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Eli Yamin: Message From Saturn
The Jazz Drama Program was founded in 2003, in New York City, by pianist and composer Eli Yamin, and educator Clifford Carlson, to stimulate youth by offering diverse and imaginative jazz, theater, and dance programs with active participation of those enrolled. Message From Saturn takes its title from a famous Sun Ra comment: “I just got a message from Saturn. We're not playing enough blues." With this statement as a launching point, the cosmological theme also draws inspiration from “The ...
read moreEli Yamin and Evan Christopher: Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz Heroes
Hero worship has long been a magnetic force that helps to draw in the next generation of musicians, yet this very concept is often pooh-poohed by a segment of the musical and artistic community. These people feel that new is always better, and that originality can't thrive if artists acknowledge their forefathers and wear their influences on their sleeves. Pianist Eli Yamin and clarinetist Evan Christopher have never bought into this line of thinking. On Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz ...
read moreEli Yamin: You Can't Buy Swing
Pianist Eli Yamin is a communicator who believes jazz can foster a sense of community. His work is expansive and extroverted, populist in the best sense. As a teacher--he's now part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's education program--he's created jazz dramas and the dramatic impulse is a strong component of his music. So is swing. This album's title comes from a saying by a drummer who worked often with Yamin, the late Walter Perkins: “You can't buy swing, baby sweets. ...
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