[NewMusic] RIP: Leroy Jenkins

[Phillip Greenlief]

-----Original Message-----
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] RIP: Leroy Jenkins

Among other things, I recall seeing a great set with Leroy Jenkins, 
Joseph Jarman and Myra Melford at Yoshi's in late 1999. He will be 
missed.

<http://omnitone.com/equalinterest/index.htm>

MZ

PG:

Here is another, more detailed bio on Jenkins, if anyone is interested:

LEROY JENKINS
March 11, 1932 - February 24, 2007

Narrative biography, February 26, 2007

Leroy Jenkins is renowned as a virtuoso violinist and for his
compositions and operas which are an extraordinary bonding of a variety
of sounds associated with the African American music tradition and
European styles. 

Throughout his long career, Jenkins never stopped experimenting. At
Harvestworks Digital Art Center where he was Artist in Residence in
2005, he and Mary Griffin developed an interactive music/video
instrument which allows Jenkins, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, and the other
musicians in Coincidents to manipulate multiple video tapes with their
acoustic instruments and voices. Most recently, he assembled a world
music improvisatory group - Jin Hi Kim (Komungo) Korea, Rmesh Misra
(Sarangi) India, Yacorba Sissoko (Kora) Africa, Leroy Jenkins (Violin)
USA. A recording of the group, made at an AACM concert will be released
shortly.

In the last fifteen years, Jenkins has turned his attention to
music/theater pieces: Fresh Faust, a rap opera was presented in workshop
at the Institute of Creative Arts in Boston. The Negro Burial Ground, a
cantata, was presented in workshop at the Kitchen Center in New York. A
later work, The Three Willies, an operatic collaboration with Homer
Jackson was presented at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia (1996), and
at the Kitchen, NYC (2001). Coincidents an opera, with librettist Mary
Griffin will receive its premiere in June at Roulette. Jenkins is
developing two new operas: Bronzeville, a history of South Side Chicago
in the 20s through 50s with Mary Griffin, and Minor Triad, a musical
drama with composer/librettist, Carmen Moore. 

Leroy Jenkins was born on March 11, 1932 and began his violin training
as a child, studying with Professor O. W. Frederick at the Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Chicago. He studied clarinet, saxophone and bassoon
under the direction of legendary Captain Walter Dyett at Du Sable High
School in Chicago, and received a music scholarship to study classical
violin with Bruce Hayden at Florida A&M University. He received a B.S.
in Music Education in 1961. Immediately following graduation, he taught
music in Alabama schools, and then in Chicago.  

Classically trained, Jenkins was also influenced by the great jazz
masters, and played saxophone and clarinet in a number of jazz
ensembles, but his passion, from the age of eight, was the violin, and
he found a way to meld his classical technique and his love of jazz when
he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a
pivotal Chicago organization which originated a vibrant new form of
creative improvised music. Moving to Paris in 1969, Jenkins toured
Europe with his first group: The Creative Construction Company of
Chicago, with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. In  1970, he came to New
York and formed another cooperative, The Revolutionary Ensemble, a trio
of bass, (Sirone) violin, and drums (Jerome Cooper), which toured
internationally to critical acclaim, and went on to record five albums.
He also developed his solo compositions and premiered his first works in
this format at a concert at the Washington Square Peace Church in
Greenwich Village. 

In the '70s and '80s Jenkins received major support for music
composition with many grants and commissions for chamber ensemble,
orchestra, dance, and theater. During this period, in addition to
touring as a soloist and with various instrumental groups under his
leadership, his music was performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the
Albany Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Kronos Quartet, the
Dessoff Choirs, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and the New Music
Consort, among others. 

In 1989 Jenkins was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for the Munich
Bienale New Music Theater Festival to write the opera/ballet, Mother Of
Three Sons, choreographed and directed by Bill T. Jones. It premiered in
Munich and was later staged by the New York City Opera, the Houston
Opera, and was broadcast on German television. He received a Bessie (New
York Dance and Performance Award) "for the lyrical, intricately
constructed river of jazz and opera". 

In 1998, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony performed and recorded
Wonderlust, a work for chamber orchestra and two soloists and in the
last six years Jenkins has performed at numerous festivals and venues
here and in Europe including the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco,
California Institute for the Arts, the Contemporary Museum in New
Orleans, the Chicago Jazz Festival, as well as international jazz
festivals in Portugal, Sardinia, and Canada. Other recent projects have
been a commissioned piece for tenor, baritone, and brass quartet which
was performed at Merlin Hall as part of the World Music series in New
York, in San Francisco and at North Florida State University.

His most recent touring group - Equal Interest, a trio with violin,
(Jenkins), piano, (Myra Melford), and woodwinds (Joseph Jarman) - was
formed  in 1999. The British Arts Council commissioned its members to
write pieces for a group of nine British musicians, and Equal Interest
performed with these musicians on a ten-city tour of England. 

Jenkins held residencies and guest professorships at many American
universities including Oberlin, Bennington, Harvard, Brown, University
of Michigan, Williams, California Institute of the Arts, Bard College,
and Duke.  He was guest composer/ master teacher/performer at the Della
Rosa of Portland, Tom Buckner's Interpretations series in New York, the
American Composers series at the Kennedy Center, the Atlantic Center for
the Arts, the Atlanta Virtuoso, and the First American Violin Congress
at the invitation of Sir Yehudi Menuhin.

He received numerous commissions and awards - from the National
Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York
State Council for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation's Multi Arts
Production Fund among others, and was awarded a 2003 composition grant
from the Fromm Foundation for Coincidents. In 2004 he received a
Guggenheim Fellowship.

Jenkins also collaborated with dancer Felicia Norton and was
commissioned by Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Series for collaborations
with choreographers Molissa Fenley and Mark Dendy. 

Jenkins served on the Board of Directors of Meet the Composer in New
York and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and as Artistic Director and
Board Member of Composers' Forum. He has sat on many panels for music
including the National Endowment, the Herb Alpert Foundation, The Bush
Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and New York Foundation for the
Arts, and the New York State Council for the Arts. He placed numerous
times in critics' and readers' polls in Downbeat and Jazz Magazine. 

In groupings from solo to chamber orchestras, Jenkins has recorded 25
albums/ CD's, nine of which have been reissued. Recent recordings
include: Solo, a suite for solo violin and viola, Lovely Music (1999),
Equal Interest, Omnitone (2000), The Revolutionary Ensemble, Mutable
Music (2004), And Now, The Revolutionary Ensemble, Pi Recordings (2004),
and The Art of Improvisation, Mutable Music (2006).