Honoring Heroes of Jazz, With Words, Silence and Improvisation

From NYTimes.com:

Thursday night’s Vision Festival bill at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side included a panegyric for the living, in the form of a lifetime-achievement celebration for the pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams; a eulogy for the deceased, in the form of a 10-minute silence for the saxophonist Fred Anderson, who died earlier in the day; and a handful of performances that were all at least reaching for something beyond formal excellence. It wasn’t all great, but there was a lot beyond notes to consider. Each part of the night — including the silence — contained stamina and resistance and a kind of morality.

Now 79, Mr. Abrams helped found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago in 1965. (After moving here, he started up the New York chapter in 1983.) It was and is a collective, nonprofit organization, urging the writing of original music, challenging any perceived boundaries of what jazz can be or include, creating performance opportunities for its members and educating young musicians from the South Side of Chicago in an alternative academy.

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