Eugene Uman’s Convergence Project

“Eugene Uman represents where the music we call “Jazz” is in the new millennium -maintaining the tradition, and embracing the future”
–Bobby Watson

Saturday June 15th,
2024  at 7:30 pm EST

Eugene Uman (piano and compositions) Haneef Nelson (trumpet), Jason Robinson (saxophone), Cameron Brown (acoustic bass)
and Brian Shankar Adler (drums)

Please consider making a donation. Tickets are valued at $55-$60 per seat and are general admission. Your contribution will go directly towards sustaining the Vermont Jazz Center’s mission of providing access to top quality jazz music to all as well as fair employment to jazz musicians.

     Please give generously and support live music.

VJC Director and pianist Eugene Uman will close out the Vermont Jazz Center’s season of concerts with a new version of the Convergence Project. 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).

Charlie Parker, the great architect of bebop, has been quoted as saying, “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” The Convergence Project is a window into VJC director Eugene Uman’s musical experiences, which were forged playing blues, R&B, funk, and jazz as a youth in New York and central Vermont. He later moved to New York City and then Colombia, South America, where the pulse of rhythm and dance permeates everyday life.

Colombian rhythms serve as one of the foundational elements of Uman’s compositions. The melodies and chords are derived more from the language of blues, rock, fusion, gospel, and jazz. This melding of sounds and cultures provides Uman with a multi-hued pallet to work from as a composer, and led to the formation of the Convergence Project, a group he put together 15 years ago to perform his original compositions. The musicians that make up this mutable ensemble are hand-picked and empathetic to Uman’s vision; each player is well-versed in numerous styles and encouraged to weave the sounds of their own personal voices into the group’s musical fabric.

Another less-obvious inspiration to Uman’s sound is his connection to the land. His friend, poet-legend, Verandah Porche writes, “Before dedicating his life to music, Eugene was a forester. The well-being of the biome was his beat. He brings this deep attunement to his work as a composer.”

One of Uman’s compositions that demonstrates the intersection of musical styles with the influence of nature is “La Cosecha,” which translates to “The Harvest.” This piece was written during a bountiful Vermont harvest season and was composed over a Colombian Currulao rhythm. According to Wikipedia, Currulao “is one of the most African influenced-styles in all of Colombia, and has its roots among the Afro-Colombian people of the Pacific Coast.” The Currulao rhythm is based on accents similar to the triplety jazz-shuffle beat that can also be heard in old-school piano boogie. Uman noted these similarities and composed a tune that switches back and forth between the Currulao rhythm and a piano-boogie bassline. The blues has been an essential element of Uman’s musical pallet since his early teens. As a composition, “La Cosecha” demonstrates an easy, natural blend of blues and Latin rhythms.

Uman finds composing to be a form of expression when words won’t do. He writes, “composing gives me the opportunity to take ideas or feelings and put them into an expressive format that can then be repeated and developed over time. Compositions can be used to create sonic space or programmatic declarations that have the power to spur on conversations and develop awareness for both the performers and the listeners. For example, the tune ‘Ominous Glacier’ uses sound to express feelings of existential dread which I find impossible to articulate verbally. Once these feelings are conveyed into musical sounds, they become open-ended. A performance of this piece gives listeners a space in time where they can access a zone that is created by the vibration of the music in association with the listening environment. As a composer, I can influence the setting through the music’s harmony, melody and rhythm (and the composition’s title), but there is no right or wrong way to decode it – the music creates a feeling which is then interpreted by each listener according to their own experiences. I love the open-ended accessibility and freedom that music provides.”

For this concert, Uman has put together a group of musicians he has known for many years, including Haneef Nelson, Cameron Brown and Brian Shankar Adler, all of whom are on the faculty of the VJC’s summer workshop. And Jason Robinson, a colleague from Amherst College.

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.

Like many groups headlined by a specific individual over an extended time, the Convergence Project is a manifestation of that individual’s life. Come find out why the great saxophonist Bobby Watson says, “Uman is an adventurer; he brings many influences to his musical expression. He represents where the music we call Jazz is in the new millennium, maintaining the tradition and embracing the future.”

The VJC greatly appreciates the sponsorship of this performance by supporter and enduring friend, Michael McKenzie. The McKenzie Family Charitable Trust has financed the Jazz Center’s efforts to bring world-class jazz to New England ever since 1997 when Uman and his wife, Elsa Borrero, were asked by its founder, Attila Zoller, to shoulder its leadership. Publicity for this concert is partially underwritten by The Commons and The Brattleboro Reformer. The VJC is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Vermont Community Foundation.

-Eugene Uman, VJC Director