World Premiere of PRISM Quartet’s GUITAR HEROES feat. Leyla McCalla, Rez Abbasi and Steven Mackey (NYC)

For more than 40 years, the all-sax PRISM Quartet has redefined the artistic boundaries of its medium, with collaborators ranging from PARTCH, So Percussion, Piffaro, The Crossing, Inti-Illimani, Ethel, and BMOP to leading jazz artists Melissa Aldana, Jason Moran, Susie Ibarra, Arturo O’Farrill, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Joe Lovano. PRISM has worked across disciplines with several dance companies, stage directors, interactive film makers, poets, and, going back to the 1980s, was the first group to play a consort of electronic wind instruments.

The group now ventures into unchartered waters with PRISM Quartet’s GUITAR HEROES, its newest project featuring collaborations with three eminent guitarist-composers representing a vast range of musical traditions: Leyla McCalla, Rez Abbasi, and Steven Mackey. PRISM has commissioned each to create a new work for guitar and sax quartet, and join the group in world premiere performances in New York City and Philadelphia.

“Guitar Heroes is a once-in-a-lifetime project,” says Matthew Levy, PRISM’s co-founder, executive director and tenor saxophonist.  “We’ve invited three strikingly original guitarist-composers to explore the infinite range of sounds that saxes and guitars can make together. In fact, these are among first pieces pairing a sax quartet with solo guitar, with Leyla’s piece also including her extraordinary voice and words. None of us are sure quite what to expect, and that’s why this project is so exciting.”

Steven Mackey is an electric guitarist and GRAMMY-winning composer of works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, dance, and opera—commissioned by the greatest orchestras around the world, and winner of several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. Bright in coloring, ecstatic in inventiveness, lively and profound, Mackey’s music spins the tendrils of his improvisatory riffs into large-scale works of grooving, dramatic coherence. His distinctive voice (in his words) was born from “merging his academic training with the free-spirited physicality of his mother-tongue rock guitar music.” Mackey serves on the faculties of Princeton University and the Curtis Institute of Music.

Guitarist, composer, and Guggenheim fellow Rez Abbasi is interested in music’s ability to bridge traditions. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, and making New York home for the past 25 years, Abbasi is considered by many to be one of the foremost modern jazz guitar players the world over. He has performed and recorded with many jazz greats, including Grammy winner Ruth Brown, Peter Erskine, Kenny Werner, Barre Phillips, Tim Berne, Michael Formanek, Billy Hart, Gary Thomas, Dave Douglas, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mike Clark, Tim Hagans, John Beasly, Ronu Majumdar, Kadri Gopalnath, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Vijay Iyer, Marilyn Crispell, Greg Osby, and Howard Levy. With 14 albums of mostly original compositions under his belt, Abbasi continues to find new groups of musicians to help his musical vision come to life. He was voted #1 Rising-Star Guitarist in the 2013 DownBeat Critics Poll and subsequently placed in the top ten guitarists alongside luminaries Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny.

Leyla McCalla is an American classical and folk musician and songwriter. Born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists, and now living in New Orleans, she finds inspiration from her past and present– her music vibrates with three centuries of history and influences from around the globe. McCalla possesses a stunning mastery of the cello, tenor banjo and guitar and, as a multilingual singer and songwriter, has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience. In addition to her solo work, McCalla is a founding member of Our Native Daughters (with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell) and alumna of Grammy award-winning Black string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops.

TICKETS: This concert is presented on a pay-what-you-wish basis, with three levels of tickets for general admission — $10, $22.50, and $35 — in order to make it affordable to the widest possible audience.

SUPPORT PRISM QUARTET
Ticket revenue covers only a small percentage of the cost of producing this concert. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to PRISM Quartet’s nonprofit organization to support our concert series, educational programs, and commissioning and recording projects. Visit the Support page.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This program is presented with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, and Conn-Selmer. PRISM Quartet plays Selmer saxophones exclusively.

ACCESSIBILITY
PRISM Quartet welcomes all individuals to our concerts, and provides a variety of accommodations for those with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. For specific accommodations, please contact info@prismquartet.com or 215.438.5282.