MIT's Festival Jazz Ensemble (FJE) will flex its musical muscles in "Flexology," an evening of diverse music for small and large jazz ensembles on Friday, Nov. 18, at 8 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.
The program will feature "Flex" (2000), a piece by MIT lecturer and guest conductor Mark Harvey that blends complex structural design with improvisation.
The title refers in part to the flexible nature of the piece itself, which is never performed the same way twice, Harvey said. It also refers to the conductor's flexibility in making choices, the flexibility demanded of the players -- who must be conversant with many styles and open to many musical possibilities -- and to what Harvey calls a "kind of post-modern consciousness."
FJE will also perform Harvey's "De-Evolution Blues," a new work recently premiered by Harvey's own Boston-based Aardvark Jazz Orchestra; Duke Ellington's "The Shepherd," with Harvey on trumpet; as well as Ellington's "Oclupaca"; Magali Souriau's "Petite Promenade"; Charles Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song"; and two nonets by Tad Dameron.
Admission costs $5 at the door. For more information, call x3-2826.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 16, 2005 (download PDF).
