(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Jazz guitarist/composer Freddie Bryant headlines the 11^th annual Hudson Jazz Workshop concert at Hudson Hall on Sunday, August 13, at 4:30pm. Bryant will perform with Hudson Jazzworks artistic directors Armen Donelian (piano) and Marc Mommaas (saxophone) as well as an international line-up of workshop participants. The concert is preceded by a free talk with the artists at 4pm.

A member of Ben Riley’s Monk Legacy Septet, the Mingus Orchestra, and his own group, Kaleidoscope, Freddie Bryant a versatile musician skilled both in jazz and classical music. Bryant has toured with three legends of the music world: African singer Salif Keita; the virtuoso klezmer clarinetist Giora Feidman; and the jazz trumpet great Tom Harrell. He has recorded and/or played with Tom Harrell, D.D. Jackson, Steve Wilson, Kevin Hays, Brad Mehldau, Chris Potter, bassist Avishai Cohen, Rosanna Vitro, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sheila Jordan, Randy Brecker, David Sanchez, Joshua Redman, Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, Lonnie Smith and many others. He is also on the first call list of many singers and Brazilian musicians because of his sensitive accompanying and his knowledge of Brazilian guitar and has toured with pianist/singer Eliane Elias.

Bryant’s new CD, “Monk Restrung,” celebrating the music of Thelonious Monk, comes out this fall. He has released seven other CDs for GJKSounds, HiPNOTIC Records, Fresh Sound Records, Jazz City Spirit and Twinz Records. Bryant has toured 52 countries and collaborated with Indian classical musicians, African singers, oud players, traditional Arab groups and klezmer bands. Bryant also composed the score to the documentary film “Complicit,” which premiered at the 2017 London Human Rights Watch Film Festival. An impassioned educator, Bryant is on the faculties of Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts and Prins Claus Conservatorium in Holland.

The Hudson Jazz Workshop (HJW) is a weekend immersion in improvisation and composition with artistic directors Donelian, a Hudson resident, and Mommaas, a Dutch native living in New York City, held this year from August 10-13. Past HJW participants, many of them rising professional musicians, have come from across the United States and as far away as Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, and Spain.

Armen Donelian is a graduate of Columbia University and the Westchester Conservatory of Music. Donelian’s compositions exhibit influences drawn from classical, jazz and Middle Eastern music. He has produced 13 acclaimed albums as a leader for the Sunnyside, Odin, Atlas and Playscape record labels. His recent two-disc release, “Sayat-Nova: Songs of My Ancestors” (Sunnyside), with David Clark and George Schuller, offers distinctive jazz solo piano and trio arrangements of 18^th-century Armenian folk songs.

Donelian has toured in 25 countries with renowned performers including Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Billy Harper and Paquito D’Rivera, and recorded with Mongo Santamaria, Billy Harper, Eddie Gomez, Billy Hart, Dick Oatts, Bill Stewart, Night Ark, Thomas Chapin and Datevik Hovanesian, among others. A Fulbright Senior Scholar and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Donelian has taught for over three decades in The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and at William Paterson University. He has written several widely-read books on ear training and piano pedagogy, lectures at leading academies around the world, and performs internationally in festivals, concerts and clubs.

Marc Mommaas is a cum laude graduate of Manhattan School of Music (MSM). A William Borden Award recipient, Mommaas is a frequent lecturer at MSM, New York University, William Paterson University, Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Denmark, and the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Mommaas co-directs both the Hudson Jazz Workshop and the New York Jazz Workshop. He is a faculty member of The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, leads two celebrated bands, Global Motion and Landmarc, and composes innovative works featured on Global Motion, Balance and Landmarc (all on Sunnyside Records). Mommaas tours internationally with Amina Figarova, Tony Moreno, Tim Horner and Armen Donelian, and has appeared in major venues including the Newport Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall. Mommaas’ newest CD is a solo project named Irreversible Momentum. He is currently preparing for the release of a new CD of standards and ballads.

Donelian and Mommaas met in 2000 and immediately established a personal chemistry that is at the heart of their music making.  For 14 years, they have performed their original compositions and standard repertoire documented on their critically acclaimed Sunnyside CD, “All or Nothing at All.”

 

 

HUDSON JAZZWORKS

August 13, 2017 at 4.30pm

Special Guest Artist, guitarist Freddie Bryant

Preceded by a free talk with the artists at 4:00pm

Tickets: $20 general admission | $16 for members and seniors | Free for students with a valid ID

 

Hudson Hall

at the historic Hudson Opera House

327 Warren Street

Hudson, NY 12534

(518) 822-1438

 

ABOUT HUDSON JAZZWORKS

Founded in 2007, Hudson Jazzworks, Inc is a nonprofit organization with an educational/artistic mission to present workshops, seminars, classes, concerts, and related activities that promote and transmit the knowledge, composition, and performance of music in a healthy and supportive environment. The Hudson Jazz Workshop takes place annually in mid-August in rural Columbia County, with a focus on improvisational duo performance, music composition, practice regimens and related issues.