DAVID AMRAM & BOBBY SANABRIA'S MASTERS OF THE MULTIVERSE!
with Peter Brainin, Silvano Monasterios, Leo Traversa, Jennifer Jade Ledesna, Adira Amram, & Marcos De La Fuente.

JACK KEROUAC's legendary status as the leading voice of the BEAT writers was cemented with his now seminal work, ON THE ROAD. Published in 1957, the same year West Side Story debuted on Broadway and Sputnik launched into space, The New York Times hailed the book's appearance as "...the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."

Kerouac's work was greatly influenced by the stream of jazz that became known as Be Bop. Developed in the mid-1940s by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his second in command, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, it featured angular melodies, at times blistering tempos, the use of Afro-Cuban rhythms, and complex harmonies, it challenged jazz players to a new level of improvisational virtuosity that inspired Kerouac and his colleagues.

Two musical titans, one who actually worked with Kerouac, will join forces at Joe's Pub to celebrate Kerouac's centennial in a special evening of bebop, mambo, and poetry.

DAVID AMRAM
Ubiquitous is the only word that can best be used to describe Maestro David Amram. A composer for symphonic, chamber ensemble, choir, jazz ensembles, movie soundtracks, an arranger, multi-instrumentalist, educator, conductor, and raconteur, he is a true World musician. He has conducted in over thirty-five countries including Cuba, Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan, Israel, Latvia and China and regularly criss-crosses the United States and Canada.

He started his professional life in music as a French Hornist in the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, D.C.) in 1951. After serving in the US Army from 1952-54, he moved to New York City in 1955 and played French horn in the legendary jazz bands of Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Oscar Pettiford.

In 1957, he created and performed in the first ever Jazz/Poetry readings in New York City with novelist Jack Kerouac, a close friend with whom Amram collaborated artistically for over 12 years. He has composed the scores for many films including Pull My Daisy (1959), Splendor in The Grass (1960) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He composed the scores for Joseph Papp's Shakespeare In The Park from 1956-1967 and premiered his comic opera 12th Night with Papp's libretto in 1968. He also wrote a second opera, The Final Ingredient, An Opera of the Holocaust, for ABC Television in 1965. From 1964-66, Amram was the Composer and Music Director for the Lincoln Center Theatre and wrote the scores for Arthur Miller´s plays After the Fall (1964) and Incident at Vichy (1966).

Appointed by Leonard Bernstein as the first Composer In Residence for the New York Philharmonic in 1966, he is now one of the most performed and influential composers of our time. His most popular recent symphonic compositions include This Land, Symphonic Variations On A Song By Woody Guthrie (2007), commissioned by the Guthrie Foundation and performed by the Colorado Symphony with Amram conducting and recorded by Newport Classics in 2015; Giants of the Night (2002) commissioned and premiered by flutist Sir James Galway; Kokopeli, A Symphony in Three Movements (1995), premiered by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra with Amram conducting; Three Songs, A Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2009), Greenwich Village Portraits for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra (2018) and Partners: A Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra (2018) He has collaborated as a composer with Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Eugene Ormandy, Sir James Galway, Langston Hughes and Jacques D´Amboise and as a musician with Thelonious Monk, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Dizzy Gillespie, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Betty Carter, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Paquito D´Rivera, Tito Puente and Jerry Jeff Walker.

A recipient of numerous awards, Amram is the author of three memoirs, Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat (2009), Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac (2005) and the highly acclaimed Vibrations (1968, 2007), all published by Routledge Taylor and Francis. His fourth book Amram@90: Notes from a Promising Young Composer will be published in November of 2022, celebrating his 92nd birthday. In addition to writing new music, he continues to perform around the world as a guest conductor, soloist, multi-instrumentalist, band leader at jazz, folk and classical festivals and narrates them in five languages.

BOBBY SANABRIA
"Bobby Sanabria is equally adept at the swinging big band sounds of drummers Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson along with another boyhood hero, fusion pioneer Billy Cobham and timbale titan Tito Puente” - Bill Milkowski, Jazz Times

Bobby Sanabria is an eight-time Grammy-nominee as a leader. Known as a drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, documentary film producer, educator, activist, and bandleader, his versatility as both a drummer and percussionist, from small group to big band, has become legendary. A native son of the South Bronx born to Puerto Rican parents, he has performed and recorded with every major figure in the world of Latin jazz and salsa, from the founder of the Afro-Cuban/Latin jazz movement Mario Bauzá, to Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaría, Dizzy Gillespie, Chico O’Farrill, Ray Barretto, Candido, to Larry Harlow, Ruben Blades, Celia Cruz, and jazz luminaries as diverse as Henry Threadgill, Charles McPherson, Randy Brecker, Joe Chambers, Jean Lucien, The Mills Brothers, and others. DRUM! Magazine named him Percussionist of the Year (2005); he was named Percussionist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2011 and 2013. In 2006, he was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame. He was a recipient of the 2018 Jazz Education Network (JEN) LeJENS of Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a musician and educator. In 2008 Congressman Dennis Kucinich honored his work as a musician and educator by reading his name into the Congressional Record and in 2018 the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus honored him as a musician, educator. Every single one of his big band recordings, seven in total, have been nominated for Grammys.

His 2018 recording, ‘West Side Story Reimagined,' reached #1 on the national Jazz Week radio charts, was nominated for a 2018 Grammy, and won the prestigious 2019 Record of The Year Award from the Jazz Journalists Association. Partial proceeds from sales of this double CD went to the Jazz Foundation of America’s Puerto Rico Relief Fund for musicians. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and the forthcoming Bronx Music Hall. His lifetime dedication to spreading the history, culture, of jazz and Latin jazz to the general public as a performer, as well as educating a new generation of players, composers, arrangers, has no parallel. A member of Max Roach’s legendary M’BOOM percussion ensemble, he is on the faculty of the New School (his 26th year) and NYU and was on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music for 20 years. He is also the on-air host of the Latin Jazz Cruise on WBGO FM and wbgo.org, the number one jazz station in the nation. Lehman College in NYC has recently awarded Maestro Sanabria an Honorary Doctorate.

Photos courtesy the artists.

David Amram Website
Bobby Sanabria Website
The Village Trip Website