Program
8:00 PM
Phantom Station
Brandon Ross - electric guitar
Hardedge - soundesign
Mauro Refosco - percussion
Stomu Takeishi - electric bass
9:15 PM
Rob Reddy's "Where's Marilyn?"
Rob Reddy - saxophones
Charlie Burnham - violin, viola, mandola
Curtis Fowlkes - trombone
Marvin Sewell - guitars
Ron Caswell - tuba
JT Lewis - drums
"Where's Marilyn?" is a musical and visual portrait of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center, a former state-run institution on Long Island that operated from 1885 until 1996. As the hub of the composer's hometown, it shaped many generations of Kings Park residents.
Reddy was born and raised in Kings Park. His mother worked as a nurse in the hospital for over twenty years, and he and his five older siblings regularly interacted with patients who would often come into the Reddy family-run deli in the center of town. (This was most common in the early to mid 1970s when rules about patient movement on and off hospital grounds were more liberal than in later periods.) One specific encounter Reddy had with a patient always stood out in his memory. One summer afternoon in 1974, Reddy, eight years old at the time, was playing the piano in his family home when a patient, partially clothed, burst into the house crying out, "Where's Marilyn? Where's Marilyn?" The clarity of the event and the impact it made on the young Reddy is what inspired this project. This project is essentially about memory. While it takes as its starting point this event from Reddy's childhood, it spans out to something much more. It shows not only how memories conflict—how different people record events in all sorts of ways—but also how those memories together are what really make up the fabric of a town, a community.
Brandon Ross - Phantom Station - Brandon Ross has crafted a personal approach to guitar, and improvisation, that has taken him all over the world, figuratively and literally. On this special night he will play taisho harp, acoustic guitar and soprano guitar. Mauro Refosco joins on percussion, Stomu Takeishi on electric bass and Hardedge on "soundesign."
Brandon has worked/recorded with Cassandra Wilson, Henry Threadgill, Jewel, Tony Williams, Arto Lindsay, The Lounge Lizards, Leroy Jenkins, Butch Morris, Bill Frisell, Me'Shell N'degeocello, Moreno Veloso, Arrested Development, Craig Harris, Archie Shepp, Fred Hopkins, Joan Osborne, Muhal Richard Abrams, Deidre Murray, Mino Cinelu, Don Byron, Graham Haynes, Lizz Wright, Timothy Hill, Myra Melford, Ron Miles, Oliver Lake, Sekou Sundiata, Bill Laswell, Zeena Parkins, Michelle Branch, Wadada Leo Smith, and many others.