Requiem For Jazz

Description

"Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement suite composed and arranged by Angel Bat Dawid, inspired in part by dialogues from Edward O. Bland's 1959 film "The Cry of Jazz". The original form of the music was created during the 2019 edition of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago, where Angel led a multigenerational instrumental ensemble of fifteen musicians (all Black musicians from Chicago's creative music community) alongside a four-person choir (with singers from the Black Monument Ensemble), dancers, and visual artists in performance. Angel mixed and post-produced recordings of the performance - adding interludes, additional voices and sounds, as well as transcribing a piece from the film "The Cry of Jazz". The final movement of Requiem for Jazz features Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott from the Sun Ra Arkestra. Their contributions were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia. Sun Ra in Philadelphia at the end of 2020. The physical packaging comes in the form of a luxury gatefold, with notes from South African writer Nombuso Mathibela, an illustration by Damon Locks, and a large fold-out poster designed by Jeremiah Chiu, featuring a poem written by Angel Bat Dawid as a tribute to all her collaborators on the project.