Get set: Amram's NYC birthday show
As a noted musician chalks up another anniversary in an epic life, we share the detailed programme from the celebration
Rock and the Beat Generation has been waxing lyrical recently on the seemingly eternal talents of the composer David Amram – and for that we offer no apologies. We haven’t even mentioned that this truly Beat creative wrote the score for the most famous of Beat Generation movies, 1959’s classic Robert Frank-Alfred Leslie short Pull My Daisy. However, Amram is not one for looking back. Last night in Manhattan he performed his 91st birthday show and we thought readers might get a real sense of the man, his long life, his range and achievement from the highly eclectic set list…
AMRAM JAM: WHERE IT ALL BEGAN – 91st Birthday Celebration
Theater for the New City, 155 1st Ave, NYC (between 9th and 10th Streets)
Sunday night, December 5th, 2021 (between 8 pm and midnight)
PROGRAM
THREE CHAMBER MUSIC COMPOSITIONS by David Amram
I The Wind and the Rain for viola and piano (1959), Consuelo Sherba, viola, Yoshiko Kline, piano
II Prelude, Prayer and Dance for solo viola (2021), Consuelo Sherba, viola
III Greenwich Village Portraits (2014), Ken Radnofsky, alto saxophone, Yoshiko Kline, piano
1) ‘MacDougal Street’ (for Arthur Miller)
2) ‘Bleecker Street’ (for Odetta)
3) ‘Christopher Street’ (for Frank McCourt)
INTERMISSION
FOUR JAZZ CLASSICS
Performed by the David Amram Jazz/Global Roots Quartet
(Kevin Twigg, drums & glockenspiel; Rene Hart, acoustic bass; Adam Amram congas; David Amram, piano, French horn, penny whistles, Lakota courting flute, Chinese hulusi & scat vocals)
IV ‘St Thomas’ (1955) by Sonny Rollins
V ‘Waltz’ for Arthur Miller's After the Fall (1964) by David Amram
VI ‘Blue Monk’ (1954) by Thelonious Monk
VII Theme from Splendor in the Grass (1960) by David Amram
GLOBAL ROOTS
VIII ‘The Fox Hunt’, traditional Irish slip jig
IX ‘Mastinchele Wachipi Olwan’, traditional Lakota Ladies’ Choice round dance song
X ‘L'Mizmor David & Aya Zehn’, a medley of two traditional Middle Eastern songs with Eugene Feygelson violin
SINGER-SONGWRITERS WHOSE WORK ENDURES
XI Two songs composed and performed by Guy Davis
XII ‘Pastures of Plenty’ by Woody Guthrie
XIII ‘When I'm Gone’ by Phil Ochs
NEW SONGS
XIV Original song performed, by Morley Kamen and Chris Bruce
XV Original song, performed by Gabby Sherba & Adam Minkoff
XVI ‘The Old Man and the Mirror’, original song performed by David Amram (NY premiere)
XVII ‘Sidewalks of New York’, A new version created and performed by Richard Barone
JAZZ/POETRY: Alive and Well in NYC 64 years later
XVIII Two short gems from On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac (honoring his upcoming Centennial), narrated by Adira Amram, celebrating Kerouac and Amram's first public jazz /poetry readings ever held in NYC in 1957
XIX ‘Pull My Daisy’, lyrics by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady (1959) with scat improvised lyrics & music by David Amram
GRAND FINALE
XX ‘Irene Goodnight’ by Lead Belly, with the entire cast, surprise guests and audience singalong.
ENCORE
XXI ‘It's a Wonderful World’ by Bob Thiele
David Amram has been described by the Boston Globe as ‘the Renaissance Man of American music’. He has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, written two operas, and many scores for theatre and films. He has collaborated with such notables as Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Sir James Galway, Jack Kerouac, Charles Mingus, Arthur Miller, Odetta, Wynton Marsalis , Pete Seeger, Betty Carter, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Joy Harjo, Elia Kazan, Eugene Ormandy and Tito Puente
Pictured: David Amram on stage at the Theater for the New City’s annual Festival Of the Lower East Side, 2019