Just an early heads-up about this year's Vision Festival. If you've never been, it's kind of like Coachella for the Destination: Out set. Except with significantly less camping.
It runs June 19-24 at the beautiful Angel Orensanz Center, a former synagogue turned arts space on the Lower East Side. (It's a big space and the sound there can get a bit washy, so be sure to get there early so you can get up close.) Every year, the festival bestows a lifetime recognition award on an overlooked master -- this year, it goes to trumpeter Bill Dixon. I'm not all that familiar with Dixon's music, but Taylor Ho Bynum has a superb post talking about how much Bill Dixon's music has influenced his own -- he puts Dixon's album November 1981 right up there with In a Silent Way, A Love Supreme, The Rite of Spring, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Too Much Sugar for a Dime, Braxton’s Willisau Quartet, The Far East Suite, and Sign ‘O’ The Times. Dixon is premiering new works with the 17-piece Sound Vision Orchestra, which includes Bynum on cornet. I hope he will blog about the experience of putting this music together.
Other Vision Fest highlights include a 50-violin tribute to the late Leroy Jenkins (that's "Leroy Jenkins," not "Leeroy Jenkins"), premieres by Roy Campbell, Nicole Mitchell, and festival founder William Parker, and sets by Fieldwork, Marc Ribot, Marilyn Crispell, Tim Berne, Matthew Shipp, Fred Anderson, Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone, Myra Melford, Corey Wilkes, and Hamid Drake. There's even a poetry-plus-music project headlined by none other than Amiri Baraka. (I'm sure Stanley Crouch will be on hand to check that out.)
The full Vision Festival lineup can be found here. I'm going to the opening night on Tuesday and the Bill Dixon tribute on Wednesday (and might possibly be back for another night if I can find the time), and I'll be posting photos and a review here. Somebody asked me if I was going to follow up my Bang on a Can Marathon coverage by liveblogging the entire 6-day Vision Festival. This person either has an excellent sense of humor or is trying to kill me.
My photos from last year's Vision Fest are here.
Color me jealous. I was hoping to make it out for the weekend set of Vision Fest shows but unless airfares plummet in the next couple weeks it ain't happening. Guess I'll have to live vicariously through you and other reviewsers...
Posted by: Dan | 07 June 2007 at 07:23 PM