3D Family - David Murray Creole Project

So if you still have some dates available in this time period (july and august) please feel free to contact us to check the details. This crossover project DAVID MURRAY CREOLE PROJECT will be back on tour in October/November 2004.
 
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photo: Franck Schemmann
DAVID MURRAY CREOLE PROJECT
David Murray - Tenor sax
Jaribu Shahid - Doublebass
Hamid Drake - Drums
Hugh Ragin - Trumpet (tbc)
Francois Ladrezeau - Gwo-Ka drums, vocals
Klod Kiavue - Gwo-Ka drums, vocals
Herve Samb - Guitar

David Murray Creole Project III is a fusion of the harmonic structures of jazz, the rythmic accentuations of the Ka Drum of Guadeloupe, and the ritmalistic vocalization in the langage of Creole. The group just completed its 3rd CD, recorded in the Caribbean which features the legendary tenor saxophonists Pharoah Sanders. The result of David and Pharoahs last collaboration " Blues for Coltrane " was a 88 Grammy Award. On stage, the growth of the improvisation, composition and interaction is evident. The group has developed into a genuine working band with a concept that often leaves audiences listening quite intensly and dancing in the ailes.

The New York Times
POP REVIEW
Using a Caribbean Base For Jazz Improvisations
By JON PARELES
David Murray's Creole, which performed at the Knitting Factory's Old Office last Friday night, is a jazz-Caribbean hybrid split down the middle. Its jazz half is Mr. Murray on tenor saxophone, Santi Debriano on bass and Pheeroan Aklaff on drums, workig with three singers and percussionists from Guadeloupe : Guy Konket, François Ladrezeau and Klod Kiavue, Mr. Murray's brother-in-law and the group's co-director. Creole is an openwork, bare-bones group that unleashes improvisation on tunes in an old Guadeloupean style called ka, after a traditional drum.
The Guadeloupean songs, about hard work and hot sun, were uncomplicated meodies built on vamps. Mr. Knoket's bluesy, leathery voice made his songs sound like cousins field hollers; Mr. Ladrezeau's earnest baritone, taking on an impassioned vibrato, moved closer to caribbean pop. Mr Ladrezeau and Mr. Kiavue, playing hand drums, set out methodical three-against-two rhythms. And the jazz musicians offered promising entanglements everywhere, with Mr Debriano plucking syncopated countermelodies against Mr. Konket's stern vocals and Mr Aklaff building eruptions of tom-tom or cymbal atop the beat.
Along with Creole, Mr. Murray juggles at least a half-dozen different groups, from a standard jazz quartet to the Senegalese-powered Fodeuk Revue to Speaking in Tongues, a gospel group that performed on Sunday night. But context barely affects his solos. They quickly leap from suavely phrased melody to whizzing, ecstatic flights : scurrying lightly overhead or somersaulting through arpeggios, hopping around the registers or muscling selected notes with insistent trills and targeted honks. He's always in control, puffing up his tone or squeezing it down to an articulate squeal; on Friday night, he hinted at Arabic music and mocksoupy chansons as well as the blues.
Mr. Murray's playing galvanizes musicians along with listeners, and creole bore down on the songs to match his drama and momentum; leaving tropical ease behind for the volatility of jazz.

BIOGRAPHY

David MURRAY
Tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, composer and producer

Be Bop and shut up! No way would the young David Murray bow down : his country was to be the state of free jazz, the last unconquered territory open to the jazzman at the end of the 20th century, where this born-and-bred Methodist would enconter Coltranian terrain and Aylerian temptations, which led him on  to the Negro spiritual.
Today, aged 45, David has more than 220 albums behind him that tell of this journey.
At the end of the 90s he has been frequently associated with fusion, world music, even pan-Africanism, reflecting his journey back through time from the West Indies to the Central American islands, via South Africa and Senegal.
From Blaise Makossa's biography of David Murray (2000)

Before embarking on this "journey through time", David Murray had already worked his way brilliantly through the history of jazz. Born in Oakland, he grew up in Berkeley and studied with Catherine Murray (organist and David's mother), Bobby Bradford, Arthur Blythe, Stanley Crouch, Margaret Kohn and many others before he left Ponoma College (Los Angeles) for New York where he moved in 1975.
In New York he met and played with Cecil Taylor, who along with Dewey Redman, gave the young musician the encouragement he needed. The city would again be a source of new encounters, with people and with music from all horizons : Sunny Murray, Tony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Don Cherry. In Ted Daniel's Energy Band he worked with Hamiet Bluiett, Lester Bowie and Frank Lowe.

In 1976, after an European tour,  David Murray set up the first of his mythic groups, the World Saxophone Quartet, with Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett and Julius Hemphill. This marked the beginning of an intensely creative time, when one recording led to another, with an endless permutation of formations.

From Jerry Garcia to Max Roach, from Randy Weston to Elvin Jones, David Murray worked as widely as possible until 1978, when he set up his own quartet, then octet and finally his quintet. From this time on his focus is more on his own formations, although he frequently works with other musicians, drawing in a whole range of different sounds, from strings (the 1982 concert at the Public Theatre in New York), to Ka drums from Guadeloupe (Créole in 1998 and Yonn Dé in 2002) and South African dancers and musicians (Mbizo, 1998), just some of the treasures he has discovered on his journey.

David Murray's awards include: a Grammy and several nominations; a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Bird Award; the Danish Jazzpar Prize; Village Voice musician of the decade (1980s); Newsday musician of the year (1993); personality of the Guinness Jazz festival  (Ireland, 1994); the Ralph J. Simon Rex Award (1995). Two documentaries have been made about David Murray's life: "Speaking in Tongues" (1982) and "Jazzman", nominated at the Baltimore Film Festival (1999).

"Murray's music stems from the post-free movement, combining the innovations of free in the 70's and New Orleans jazz. It is characterized by its paroxystic effects, producing a harsh, extreme sound. He draws explicitly on African traditions, and symbolizes a return to a raw sound". From Le Dictionnaire du jazz, éd. Laffont, 1995

ARTISTS ON TOUR IN 2004/2005

* DAVID MURRAY CREOLE PROJECT (usa/guadeloupe)
* DAVID MURRAY LATIN BIG BAND (usa/cuba)
* OMAR SOSA (cuba) -- represented by Transatlantico in Germany
* HAPPY APPLE (usa)
* MAGIC MALIK ORCHESTRA (france)
* BONGA (angola)
* BA CISSOKO (guinea)
* LILA DOWNS (mexico)
* MANOLITO Y SU TRABUCO (cuba)
* RUMBA PALENQUERA "THE HERITAGE OF BATATA" (colombia)
* TEOFILO CHANTRE (cape verde) -- represented by Griot for Germany, Switzerland and Austria
* KARIM ZIAD (algeria)
* WOPSO (f.w.i - guadeloupe)
* TOTONHO E OS CABRA (brazil)
 
For more information, contact:
3D Family
50, rue Servan
75011 Paris
 
Fabrice Gogendeau
prod@3dfamily.org
http://www.3dfamily.org
Ph : ++33 -240-245-377
Fx : ++33-140-091-234