Jazz and Strings: Sonny Rollins

Doors open at the Shablul club an hour and a half before the show begins. It's recommended to arrive close to door-opening time. This is the second show in the "Jazz and Strings #2" series with the Amit Friedman Octet, a follow-up series launched due to audience demand, after crowds packed every show of the first series and loved every moment. Saxophonist-composer-arranger Amit Friedman is one of our leading jazz musicians, winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Composers, and his beloved octet unites a jazz quartet with a string quartet of bowed instruments, drawing sparks of delight from this combination. The show is dedicated to Sonny Rollins, who recently passed away. Rollins was one of the most distinctive and original voices in the history of the saxophone and jazz. Throughout his career he turned seemingly simple melodies into an endless playground of improvisation, rhythm, humor and imagination. Rollins's works that became part of the jazz canon and will be played at the show include: Pent-Up House, Tenor Madness, St. Thomas, Doxy. The original string arrangements will allow Rollins's music to take on new space - between the swing and energy of the quartet and harmonic, orchestral colors that highlight the lyrical and melodic side of the music. The meeting between a jazz quartet (saxophone-piano-double bass-drums) and a classical string quartet (two violins-viola-cello) is not routine, but every time this meeting has taken place over the course of jazz history, the combination of jazz freedom and rhythm with classical structure, depth and refinement has given birth to new layers of musical richness and beauty that left a powerful mark on live audiences and on album listeners alike. Especially memorable are the immortal albums and iconic performances with strings, beginning first with Charlie Parker with Strings in 1950, followed by the Modern Jazz Quartet, who joined the classical Beaux Arts Quartet in 1960, Stan Getz, who improvised a solo over Eddie Sauter's string work FOCUS, Bill Evans's Symbiosis in 1974, and later projects by Lee Konitz with the AXIS String Quartet, and Joshua Redman with the Brooklyn Rider string quartet.