’s compositions draw from a vocabulary of modern jazz, hard bop, rock, soul, Latin American rhythms and gospel; listeners can expect a “convergence” of the music he loves in a mash-up of styles where groove is king.
This presentation of the Convergence Project is the last show of the Vermont Jazz Center’s 2023-24 season. For this June 15th performance, Uman will present a sextet with Haneef Nelson (trumpet), Jason Robinson (saxophone), Cameron Brown (acoustic bass), and Brian Shankar Adler (drums).
Haneef Nelson plays trumpet in the VJC big band. As a youth he developed his love for jazz at New York’s Jazzmobile Program where he played in ensembles taught by jazz luminaries such as Cecil Bridgewater, Dr. Donald Byrd (his mentor), John Stubblefield, Frank Foster, Charles Davis and many others. He attended the African-American Music Department at the Hartt School where he studied under Jackie McLean and Nat Reeves. Nelson then went on to study Jazz Composition and Arranging at UMASS Amherst and is now finishing up his Ph.D. at Hartt. Nelson has performed with Yoron Israel, Avery Sharpe, Bill Saxton, Paul Brown, Feya Faku, Joe Ford, Charles Tolliver, Wayne Escoffrey, Bill Lowe, Musiq Soulchild, and numerous others.
Saxophonist Jason Robinson has released 18 albums as leader or co-leader and appeared on nearly 50 albums in total. He performs regularly as a soloist (acoustically and with electronics) with his group Janus Ensemble and in numerous collaborative contexts. He has performed at festivals and prominent venues through North, Central, and South America, Europe, and East Asia, and performed with Peter Kowald, George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Myra Melford, Nicole Mitchell, Amiri Baraka, Howard Johnson, Toots and the Maytals, Groundation, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Eugene Chadbourne, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Kei Akagi, Babatunde Lea, Mel Martin, Raphe Malik, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Makanda Project and many others. Robinson is Professor of Music at Amherst College and holds a Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego. His work investigates the relationship between improvised and popular music, experimentalism, and cultural identity. His writing has been published in numerous journals and several edited volumes.
Detroit-born bassist Cameron Brown has been playing jazz and free music professionally since the mid-1960s when he toured Europe with the bands of George Russell, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry and Donald Byrd. Career highlights include a fifty-year musical relationship with National Endowment of the Arts jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan, a tour of Japan with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and a long tenure with the legendary George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet. Brown’s discography includes six albums under his own leadership and over two hundred recordings as a sideman including appearances with Dannie Richmond, Joe Lovano, Connie Crothers, George Russell, Archie Shepp, Lee Konitz, Chet Baker, Mal Waldron, Grover Washington Jr., Charlie Persip, Luicano Pavarotti, Ed Blackwell, Ronnie Cuber, Ricky Ford, Beaver Harris, Grady Tate, Mike Longo, Sheila Jordan, Jim McNeely, Steve Grossman, Betty Carter, John Hicks, Dewey Redman, Houston Person, Etta Jones, Jane Ira Bloom, and many others.
Drummer Brian Shankar Adler was once described by JazzTimes Magazine as “a polyrhythmic force… still somehow capable of evoking the delicacy of a summer breeze.” Adler has performed in caves, forests and glacial ice fields as well as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and other venues. He appears on over 40 recordings, including several as a leader. His music video, Mantra, won best music video at the Transcinema International Film Festival in Peru and was an official selection at the Quiet City Film Festival in Brooklyn. In 2013, Adler was a guest soloist with La Bomba de Tiempo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has traveled to Germany to perform with singer Sunny Kim and to Kuwait to perform with oudist Ahmed Alshaiba. He was composer-in-residence at Antenna Cloud Farm and was commissioned by Palaver Strings. Shankar Adler is a winner of the 2021 Lifetime Arts/National Guild Fellowship. He has worked professionally with Sheila Jordan, Jay Clayton, Guillermo Klein, Michael Leonhart Orchestra, Kate McGarry, Ray Vega and many others. He currently teaches at Bates College, Bowdoin College, University of Maine and the Vermont Jazz Center.
—Jerry Bergonzi
