Darius Jones in Residence

Description:

Western Front hosted composer and saxophonist Darius Jones for a residency in which he rehearsed, performed, and recorded The Vancouver Suite—a concert-long composition for strings that Jones began in 2019 during an earlier residency at Western Front. The work is dedicated to Vancouver’s physical environment, its audiences, and most specifically, four of its string players: cellist Peggy Lee, bassist James Meger, and violinists Jesse Zubot and Josh Zubot. The public was invited to join the musicians for a series of open rehearsals in the Grand Luxe Hall in preparation for the recording and performance of the piece at The Ironworks during the 2022 TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. 

Following this project, Jones was joined by vocalist Amirtha Kidambi to further develop their duo Angels and Demons. Together, Jones and Kidambi perform musical adaptations of cosmological writings by iconic composer and bandleader Sun Ra. The duo formed to honor the intellectual, literary, and spiritual contribution of Sun Ra as a philosopher and teacher. Dancing between Ra’s prophetic poetic verse, abstract phonemes and syllables, sound, noise, tone, melody, and rhythmic interplay, Jones and Kidambi use their unique compositional and improvisatory voices to amplify Ra’s poetry to contemporary audiences. To conclude the residency, Jones and Kidambi hosted a concert and a public discussion about their collaborative process and the significance of Ra’s work to their artistic practices. 

Curated by Aram Bajakian.