CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Alexa Tarantino
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
Alexa Tarantino is an award-winning, vibrant, young jazz saxophonist, woodwind doubler, composer, and educator. Alexa’s “lovely, ardent way of improvising,” and “sharply plotted but gracefully unencumbered straight-ahead jazz [compositions]” (Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times) establish her individual voice which shines through as a dynamic performer and educator. Tarantino was recently named one of the “Top 5 Alto Saxophonists of 2019” by the JazzTimes Critics’ Poll. Her debut album, Winds of Change, peaked at #15 on the JazzWeek Charts and landed at #79 for JazzWeek’s Top 100 records of 2019.
Tarantino’s performance highlights include prestigious venues such as Jazz in Marciac Festival (with Wynton Marsalis and the Young Stars of Jazz), Umbria Jazz Festival (with Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project), the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Hollywood Bowl (with Sherrie Maricle & the DIVA Jazz Orchestra), the Rockport Jazz Festival (Alexa Tarantino Quintet), Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts (with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra), and the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival (with LSAT, Earth, Wind & Fire and others). She has performed regularly as a leader and sidewoman in a wide variety of ensembles and genres including the Alexa Tarantino Quartet, Cecile McLorin Salvant Quintet, Cecile McLorin Salvant’s OGRESSE Ensemble, Ulysses Owens Jr.’s Generation Y, LSAT (quintet co-led with baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian), Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Sherrie Maricle & the DIVA Jazz Orchestra.
Tarantino leads her own quartet, which was featured at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland Jazz Theater, Jazz Standard, and Times Square. Tarantino is an artist on the Posi-Tone Records label. Her debut quartet record on Posi-Tone, Winds of Change, released late-May 2019 featuring Christian Sands (piano), Joe Martin (bass), and Rudy Royston (drums), with Nick Finzer (trombone). Her next quartet album will be released in May 2020. Tarantino’s other recent projects include her quintet that she co-leads with baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian called “LSAT.” LSAT was selected as the winners of the Made in New York Jazz Competition, where they performed with Randy Brecker, John Patitucci, and more. The two award-winning saxophonists have fused with a dynamic rhythm section that propels their music to new heights. LSAT presents original compositions highlighting the unique combination of baritone and alto saxophone, as well as their own interpretations of favorites from the jazz repertoire. LSAT recently headlined at the Jazz Educators Network Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA.
As a composer/arranger, Tarantino has written and/or recorded works for Lauren Sevian’s Bliss for Posi- Tone Records, Sherrie Maricle & The DIVA Jazz Orchestra’s 25th Anniversary, and Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Quintet. With Posi-Tone Records, her work can be heard on Something Blue, Lioness, Works for Me, and Winds of Change.
In addition, Alexa has enjoyed opportunities as an instrumentalist in musical theater, such as performing in The New Group’s Off-Broadway Production of SWEET CHARITY starring Sutton Foster and directed by Leigh Silverman. Prior to SWEET CHARITY, she spent a year with Maurice Hines and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra as part of Hines’ production TAPPIN’ THRU LIFE for the show’s runs in Delaware, Off- Broadway in New York City, and Philadelphia.
Tarantino is currently on faculty for Jazz at Lincoln Center's Youth Education Programs and directs one of their High School Jazz Academy big bands. She has also taken on a larger role in JALC’s Jazz for Young People Program, bringing music to New York City schools. Previously, she served as Jazz Saxophone Instructor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Tarantino continues to visit several colleges, high schools, and summer jazz programs across the globe as a guest clinician, including the Rockport Jazz Workshop (MA), of which she is Founder and Director. Rockport Jazz Workshop, currently in its seventh year, expanded in just four years from a five-day program with 7 students to a two-week program with 120 students.
She holds a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from The Juilliard School and Bachelor’s degrees in Jazz Saxophone Performance and Music Education from the Eastman School of Music. Tarantino is a graduate of Hall High School’s award-winning music program in West Hartford, Connecticut and currently resides in New York City.
My Instruction
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Lessons/Workshops:
As an educator, Alexa has experience teaching all ages and ability levels. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes learning by ear to encourage creativity, communication, and improvisation in music-making. She is currently on Faculty for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Education Programs and directs one of their High School Jazz Academy Big Bands. Previously, she served as Jazz Saxophone Faculty at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva, NY), where she taught jazz saxophone/woodwinds and jazz improvisation to a studio of almost fifteen students ranging from saxophonists to vocalists. Other previous teaching positions include Private Woodwinds Instructor at the LREI Schools in New York City, Rochester Contemporary School of Music, and the Eastman Community Music School in both the Early Childhood and Jazz Studies Departments.
Alexa has been a guest artist/clinician at the New Trier Jazz Festival, Iowa All-State Festival, Berklee College of Music, the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland, Nazareth College, SUNY Oswego, the Hartt School of Music, and Monroe Community College. In addition, Alexa is a Teaching Artist with the Institute for Creative Music and developed an online course, “Demystifying Jazz Improvisation,” for their “Creative Jazz Fundamentals” series.
Alexa is the Founder and Director of the Rockport Jazz Workshop (est. 2014, Rockport, MA). Rockport Jazz Workshop has expanded in just four years from a five-day program with 7 students to a two-week program with 120 students. Guest artists at Rockport Jazz Workshop over the years include Sherrie Maricle, Jimmy Greene, Matt Buttermann, Ulysses Owens, Jr., and Lauren Sevian.
Tarantino is currently on faculty for Jazz at Lincoln Center's Youth Education Programs and directs one of their High School Jazz Academy big bands. Previously, she served as Jazz Saxophone Instructor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Tarantino continues to visit several colleges, high schools, and summer jazz programs across the globe as a guest clinician.
Alexa holds a master’s degree in Jazz Studies from The Juilliard School and bachelor’s degrees in Jazz Saxophone Performance and Music Education from the Eastman School of Music.
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix, originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet, is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. Neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible. In a matrix they can be created.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX