Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

Hey everybody,

I hope you are having a wonderful Spring! We are enjoying the open the windows, the fresh air, and the greenery that’s showing up everywhere.

Spring makes me want to spend my time in solitude and simplicity. So I love it when the quiet of a song makes you lean in. When I recorded this song “You Must Believe in Spring” with pianist Takana Miyamoto, I heard Tony Bennett’s version in my head when he sang it with Bill Evans. Simple, elegant, beautiful. Take a listen, let me know what you think.

You Must Believe In Spring (Audio)

I’ve been in a real creative stretch lately, and I’ve learned to respect that space more as I’ve gotten older. Just sitting still long enough to hear something… a melody, a line, an idea. It doesn’t come when you chase it. It shows up when you make room for it and just let it speak to you.

And once it shows up, well… you’ve got to take it out into the world and let it breathe.

So today I’m getting ready for Harlem After Dark at the Hudson River Performing Arts Center’s annual benefit gala. Then next Friday, April 23rd, we bring the show downtown as part of the debut of the Downtown NYC Jazz Festival at The Django. Harlem goes downtown. They’ve got a great line-up I think you’ll want to check out.

As I get ready to take Poetry of Jazz out to California first in Carmel (4/24) and then in San Francisco (4/25 & 26), I stopped by the studio yesterday to record a few of my favorite poems. The audio below is entitled Invictis. This was Nelson Mandela’s favorite poem that helped get him through his long prison sentence.

I also recorded a short song for a Heineken commercial in Amsterdam. They wanted a Sinatra vibe so singing “It Had To Be You” in that style is something right up my alley. The crooners of the 20th century, people like Sinatra, Bennett, Cole, Prysock, Hartman, Crosby, and one of my favorites, Brook Benton have always been my inspiration.

My mother introduced me to the great American Songbook early on. She listened to all those crooners and she even loved country music. I guess that’s what made me more open to all kinds of musical genres. I just heard a quote by Nina Simone “jazz is black people’s classical music” that really resonated with me. She and my mother were both from North Carolina, and she like my mother, wanted to be taken seriously as a “classical” pianist. A black woman in those days didn’t have a shot at the classical schools, but it didn’t stop Nina from becoming one of the most influential black female voices of our century. And my mother, was accepted at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, my mother walked those halls alongside Arthur Mitchell. They were childhood friends. Co-dreamers. She nudged him toward ballet, she said, and the world got the Dance Theatre of Harlem because of it. She went on and had a family and I am lucky for that. So maybe that’s why North Carolina has been on my mind.

That kind of lineage… that kind of quiet influence… it stays with you.

And it circles back.

Another North Carolina thing…This summer, Cross That River rides into the International Black Theatre Festival, four performances in Winston Salem, North Carolina, for two days, Friday, July 31 at 2PM and 8PM and Saturday, August 1 at 2PM and 8PM. Prime slots. The buzz is beginning with cast and crew and we can’t wait to get started on rehearsals. If you’d like to support our show you can do so through our fiscal sponsor for a tax deductible donation: Fractured Atlas. We sure could use your help!

Because none of this happens in isolation.

It happens because you show up. You listen. You believe in the work enough to carry it forward.

In a world that measures value in dollars and loopholes, we’re still out here measuring it in stories, and in songs shared between artist and audience.

And that feels like the better math to me.

Peace,

Allan

TOUR DATES

April 19 - The Chart House gala (HAD)

April 23 - Downtown NYC Jazz Festival, NYC (HAD)
April 24 - Sunset Center, Poetry of Jazz, Carmel, CA

April 25 & 26 - SF Jazz, CA, Poetry of Jazz (Nat’l Poetry Month)

June 22 & 23 - Rochester Jazz Festival, NY
June 26-28 - South Jazz Club, Philadelphia (HAD)

July 3 - 12 - Umbria Jazz Festival, IT (HAD)

July 17-19 - Birdland Jazz Club, NYC (HAD)

July 31 & Aug 1 - Int’l Black Theater Fest., Winston Salem, NC -

Cross That River

Sept 5 - Sonoma Jazz Society, CA (POJ)

Sept 11 - Piedmont Piano, Oakland, CA (POJ)

Oct 17 - Queens Theater, NY (POJ)

Dec 12 - Pinecrest Gardens, FL, (Nat King Cole XMAS)

Dec 21-27 - Half Note Jazz Club, Athens, Greece, (Nat King Cole XMAS)