Harrison Bankhead in Grand Rapids, May 3rd

[Lazaro Vega]

“The Chicago-based jazz bassist Harrison Bankhead is an avant-garde-leaning musician with a journeyman's ability to fit within an array of jazz styles from straight-ahead to free jazz.” Matt Collar, The All Music Guide.

Grand Rapids celebrates the 50^th Anniversary of Chicago’s Association For the Advancement of Creative Musicians with a performance by Harrison Bankhead’s Quartet on Sunday, May 3^rd at 3 p.m. in The Underground Series, presented in the unique surroundings of the LaFontsee Galleries, 833 Lake Drive S.E., Grand Rapids, in association with www.adventuremusic.org.

Bankhead’s quartet presents a high energy two saxophone front line with proven bass/drums rhythm section reaching heights familiar to John Coltrane’s late period -- highly spiritualized, ecstatic hosannas seeking the universal tone – while able, sometimes within the same piece, of introspectively delving into traditional African musical instruments and cultures.

Bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Avreeayl Ra are a Chicago rhythm section of enormous range and stylistic flexibility, able to lay down a straight ahead groove as they did at The Wealthy Theatre with trumpeter Malachi Thompson and poet Amiri Baraka in 1999, or push the music into free range as you heard at the Wealthy Theatre when Bankhead joined the Roscoe Mitchell/Fred Anderson Quintet in 2003.

Appearing in Grand Rapids powering Harrison Bankhead’s Quartet on Sunday, May 3^rd at 3 p.m. they’ll reinforce the multi-directional musical possibilities of saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr., two musicians firmly in the post-John Coltrane/Archie Shepp/Albert Ayler/Roscoe Mitchell saxophone continuum who, as A.A.C.M. artists, play a wide range of woodwinds (including Didgeridoo) and African percussion.

With Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians celebrating its 50^th Anniversary on April 26^th, this is a perfect time to experience the spectacular heights of fire and thunder some of the most creative musicians on the planet improvise in the moment.

With this concert, The Underground Series seeks to, in the words of Tum Records, “promote more experienced musicians whose work is not favored by the commercial trends of our time.”

As series curator Lazaro Vega said prior to the Charlie Kohlhase Explorers Club concert, “The corptocracy will not give you this music: to find it you have to go underground. Thanks for digging.”

Bankhead’s long association with Fred Anderson on the bandstand at Anderson’s The Velvet Lounge in Chicago seasoned the bassist to be ready for anything, and to always groove. He plays beautiful, precise, swinging lines on vocalist Dee Alexander’s new release “Songs My Mother Loves,” and ably takes his working quartet through the sonicsphere on the new album “Velvet Blue.”

Ticket are $20 in advance, $10 for students with a student I.D. and $25 at the door. Advance tickets available only from www.adventuremusic.org . The phone number at the LaFontsee Galleries is (616) 451 – 9820. The LaFontsee Galleries are wheel chair accessible.

To find LaFontsee Galleries please see, www.lafontsee.us/ .

[johnblitweiler]

Mars Williams has become one of the best saxophonists around, but I doubt he was ever in the AACM.

[Utevsky]

Wish I could be there for this one. The Harrison Bankhead CD on Engine Records a few years ago was awesome.