Angel Bat Dawid - Requiem for Jazz

Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.

Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African American experience - as one of freedom and restraint, of joy and suffering - that manifests in the triumph of spirit over the crushing prejudice of daily life.

Cutting together archive reels from Black neighborhoods in Chicago with live performance footage from Sun Ra and his Arkestra among others, the film remains a radical and prescient evocation of Black pride and its roots in the history of jazz, from spirituals to blues and beyond.

Tha ArkeStarzz:
Piano - Dr. Charles Joseph Smith
Contrabass - Jeremiah Hunt
Percussion - Vincent Davis
Auxiliary Instruments - Xristian Espinoza
Electronics - Norman W. Long
Flute - Dr. Adam Zanolini
Clarinet - Hannah Washington
Trumpet - Sam Thousand
Soprano Saxophone - Isaiah Collier
Alto Saxophone - Fred Jackson Jr.
Tenor Saxophone - Kwesaiah
Violin - J’Niya Blunt
Violin - DaJour Smith
Viola - Michelle Manson
Cello - Olula

Tha Choruzz:
Soprano - Tramaine Parker
Alto - Monique Golding
Tenor - Deacon Julian Otis Cooke
Baritone - Phillip Armstrong

Special Cosmic Guests on “Lux Aeterna- Eternal Light/My Rhapsody”:
Marshall Allen - Alto Sax, Ewi
Knoel Scott - Percussion