| |
Arts
For Art Press Quotes
...the level of musicianship and commitment was consistently high.
The festival was obviously programmed with an ear toward diversity,
large and small aggregates juxtaposed for contrast. The approach allowed
fresh context for each successive performance, unifying the festival’s
components for a week of exceptional, revelatory music.
— Marc Medwin, AAJ (081207) |
|
...the
Vision Festival is unlike any other festival on the planet...
— John Sharpe, AAJ (082805)
It differs from other jazz festivals in its inclusivity, representing
a wide artistic community and customarily featuring dance and art
alongside the musical performances. The festival has a great vibe,
bringing together aficionados from all over North America, and, like
me, from the UK and further afield, in a friendly weeklong celebration
of avant-garde jazz. Where else can you mingle with your heroes, possibly
even buy your evening meal from the great William Parker?
— John Sharpe, AAJ (111106)
No single event in the past decade has done more for New York free
jazz than the annual Vision Festival.
Besides raising the profile of musicians who’ve been marginalized
by the mainstream media, the artist-run event has provided a forum
for allied artists in various media in which to explore the common
political-aesthetic-spiritual underpinnings of their art directly
with their audience.
— Ed Hazell, Boston Phoenix (120205)
...arguably the most important free-jazz fest
in the U.S. ...
— Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader (080307)
“The Vision Festival is New York's most happening jazz festival
by miles: in fact some of the music is so happening that it takes
aim at that old-hat term jazz festival, and blows it out (of) the
water.”
Philip Clark - Jazz Review (08/0906) For
New Yorkers who have learned to love modern free jazz, the Vision
Festival may be the best kind of one-stop shopping.
— Aaron Steinberg, JazzTimes (Dec. 2003)
“The Vision Festival has reached the point
where it promises its most ambitious, far-reaching slate of performers
yet.” Gene Seymour, Newsday - (061206)
“As world priorities go, free jazz ranks right up there with
peaceful coexistence these days, but this festival remains committed
to both.”
— New Yorker June 2005
...the Vision fest is affordable like church, with comparable spiritual
uplift.
— Howard Mandel, NY Press (060705)
The VISION FESTIVAL trumpets the finest lineup of jazz musicians each
year, the shared esthetic a genius exploration into the new territories
of sound. Creative and adventurous, this event hosts the crowned improvisers
of our time, each drawing from their own pool of inspiration, whether
it be African, Middle Eastern or Asian rhythms, classical music or
old-school bebop. Over the years, it has become a community, a shared
space, an occurrence that gathers connoisseurs of the music, those
who believe that the possibilities of artistic creativity are boundless,
empowering and beautiful.
— Steve Psyllos, NY Press (052204)
Avant-garde jazz culture has no better colloquy in this country than
the Vision Festival...
— Nate Chinen, NY Times (061507)
...the Vision Festival has evolved into an impressively vibrant and
well-organized affair.
— Nate Chinen, NY Times (061706)
...a smorgasbord of avant-garde improvised music...
— Nate Chinen, NY Times (061906)
The Vision Festival, a vibrant grass-roots endeavor that marked its
10th season in June, has long been a
gravitational center for jazz's far-flung avant-garde. Its focus is
social and political as well as aesthetic -- a reflection of the guiding
principles of its director, Patricia Nicholson, whose husband, William
Parker, is the scene's most prominent bassist.
— Nate Chinen, NY Times (091605)
The energetic expressiveness of free-playing transformed older jazz
traditions, world music and modernist classical explorations. Layers
of sound and meaning accrued, creating an atmosphere thick with debate
and excitement.
— Ann Powers, NY Times (060601)
...an omnium-gatherum of musicians from the aesthetic
outskirts of jazz as well as poets, dancers and visual artists...the
festival has become a weeklong social hub for a certain kind of jazz-centric,
post-hippie, Lower East Side culture. It has also become something
like the un-JVC jazz festival.
— Ben Ratliff, NY Times (052004)
It's an annual bonanza of jazz that split apart from the mainstream
more than 40 years ago, developing its own traditions, language, innovations
and clichés.
— Ben Ratliff, NY Times (052004)
The Vision Festival, New York's annual mixed-media display of jazz's
bohemian tendencies, is a model of a self-sustaining subcultural event
that draws consistent crowds...The festival draws a post-collegiate
to late-middle-aged crowd and has its aesthetic roots in art movements
of the 1960's and 70's.
— Ben Ratliff, NY Times (053000)
The festival gives a picture of the free-jazz scene as a family, not
as individual bandleaders looking out for themselves...
— Ben Ratliff, NY Times (061805)
The Vision Festival, now in its 12th year, is proof of this scene’s
vitality and loyalty.
— Ben Sisario, NY Times (051307)
This avant-jazz summit always delivers...
— Time Out New York (052506)
The scene gets its grandest public forum at the annual Vision Festival,
the summer event that Parker and his wife, dancer Patricia Nicholson,
cofounded just over a decade ago. Although recent editions have expanded
to include various performers from the alternative-rock and new-music
worlds, the festival’s who’s who of kinetic jazzers—from
visiting Chicago tenor veteran Fred Anderson to local piano power
Matthew Shipp—often includes Parker’s staunchest collaborators;
his luminously brash ensembles, like the Little Huey Creative Music
Orchestra and the soulful quartets Other Dimensions in Music and O’Neal’s
Porch, have reinforced the bassist’s centrality here and abroad.
— K. Leander Williams, Time Out New York (032306)
...as fine and focused a celebration
of free-jazz improvisation as we have and an event full of heroic
hookups that regularly transcended limitation.
— Larry Blumenfeld, Village Voice (072705)
...the most exciting, adventurous music
gathering that New York has to offer is this one. It's a bellwether
of where modern jazz is going, a history lesson gathering old masters
with young bucks, and an experimental lab where new concepts are worked
out.
— Jason Gross, Village Voice (052103)
Central to the creativity, energy and following
of the Vision Festival are...a core group of Lower East Siders who
fiercely maintain the principle of art, grassroots and community.
— Al Orensanz - The Villager 2005 |
|
