Join us downtown Friday, February 17 from 5:00-7:00pm for an exhibition reception that features the performance of a new experimental jazz composition by Jerry Tabor.

Free refreshments and a cash bar will be available, this event is open to the public and anyone who wishes to attend.

More info regarding Scaffolding, an experimental performance bringing Brooke Rogers's art to life:

Scaffolding (for front line [open], piano, bass, drums, 2023)

By Jerry Tabor (b. 1966)

A hallmark of Jerry Tabor’s experimental compositions, even his computer and crossover music, is a high-resolution foundational structure (deep structure) upon which variable sonic and behavioral interpretations emerge. Jerry has come to consider himself a jazz composer:  just as traditional expressions of jazz have a primary melody and repetitive chord progression that musicians improvise on with endless variety, his music’s deep structures repeat while reflective surface music presents various interpretations of the deep structures. An emerging characteristic of Jerry’s music also builds into the deep structure various possible pathways for a composition to unfold as musicians listen to and interact with each other and their own performance. Some of his composition research is based in methods of building ensemble interaction directly into the deep structure.

Scaffolding is an experiment that involves all these traits. There is a primary melodic idea that repeats in various ways throughout the composition. But under that melody, harmonies are continuously reinterpreted to create new improvisational contexts, each of which is made more and more tangible showing how different the melody sounds in these different contexts. Further, the tempo and feel of the music is almost entirely based on new interpretations of the combined ensemble interactions. Thus, every performance of the composition is entirely unique and will never be repeated. 

The process of constructing a background structure with an improvised or intuitively created surface is where Jerry finds an exciting connection with Brooke’s work. Both artists seem to work in the same way. The difference, and perhaps where their creative connectivity is most vivid and dynamic, is that Jerry’s process plays out over time during each performance—exposing each underlayer before more and more layers are added, and Brooke’s layers  are perceived simultaneously in a static, fixed product. It is as if Jerry’s music demonstrates Brooke’s process as it unfolds over time.

The premiere performance of Scaffolding was made possible by a grant from the Fulton School of Liberal Arts and an ensemble of talented musicians from the Mid-Atlantic region, who have international reputations for their improvisational styles:

Tim Stanley, trumpet

Pat Shook, tenor sax

Savino Palumbo, piano

Amy Shook, bass

Frank Russo, drums