One Breath Rising presents: The Makanda Project

Sunday, October 6, 2024

4:40 pm

$10 live or livestream

All Saints Church 

286 Seventh Avenue, Park Slope

Brooklyn

We are thrilled to bring back the Makanda Project, a 13-piece ensemble that has become an important part of the Boston jazz scene. Led by pianist, bandleader and arranger, John Kordalewski, the Makanda Project explores and celebrates the richness of the unrecorded music of multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator Dr. Makanda Ken McIntyre.

Makanda Ken McIntyre (1931-2001) was among the group of innovative jazz musicians who emerged during the early 1960s.  He was well schooled in the jazz conventions of the 1940s and 1950s, but he created a path of his own, in which the improvisational language and compositional structures extended in some different directions.  Makanda’s music defied categorization.  His playing was both “inside” and “outside.” He has devoted students from SUNY College at Old Westbury, the New School’s Jazz Program, Smith College, Wesleyan University, Central State University in Ohio, and at Fordham University. After Makanda passed away unexpectedly in 2001, we discovered that he had about 350 original compositions that had not been recorded - in addition to the approximately 75 that had. These compositions are marked by a distinctive rhythmic and lyrical quality often writing pieces in unusual time signatures, and with unusual

chord changes. Yet his music is always swinging! Makanda was a brilliant composer. Pianist and leader John Kordalewski, who studied and performed with Makanda, formed the Boston-based Makanda Project in 2005 to explore this music with fellow musicians and introduce it to the public. John has arranged over 60 of the compositions - some of which we will hear this evening.  With new arrangements, and without the opportunity to hear Makanda’s performances of these pieces, the Makanda Project’s approach differs from that of the “ghost bands” that sometimes form to honor the legacy of a great musician.  Whereas those bands essentially revisit the original, with the same repertoire and instrumentation, the Makanda Project is extending Dr. McIntyre’s work in new ways, and has developed its own identity with his compositions as a vehicle. The ensemble will be joined by the Mickey Davidson dancers. We invite you to join us for this wonderful and rare opportunity to hear the Makanda Project in Brooklyn! Sunday, October 6, 2024 at All Saints’ Church 286 Seventh Avenue, Park Slope Brooklyn (at 7th Street). Take the F/G train 7th Ave stop or R train to 4th Ave/9th Street

4:40 pm.

John Kordalewski – piano, arranger, conductor

Kurtis Rivers – alto saxophone

Seth Meicht – alto saxophone, clarinet, flute

Sean Berry – tenor saxophone

Temidayo Balogun – tenor saxophone

Charlie Kohlhase – baritone saxophone

Jerry Sabatini – trumpet

Haneef Nelson – trumpet

Alfred Patterson – trombone

Richard Harper – trombone

Bill Lowe – bass trombone

Avery Sharpe – bass

Yoron Israel – drums

Event is free but a $10 donation is appreciated. It will be live-streamed on the One

Breath Rising YouTube channel and The Makanda Project’s Facebook page, as well.