Opening Concert, Part 2: Blink, Think & Listen
Crossroads are busy: with flashing traffic lights, they demand heightened awareness, they are an invitation to think, and – in the case of this concert – to listen. Using traditional Tyrolian music as a starting point, the musicians span an international artistic arch. More important than the question of what they play is the question of how they play. The familiar becomes alienated, and through reharmonisation and rhythmic interweaving, illuminated in a new way: the Jazz Feel creates freedom for improvisation and opens up exciting opportunities for new modes of listening.
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MA Franz HACKL
Founder & Artistic Director Outreach Festival & Academy, International Touring Artist, Composer, Brass Instrument Maker; Lecturer, Producer, New York
1985-1987 | Journeyman s Certificate Brass Instrument Maker, Schwaz |
1987-1990 | Diploma, Music Conservatory of the City of Vienna |
1990-1993 | Master of Music, Manhattan School of Music , New York |
2007-2011 | Board of Directors , Manhattan New Music Project, New York |
since 1990 | Freelance Trumpeter, Composer , Clinician, Producer & Lecturer |
since 1993 | Artistic Director Outreach Festival & Academy, Schwaz |
since 2001 | Owner and Managing director of Musikinstrumente Franz Hackl |
since 2014 | Advisory Board Member, Composers Concordance, New York |
Michael WOLFF
Musician, Composer and Actor, New York
A native of New Orleans who grew up in Memphis and San Francisco, Wolff began to study classical piano at the age of eight. He was offered a scholarship to San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, but passed it up to study at U.C.L.A. and U.C. Berkeley. At the age of nineteen, impatient to begin his career, he left college to tour and record with jazz vibist Cal Tjader. After four albums and a world tour with Tjader, Wolff moved to Manhattan to play gigs with such music greats as Cannonball Adderely (and performed on Cannon's final album, "Phoenix"), Sonny Rollins, the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra, Lean-Luc Ponty, and Airto Morelia & Flora Purim. In the late seventies, singer Nancy Wilson hired Wolff as her music director, a position he held for five years, and which enabled him to learn orchestration and to conduct symphony orchestras around the world. During this time, he became good friends with Wilson's opening act, the young comedian Arsenio Hall. When Hall was eventually offered his own talk show in 1989, he chose Wolff to lead the band. The stint on national television was a temporary detour from Wolff's jazz career, but it brought him fame, along with the chance to play and become friends with musical idols such as Miles Davis, to perform at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, and to meet his future wife, Polly Draper, when she was a guest on the show during her "thirtysomething" days. Since "The Arsenio Hall Show" went off the air, Wolff has returned to jazz, and has earned wide acclaim for his albums, "Jumpstart!" (1995) and "2 A.M." (1996). He has just released "Pool of Dreams," a duet album with Alex Foster (the saxophonist who actually played Gregory Hines' music in The Tic Code), and in January, 1998, will release his next album, "Portraiture: The Blues Period" on the Fuel 2000/Varese Seaband label. |