Before Lincoln Center, there was San Juan Hill, a diverse neighborhood located in the West 60’s of Manhattan. “Hill” refers to 62nd Street and the top of Amsterdam.
For some, the district’s reputation was synonymous with racial conflict. in the article on page 1, in 1905, The New York Times reported weekly that “Police at West 68th Street Station anticipate at least one minor riot in Hill or Gut.” Avenue, involving black and white rival gangs in the area.
But beyond its police blotter notoriety, another American cultural narrative was taking shape in San Juan Hill. Around 1913, James P. Johnson could be found playing the piano at his Jungle’s Casino on West 62nd Street. The dancing he witnessed there, which he described as “wild and comical”, inspired his syncopated roaring 20s hit “The Charleston” a decade later. gave.
In a recent interview at the Lincoln Center, jazz trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles said San Juan Hill’s musical heritage was particularly rich throughout the first half of the 20th century.
“Thelonious Monk is from here,” said 39-year-old Charles. “And Benny Carter — to me, Benny Carter is one of the most influential arrangers because he was one of the first to play five sax sleds in a big band, right? is a great bandleader and a great improviser.”
The musical side of San Juan Hill’s story dates back long before the mayor’s Slum Clearance Committee, led by Robert Moses, destroyed the neighborhood to make way for the sprawling Lincoln Center arts complex. (Using eminent domain, Moses’ “urban renewal” project dislodged more than 7,000 of his economically vulnerable families, most of whom were black and Hispanic.)
When Lincoln Center approached him for a piece to celebrate the reopening of David Geffen Hall in 2020, Charles said this lack of widespread awareness of history excited him to propose a piece about San Juan Hill. rice field. After all, the organization was thinking along similar lines.
Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, Shanta Sake, said, “It was already a topic here. The organization was asking, ‘What was our history? How did we talk about our history?’ do you?”
They agreed that Charles would compose a piece that evokes an old neighborhood, and that it would use the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center’s first-ever full orchestra commission. The Hill premieres October 8, with Charles and his group Creole Soul joining the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for two performances.
“We want to celebrate that and get as many people as possible to see this as the first production in the hall,” said Take. Tickets are available with a choice of payment methods. Limited number of free tickets Handed out at 10am at the Geffen Hall Welcome Center. )
Sark said Charles’ new film at Lincoln Center “says a lot about what the future will look like,” adding, “It doesn’t deepen as time goes on, and we’ll see more of this stuff.” I couldn’t have imagined that,” he added.
At the Kaplan Penthouse in Lincoln Center’s Rose Building, Charles sat next to a piano and a score of “San Juan Hill,” rattling off a roll call list of all-stars with neighborhood roots. , author Zora Neale Hurston. And he recalled learning about the neighborhood’s cultural heritage in 2006, shortly after arriving for his master’s degree in jazz studies at the Juilliard School.
While preparing for a concert of Herbie Nichols music, pianist and educator Frank Kimbrough gave Charles his first lesson on the topic, pointing out its connection to Charles’ career. “He said, ‘Are you from Trinidad?'” Charles said. “Herbie’s parents are from Trinidad and he was born in Trinidad.” He then pointed to San Juan Hill. ”
It didn’t take long for the dual message of local importance and broader ties to the West Indies to be reinforced. When pianist Monty Alexander stopped by the apartment Charles was sharing with another student, Aaron Deal, he taught Charles a fresh way to hear Monk’s music. “When you listen to Monk’s music, you can hear the Caribbean bouncy,” Alexander told Charles.
At the Kaplan Penthouse piano, Charles played an appropriately bumpy figure from Monk’s “Bye-Ya” as punctuation for that anecdote. “It’s like a dance hall,” he said.
For Charles, one of the challenges of “San Juan Hill” was its scope. His first thought was, “I have never composed for an orchestra.” But thanks to his training at Juilliard, he learned orchestration and completed several arrangements for orchestra. “Alright, let’s go.”
Charles also carried out fact-finding duties while looking back at the music coming in and out of San Juan Hill. He searched archives and talked to people who lived in the neighborhood before 1959. Among them was his one former leader of many gangs. (Charles said he could not identify which leader or which gang.)
Thake said such an effort epitomizes how “deeply researched and curious” Charles is as a performer. “He’s invested a lot in this place, coming from Juilliard, jazz he’s been through Lincoln Center,” she said, adding that he gave a free concert in the organization’s atrium space for the first time. said he was one of the musicians of
Deal, Charles’ former Juilliard roommate, is well aware of such social impetus. Deal is a memorable New York pianist who has also performed with the Philharmonic Orchestra. In his phone interview, Deal fondly recalled how Charles taught him about the relationship between Caribbean traditions and American jazz.
“Spending time with him revealed a whole world of Afro-Diaspora music that I had never encountered,” Deal said. “If you’re not playing these grooves right, he’ll tell you right away.”
The performance on October 8th opens with “San Juan Hill” with a mini-set by Creole Soul. Images of the neighborhood’s past and present are projected inside Geffen Hall while the group performs. But a large part of the work is concerned with the dialogue between the Philharmonic Orchestra players and their music director, Jaap van Zweden, with Creole Soul. Images are then projected only during movement. (Multimedia aspects include film elements directed by Maya Cozier, visual graffiti by his artist Gary Fritz (known as Wicked GF), and his 3D images by Bayeté Ross Smith.)
The Philharmonic Orchestra’s movements (5 movements representing approximately 55 minutes out of a 75-minute performance) feature rich American musical textures, from vintage stride piano to contemporary hip-hop.
“A lot of it was heavily inspired by what James P. Johnson and Fats Waller were doing,” Charles said. “Then, I wanted to give voice to immigrants.
Historical records also feed Charles’ musical imagination. The first movement with orchestra, titled “Riot 1905”, refers to one of the infamous street brawls at San Juan Hill. A front-page story in The Times in July 1905 concerned the race riots that broke out when a black man stepped in to help a local rag who needed help getting through the neighborhood.
Towards the end of “Riot 1905,” however, the score’s name rhythmic cues check the work of hip-hop producer J Dilla, who died in 2006. But for Charles, it’s a way of comparing times because “people are still dealing with senseless acts of violence.”
His movement “The Black Witch” for group and orchestra paints a portrait of Hannah Elias. Hannah Elias was once a whore, then a landlord and property owner, and one of the wealthiest black women in New York City.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Elias received a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars from his lover, a white man named John R. Pratt. “I’m not sure you want to call it like his 1895 version of ‘The Tinder Swindler,'” said Charles. “But he sued her, and they write everything downShe had a mansion in Central Park West. 7 bedroom apartment! And this whole mob appeared outside her house. She won the lawsuit. he lost the lawsuit. She bought real estate all over New York. ”
The music in this movement begins softly and seductively, before tinging with suspense. “It really gets outsaid Charles. “It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. You thought he was special, but in reality, his family had convinced him that he shouldn’t have given him money.”
The third and fourth movements “Charleston at the Jungle” and “Urban Removal” tackle the vastly different legacies of pianists James P. Johnson and Robert Moses. But Charles didn’t want the song to end on a downer, so the orchestra’s final movement, “House Rent Party,” is a maddening amalgamation of ragtime, Afro-Venezuelan waltz and turntablism.
“What’s it like to DJ at a world-wide party?” Charles asked rhetorically after I pointed out the abundance of style in this part of the score. “You have to give them a little flavor.”