Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber’s “Porgy & Bess The AstroBlack Trapfish Row Variations”

January 30, 2020 nycfreeconcerts_4nf0ji David Rubenstein Atrium, Latin, Lincoln Center 0

Join Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber for the U.S. premiere of Porgy & Bess The AstroBlack Trapfish Row Variations–their “caramelization” of Gershwin’s gully but melancholic masterpiece. With overt nods to Miles Davis and Gil Evans’s brassy and melodious 1966 distillation of Porgy & Bess, Burnt Sugar’s varied arrangers and conductors turn a dub wise, samba-licious, and ska-inflected ear towards the twerk-inducing cadences of latter-day Southern hip-hop and the cosmic jungle music of 1970s Miles Davis. Founded by Village Voice icon Greg Tate and co-led with Dayton, Ohio monster bassist Jared Michael Nickerson since 1999, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber is a sprawling band of musicians whose prodigious personnel allows them to freely juggle a wide swath of the experimental soul-jazz-hip hop spectrum. Rolling Stone calls them “a multiracial jam army that freestyles with cool telekinesis between the lustrous menace of Miles Davis’s On the Corner, the slash-and-om of 1970s King Crimson, and Jimi Hendrix’s moonwalk across side three of Electric Ladyland.”