Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey hits the road this week for two months of dates supporting their new album Stay Gold. The tour starts in Louisiana and Texas and then heads to Ohio, Kentucky, & Pennsylvania before hitting the West Coast from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles….
JFJO ON TOUR:
Fri. Sept 3rd – Chelseas – Baton Rouge, LA ^
Sat. Sept 4th – Boom Boom Room – Hattiesburg, MS ^
Sun. Sept 5th – Louisiana Music Factory @ 4pm – New Orleans, LA
Sun. Sept 5th – Blue Nile – New Orleans, LA ^
^ (w/ Johnny Vidacovich!)
Wed. Sept 8th – Centenary College – Shreveport, LA
Fri. Sept 10th – The Parish – Austin, TX
Sat. Sept 11th – Boiler Room – Denton, TX
Tues. Sept 14th – Skully’s – Columbus, OH
Wed. Sept. 15th – Canal Street Tavern – Dayton, OH
Thurs. Sept 16th @ 6pm – Shake It! Records – Cincinnati, OH
Thurs. Sept 16th @ 10pm – The Blue Wisp – Cincinnati, OH
Fri. Sept. 17th – Hideaway – Louisville, KY
Sat. Sept 18th – Rex Theater – Pittsburgh, PA
Sat. Oct. 9th – Jardine’s Jazz Club – Kansas City, MO
Fri. Oct. 15th – Tost – Seattle, WA
Sat. Oct. 16th – Mt. Tabor Theater – Portland, OR
Sun. Oct. 17th – Culture Works – Ashland, OR
Tues. Oct. 19th – TBA – Humboldt, CA
Wed. Oct. 20th – Aubergine – Sebastopol, CA
Thurs. Oct 21st – Kuumbwa Jazz Center – Santa Cruz, CA
Fri. Oct. 22nd – Beatnik Studios – Sacramento, CA
Sat. Oct. 23rd – Cafe Du Nord – San Francisco, CA
Thurs. Oct. 28th – Winston’s – San Diego, CA
Fri. Oct. 29th – The Mint – Los Angeles, CA
Fri. Dec. 31st – Cain’s Ballroom – Tulsa,OK*
*playing the music of Beyonce, Madonna, & Lady GaGa
Thanks for an incredible weekend Chicago!! We had an incredible time hanging out in your wonderful city and playing the Wicker Park Festival. As always we had some great food, got to hang with some old friends, see some new music, and meet some new fans. Looking forward to getting back to Chicago again soon. Check out some great photos from our set at the Wicker Park Festival:
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Words by: Dennis Cook | Images by: Rachel D. Hoefling
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey :: 06.12.10 :: OK Mozart Festival :: Bartlesville, OK
Messing with Beethoven is serious business. Foundational artists like Ludwig Van test one’s mettle and force them to grabble with fundamental structures and attitudes, particularly if one wants to put their own stamp on such a codified composer. Few are better suited to the task than Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, who took their joyously avant sensibilities right into the heart of traditionally snooty classical music by overhauling Beethoven’s 3rd & 6th Symphonies using arrangements by Noam Faingold and JFJO. A longtime coming, Ludwig had its world premiere as part of the OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma with the 50-piece Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra melding with the forward leaning jazz quartet in an experience that proved as playful, unpredictable and gently exciting as one might hope.
Brian Haas (piano), Josh Raymer (drums), Chris Combs (lap steel) and new addition bassist Jeff Harshberger looked as squeaky clean as I’d ever seen them, excited in their crisp suits and itching to jump into the fruition of a journey that began years ago. Haas has been struggling to adapt Beethoven for ages, and after a false start in Brooklyn earlier this year they found their ideal creative foils in Faingold and Bartlesville Symphony music director Lauren Green, who both grokked how JFJO isn’t like the other children, even when they are playing with a very known quantity like Beethoven. In a pre-concert discussion, Faingold said he realized some time ago that “a classical symphony with acoustic instruments could be way bigger than a metal band.” It’s this kind of outside-the-box perspective that makes him such a good fit for this particular band; though he admitted he was “initially paralyzed by [JFJO's] approach, which really pushed everyone’s boundaries.”
This last point is vitally important with Ludwig because if classical works aren’t doomed to be artifacts laboriously recreated the boundaries must be pushed. We aren’t reading by whale blubber lanterns anymore, and kings don’t decide what’s appropriate music and what isn’t. We are wireless citizens of the world with whole record collections in our pocket. As such, antiquated modes of interpretation come off as particularly dusty, like the French in Vietnam in the ’60s desperately clinging to their privileged colonial existence before the populist uprising. If Beethoven isn’t going to be a relic studied and admired under glass he needs wild creatures like JFJO to dig their nails into his hide and pull out the meat underneath…..
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Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is now using Kickstarter to help raise money to create a DVD of the premier of Ludwig, their Beethoven reinterpreted project. Click here to get more information and help support this project.
On June 12th, 2010 the band will debut the ‘Ludwig’ project in full orchestral form live at the 26th annual OK Mozart festival with a full 50 piece symphony, with plans to fully record that evening for release. The band plans to extensively recorded the entire performance for full CD & DVD release on JFJO’s own Tulsa-based record label Kinnara Records. The label is partnered with Sony subsidiary MRI/RED for exclusive North American distribution.
JFJO’s goal in all of this is to be able to show to the rest of the world the sort of innovative and progressive culture that pervades the part of the country they live in. To do this properly JFJO plans to hire a full video production team to create a DVD recording of the premier using at least 5 HD cameras, a camera crane, full 48 track 5.1 digital surround sound audio recording, etc.
JFJO is excited and honored to be able to be in a position to spread this Oklahoma based concept around the country and world, and would like to invite you to join them in this exciting endeavor. Due to the enormity of the production it will take to properly document the event, JFJO is currently seeking sponsorship of the official DVD release.
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Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey returns to Tulsa for New Year’s Eve at Cain’s Ballroom. This year the band will be celebrating the new year by playing the music of Beyonce, Madonna, and Lady GaGa! Special guests and opening act to be announced soon.
More info & tickets (on sale May 21st):
http://www.protixonline.com/View_Event.asp?id=404
JFJO has just released the title track off of their 20th album Stay Gold , out June 22nd on Kinnara Records as both CD & Vinyl.
7. Stay Gold by jfjo
Recently JFJO has been having some great rehearsals here in Tulsa with Jeff Harshbarger. If you weren’t lucky enough to catch him live at one of the band’s Record Store Day performances click here, here, and here to watch video of the new evolution of JFJO.
