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Rashida Bumbray

Sunday, May 14, 2023, 12 pm, Dia Chelsea

Event Details
Sunday, May 14, 2023, 12 pm

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

Free. Register for the event here.

In conjunction with Leslie Hewitt at Dia Bridgehampton, Rashida Bumbray will present a solo interpretation of a score realized collaboratively by Hewitt and Jamal Cyrus titled For Solo Piano, Alto Saxophone, or Tambourine (This Score May Be Realized in Any Imaginative Way, or in conjunction with or in response to the recording of the song Evidence (Justice) 00:07:55 on the album Monk in Tokyo, Columbia Records (1963) with Thelonious Monk on piano, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Butch Warren on bass, and Frankie Dunlap on drums or Evidence 00:04:41 on the album Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, Blue Note Records (1957) with Thelonious Monk on piano, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Ahamed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums or Evidence 00:05:00 on the album Evidence, New Jazz (1962) with Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone, Don Cherry on trumpet; Carl Brown on bass, and Billie Higgins (Abdul Kareem) on drums) (2022). This special performance by Bumbray culminates a series of three matinees that punctuated the run of Hewitt’s exhibition. The event follows pianist Jason Moran in November 2022 and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins in March 2023.

Building upon traditions of indeterminate musical notation and the fractal logic of the jazz standard, Hewitt and Cyrus’s score is comprised of an arrangement of objects overlaid with metadata and sound that can be imagined in relation to Thelonious Monk’s song Evidence (first recorded in 1948). Just as the score calls attention to relationality, its interpretation occurs in the register of practice. Shifting attention away from linear notation and finished performance, the focus on practice emphasizes interpretation as an exercise in discovery and an opportunity to critically add to the score.

Rashida Bumbray is a performance artist and curator. A graduate of Oberlin College, Ohio, Bumbray received an MA in Africana Studies from New York University. Her work has been presented by the Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Project Row Houses, Houston; Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York, among other venues. She received the Harlem Stage Fund for New Work. She publishes essays on contemporary art, performance, cultural studies, and comparative literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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