Night of the Legends - Jazz Adventure in Barbados 2014

MARY WILSON still performs with the same passion as she did singing with the original Supremes, but the world renowned celebrity is now using her fame and flair to promote humanitarian efforts to end hunger, raise AIDS awareness and encourage world peace. While Ms. Wilson is best known as a founding member of the world’s most famous female trio – they recorded 12 No.1 hits from 1964 to 1969 – the legendary singer’s career did not stop there, and she continues to soar to untold heights. Ms. Wilson is a best-selling author, motivational speaker, businesswoman, former U.S. Cultural Ambassador, the recipient of an Associate Degree from New York University in 2001, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. In 2007, Ms. Wilson was named international spokeswoman for the Humpty Dumpty Institute, a platform she uses to condemn the death and destruction caused by hidden landminesand unexploded ordnances in less developed countries. Performance: Night of the Legends, Thursday, 16th January, Sea Rocks Dome, Barbados Beach Club 8.pm

RANDY WESTON was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926, didn’t have to travel far to hear the early jazz giants that were to influence him. Though Weston cites Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum, and of course, Duke Ellington as his other piano heroes, it was Monk who had the greatest impact. “He was the most original I ever heard,” Weston remembers. “He played like they must have played in Egypt 5000 years ago.” Randy Weston’s first recording as a leader came in 1954 on Riverside Records Randy Weston plays Cole Porter – Cole Porter in a modern mood It was in the 50′s when Randy Weston played around New York with Cecil Payne and Kenny Dorham that he wrote many of his best loved tunes, “Saucer Eyes,” “Pam’s Waltz,” “Little Niles,” and, “Hi-Fly.” His greatest hit, “Hi-Fly,” Weston (who is 6′ 8″) says, is a “tale of being my height and looking down at the ground. Randy Weston has never failed to make the connections between African and American music. His dedication is due in large part to his father, Frank Edward Weston, who told his son that he was, “an African born in America.” “He told me I had to learn about myself and about him and about my grandparents,” Weston said in an interview, “and the only way to do it was I’d have to go back to the motherland one day.” In the late 60′s, Weston left the country. But instead of moving to Europe like so many of his contemporaries, Weston went to Africa. Though he settled in Morocco, he traveled throughout the continent tasting the musical fruits of other nations. One of his most memorable experiences was the 1977 Nigerian festival, which drew artists from 60 cultures. “At the end,” Weston says, “we all realized that our music was different but the same, because if you take out the African elements of bossa nova, samba, jazz, blues, you have nothing………. To me, it’s Mother Africa’s way of surviving in the new world.” After contributing six decades of musical direction and genius, Randy Weston remains one of the world’s foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary. Encompassing the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa, his global creations musically continue to inform and inspire. “Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest most inventive beat,” states jazz critic Stanley Crouch, “but his art is more than projection and time; it’s the result of a studious and inspired intelligence…an intelligence that is creating a fresh synthesis of African elements with jazz technique”Performance: Night of the Legends, Thursday, 16th January, Sea Rocks Dome, Barbados Beach Club 8.pm

ROY HAYNES has sat at the helm of jazz for more than sixty years. Like his early idol Jo Jones, Haynes’s expressive yet non-technical drumming style makes him a performer’s favorite. He has shared the stage with – to name a few – Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and Chick Corea. His signature snap-crackling snare has graced so many recordings that his discography stands as a kind of self-contained history of modern jazz. Gustavus and Edna Haynes welcomed the third of their four children, Roy Owen, into the world on March 13, 1925, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Gustavus was an employee of Standard Oil and an automobile enthusiast, an interest Roy later developed. Gustavus also played the organ and sang at churches in both his native Barbados and Roxbury. Edna, too, was churchgoing woman who only allowed religious music in the house on Sundays. As with so many twentieth-century American musicians, it was this early exposure to music through the church which laid the groundwork for Roy’s later development as a musician. Haynes assesses his restless persona – “I am constantly practicing in my head. In fact, a teacher in school once sent me to the principal, because I was drumming with my hands on the desk in class. My father used to say I was just nervous. I’m always thinking rhythms, drums. When I was very young I used to practice a lot; not any special thing, but just practice playing. Now I’m like a doctor. When he’s operating on you, he’s practicing. When I go to my gigs, that’s my practice. I may play something that I never heard before or maybe that you never heard before. It’s all a challenge. I deal with sounds. I’m full of rhythm, man. I feel it. I think summer, winter, fall, spring, hot, cold, fast and slow — colors. But I don’t analyze it. I’ve been playing professionally over 50 years, and that’s the way I do it. I always surprise myself. The worst surprise is when I can’t get it to happen. But it usually comes out. I don’t play for a long period, and then I’m like an animal, a lion or tiger locked in its cage, and when I get out I try to restrain myself. I don’t want to overplay. I like the guys to trade, and I just keep it moving, and spread the rhythm, as Coltrane said. Keep it moving, keep it crisp.” Performance: Night of the Legends, Thursday, 16th January, Sea Rocks Dome, Barbados Beach Club 8.pm

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