Longtime Harlem resident and well-known performer Sista Zock brings the storied Minton’s Playhouse (206 W. 118 Avenue) to life together with her perspective on the music that made the membership a nationwide shrine, from its stimulating bebop creativity to its scorching jam classes.
On Feb. 23, from 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m., Sista Zock will take you on a journey of musical and cultural expression. She shall be accompanied by an ensemble with such notables as guitarist Bruce Edwards, trumpeter Sharif Kales, bassists Lonnie Plaxico and Stanley Banks, baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall, trombonist Frank Lacy, and drummer Russell Carter, with poet Baba Don and particular company saxophonist Endurance Higgins and drummer Victor Jones.
Sista Zock is an expressive dancer who performs a task in protecting the jazz heartbeat of Harlem alive. Be part of her, alongside together with her massive ensemble, as they embark on a journey of dwelling theater the place music and storytelling converge in celebration of Black Historical past Month (yr).
For tickets, go to mintonsnyc.com or name 212-529-3397.
The bassist, vocalist, composer, and songwriter Esperanza Spaulding is an intriguing artist whose creativity revels in a swinging persistence of consciousness that explores all facets of this music. Her boundless, ever-exploring work entwines numerous combos of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic analysis, and storytelling.
The ingenious artist and multi-Grammy Award winner, together with her many musical aspects, shall be in residency on the Blue Observe Jazz Membership (131 W. third Avenue) from Feb. 18–Mar. 2, with two exhibits every night time (8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.). As of this concern, her featured company or band information was not accessible, however be assured that every night time shall be a energetic endeavor.
In 2024, Spaulding launched a collaborative album, “Milton + Esperanza,” with Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento. That very same yr, she was featured on the “Odyssey” album by the London-born saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia, who additionally believes in boundless journey.
In 2021, her “Formwela 12” paid tribute to dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade and the Dance Theatre of Harlem — the tune’s launch was accompanied by a brief movie that featured Spaulding’s band, a quartet of dancers, and de Lavallade, who contributed as choreographer and dancer. Throughout that interval, Spaulding additionally collaborated with composer and jazz improviser saxophonist Wayne Shorter on his operatic work “Iphigenia” (his interpretation of the traditional Greek delusion), which premiered in 2021 — she wrote the libretto.
By her Songwrights Apothecary Lab, Spaulding continues to collaborate with practitioners in numerous fields regarding sound, therapeutic, and cognition to develop music with enhanced therapeutic potential.By her many diverse initiatives, from acoustic to fusion, opera to therapeutic, we might be certain new music shall be within the making.
For reservations, go to bluenoteny.com or name 212-475-8592.
The 2025 celebration of Black Historical past Month and Worldwide Reggae Month additionally celebrates the centennial of one in every of America’s most defiant civil rights activists: novelist and playwright James Baldwin.
On Feb. 21 (7:30 p.m.), the Apollo Phases on the Victoria (W. one hundred and twenty fifth Avenue) will current a premiere screening of Horace Ové’s quick documentary “Baldwin’s Nigger,” which captures a vigorous dialog between Baldwin and Dick Gregory, who resigned from his comedy profession to grow to be a full-time activist in civil rights. Collectively, they interact a gaggle of West Indian college students in London, discussing a variety of subjects from the state of the Nineteen Sixties Civil Rights Motion to the perils of false consciousness.
Ové was a Trinidadian-born British filmmaker based mostly in London, England, who earned a considerably controversial popularity documenting racism and the Black Energy motion in Britain by means of pictures and in movies comparable to “Baldwin’s Nigger” (1968), “Stress,” and “Dream to Change the World” (2003).
This documentary illustrates that, as creator, lecturer, and educator bell hooks famous, “America’s white supremacist patriarchy” underneath the present administration is rapidly shifting to a chartered dictatorship with solely a frazzled body of democracy for reference. The present political disaster displays the continued relevance of Baldwin’s ideas and full understanding of this nation we name America.
Baldwin’s works, comparable to “No person Is aware of My Title,” “Notes of a Native Son,” and “The Hearth Subsequent Time,” have remained a actuality of reality for Black America on this twenty first century. The activist by no means noticed America as a land of milk and honey, however extra of a complacent racist society that refused to confess its wrongs or make substantial enhancements. Because the native of Harlem said, “Not all the things that’s confronted might be modified. However nothing might be modified till it’s confronted.”
After the screening, there shall be a dialog with Baldwin scholar and historian Dr. Wealthy Blint.
For tickets, go to apollotheater.org.
