East meets West at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville today as global fusion super group ASPADA takes the stage in Starr Theatre. Saxophonist George Brooks marries his love of world music -- particularly Indian classical -- with his jazz background as he teams up with Osam Ezzeldin on piano, Kai Eckhardt on bass and Selvaganesh Vinayakram on percussion for an evening of rhythmic exploration sure to surprise and delight Western audiences.
"There is a portion of the audience that is looking for kind of global collaborations and interdisciplinary music," Brooks says ahead of his first visit to Fayetteville. "I think that the jazz listeners are generally turned on by the newness of it for them. We're doing something that they may be seeing familiar instruments, but we're taking things in a different direction. So I think the open-minded listener is really pretty struck by that, thinking, 'I'm looking at something that looks like a jazz quartet; it's like the same instruments and they're kind of doing things the same way, but it's really a different color.'"
FAQ
George Brooks’
ASPADA
WHEN — 7:30 p.m. today
WHERE — Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville
COST — $30-$50
INFO — 443-5600, waltonartscenter.org
Describing the experience of the show, Brooks' choices are exciting and engaging: Virtuosic, in reference to his fellow musicians. Romantic, in reference to his melodies. Exotic, in reference to the structure of the music. It's like there is a fire on the stage.
"The biggest similarity is that both jazz and Indian classical music rely on improvisation as a core element of performance," Brooks explains. "The big challenge is that in jazz, there tends to be changing harmonies and the scales that you use to improvise change often. In Indian classical music, that scale will stay the same for your [entire] performance; you will use the same six or seven notes. So there's a great deal of melodic inventiveness that an Indian classical musician develops if they use a limited palette of pitches, a limited number of notes. And I was really attracted to that. Some jazz musicians find that constricting or constraining, but I feel a lot of freedom within those restrictions."
-- Jocelyn Murphy
NAN What's Up on 10/12/2018