Wednesday November 15 * 7pm * TICKETS
Transparent Productions presents Caroline Davis' Alula
Caroline Davis - alto sax, voice, electronics
Noah Garabedian - electric bass
Eliza Salem - drums
Caroline Davis created the band, Alula, to absorb electronic components into her performances and compositions. The word “Alula” is a word for a magical structure on bird wings that appears during moments of take off, flight, and landing. Using this word to describe the project imagined her electronic work to be a hidden, yet essential component of her musical identity. Of the band’s first release, The New York Times stated, "you can hear Ms. Davis's talent for deriving long, dizzying motifs from smaller melodic cells." Alula’s second album, Captivity, situates her electro-free compositions alongside the lives of eight heroes who kept hope alive through incarceration. The jazz community has been incredibly responsible for major contributions to social justice and for doing civil rights work even before certain movements were created. Through coded lyrics by blues singers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, to Nina Simone’s impactful lyrics in Mississippi Goddam and Young, Gifted, and Black, inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s words, to Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, to Terri Lyne Carrington’s recent gathering, Music for Abolition; jazz and creative musicians have always been present, creating artistic works to protest injustices and speak truth to power. Davis’ album stands on the shoulders of these influences, providing creative insight on the injustices present in the system of incarceration in America, and highlights the undeniable strength of those who have been, and some who are still, incarcerated.
“Like all her prior works, you don’t have to be a book nerd to appreciate her music, and that holds true even more than ever with Alula, which might very well be her most ambitious project yet even as it’s also structurally her most spare.” (Something Else!)
“The latest project from Davis…is Alula, her most formally innovative group yet.” (New York Times)
Alula live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYtTqcx1VA8,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoygqLh0o20,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7TF4nKiikY
Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer, saxophonist, and artivist Caroline Davis’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to her shifting environment as a child. As a leader, she has released seven albums: Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), Portals (2021), Alula: Captivity (2023). She won Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll Rising Star Alto-Saxophonist (2018) and was prasied in Downbeat’s Readers Poll (2021). Her work has garnered much praise from NPR, The New York Times, The Wire, DownBeat, JazzTimes, and many international publications.
Davis is active as both a side-person and a leader in a diverse set of music communities (jazz, improvised music, modern classical, R&B, folk). Davis has worked with Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, and Billy Kaye, to name a few. Her collaborations include My Tree (with Ben Hoffmann) and Persona (with Rob Clearfield).
Awards and recognitions over the years have placed Caroline in various mentorship communities: IAJE’s Sisters in Jazz (2006), the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program (2011), and Jen Shyu/Sara Serpa’s Mutual Mentorship Program (2020). Davis was the recipient of CMA's Performance Plus Grant (2021), NYFA's City Artist Corps Grant (2021), Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019-2020); and she has participated in several residency programs, including fellow-in-residence at The Jazz Gallery (2022) and composer-in-residence at MacDowell (2019). Her compositional practice integrates music with the cognitive sciences, anatomical structures, and the brain, influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition. Davis is an advocate for social justice in the realm of gender (Jazz & Gender at The New School and This Is a Movement) as well as in the abolitionist movement (Justice for Keith Lamar).
As an educator, Caroline brings her unique knowledge of music and psychology to her teaching. She has been on the faculty at Litchfield Jazz Camp for 15 years, Stanford Jazz Institute for 6 years, and an educator at The New School, Northwestern University, Harvard University, DePaul University, Columbia College, University of Texas at Arlington, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.