February 21 is the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. This is a performance of a composition entitled Assassinations – a reimagining of the effects of Malcolm, and other fallen leaders. With Irreversible Entanglements.
Luke Stewart – Bass, Composition
Aquiles Navarro – Trumpet, Electronics
Camae Ayewa – Voice, Electronics
Janice Lowe – Piano
Keir Neuringer – Saxophone, Percussion
Tcheser Holmes – Drums
Irreversible Entanglements are a liberation-oriented free jazz collective. The instrumentalists explore and elaborate compositional ideas drawn from their deep individual studies of free jazz improvisation, driven decisively by searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power. The message is the undeniable essence of the music – to be a vehicle for Black liberation. This is music that both honors and defies tradition, speaking to the present while insisting on the future.
Bassist and Roulette Residency Artist Luke Stewart is deservedly his generation’s most in-demand musician on that instrument, who from his work as a radio and concert presenter boasts an encyclopedic knowledge of the music from which he draws with focused and thunderous intensity.
Poet Camae Ayewa, a/k/a Moor Mother, is a legendarily prolific, globally leading light of Afrofuturist music, art, and community activism.
Saxophonist Keir Neuringer’s prodigious avantgarde technique is matched by an urgency in his tone and fierce socio-political determination.
Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes bring with them uncontainable energy and inventiveness grounded in classic jazz and Latin and Afro-Carribbean streams.
Janice A. Lowe is a composer, poet, pianist, and the author of Leaving CLE poems of nomadic dispersal (Miami University Press) and the chapbook SWAM (Belladonna Series.)
Luke Stewart: Assassinations for Free Jazz Ensemble is developed as part of Stewart’s Roulette 2022 Residency, made possible with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation. This performance is presented through Roulette’s GENERATE program, providing over 30 artists each year with in-depth creative and technical support.
