FULL PROGRAM:
Classical composer, conductor, jazz and world music pioneer, improvising multi-instrumentalist, author and raconteur David Amram hosts an evening celebrating his 59 years in the Village, with the World Premiere of “Greenwich Village Portraits,” dedicated to the memories of his friends playwright Arthur Miller, singer Odetta and author Frank McCourt, all of whom he first met in the Village.
 
For the first half of the evening, in addition to “Greenwich Village Portraits,” classical virtuoso saxophonist Ken Radnofsky, who has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony, will also perform excerpts from Amram’s saxophone concerto homage to another old friend, Ode to Lord Buckley, in addition to other chamber works, all composed during the years Amram lived on 6th Ave and 11th Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. The first half of this evening will also celebrate the release of the new CD of Amram’s classical compositions for saxophone, “Ode to Lord Buckley” performed by Ken Radnofsky, and released by Newport Classic Ltd Recordings and Films.
 
The second half of the evening will celebrate Amram’s collaborations with Village musical icons, since his seminal performances in 1955 with Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Oscar Pettiford.
 
Amram’s quartet will be joined by surprise guests from the worlds of jazz, Latin, Native American, Middle Eastern and global folk music, in addition to a reading from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road with music, celebrating Amram’s collaborations with Kerouac in New York City’s first-ever jazz-poetry readings, pioneered by Kerouac and Amram in the Village in 1957.
 
During the evening’s festivities, Amram will also be inviting some outstanding new young artists of today to join him in a tribute to the Village of the past and present, and a salute to its future.
 
In a recent interview, Amram noted, “I hope that the evening Greenwich Village Portraits” will create the same joyous feeling to everyone who will come and share what I felt when I first visited the Village as a teen-ager during World War ll. When I saw the artists on the street as well as in the coffee houses, sketching portraits while having incredible conversations with their customers and all the passers-by, heard music being played everywhere and was made dizzy by the intoxicating aroma of food being cooked, I knew I wanted this place to be my home someday….and a few years later, in the Fall of 1955, I moved to the Village.”
 
Amram muses, “Wherever I may be in my world travels and tours, in my heart and mind Greenwich Village is still my home and always will be. The evening at Le Poisson Rouge on February 16, with the World Premiere of my new formal composition, in addition to all the spontaneous one-time only collaborations for the second half of the evening, will be a valentine and thank you note to this special place and a shout out to all the great people I have met and continue to meet every day that I am here.”