Myra Melford Snowy Egret
celebrating stunning new album, Snowy Egret
$22 adv / $24 door
Myra Melford, says the Wall Street Journal, “is one of the most interesting and underrated pianists in jazz today. Her work is both ambitious and accessible, full of bright, intense rhythms and complex harmonies.” Tonight, she brings her brilliant band, Snowy Egret, to the Freight to celebrate the release of their new album, also called Snowy Egret, inspired by Memory of Fire, the three-volume history of the Americas by the late Uruguayan master, Eduardo Galeano. The quintet’s sound is grounded in the roots music of both North and South America, jazz, blues, and Latin dance rhythms, as well as Myra’s abiding interest in Zen Buddhism and the “organic philosophy” of Frank Lloyd Wright. “The compositions on the album,” says the New York Times, “touch on brooding elegy, carnivalesque rhythm, and focused abstraction, with an internal bustle that ends up serving her larger designs.” With Ron Miles on cornet, Liberty Ellman on guitar, Stomu Takeishi on acoustic bass guitar, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and Myra on piano, the band creates a whirlpool of rolling rhythms, bubbling undercurrents, and torrential energy.
Myra has been a music professor at Cal since 2004 and is currently artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In the past few years, she has received the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts in the music category, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Doris Duke Performing Artists Award. Her prolific recordings include albums as the leader of several different bands, including Trio M, Be Bread, and The Same River, Twice. She recently released her first solo piano album, Life Carries Me This Way, inspired by the drawings of her friend, the late Don Reich. Myra is a Bay Area treasure, and her visionary music is a mind-expanding experience!
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Myra Melford and Satoko Fujii