DEC 31st – First Night Boston 2011 Live Jazz Performance Program at BPC.
First Night 2011 Boston web site: download the full program guide
Where to get admission Tickets and Buttons
12/31 at 7:30 Soul R&B STAPLES SINGER Marva Staples in Symphony Hall concert feature ($35)
12/31 at 7:30, Hynes Auditorium: Roxbury Film Festival presents a short and a long feature film; and
African Dance performers Origination are performing in the venue as well.
Berklee and 89.7 WGBH present the Julian Lage Trio at Berklee on New Year’s Eve
Where: Berklee Performance Center
WHEN: New Year’s Eve, Saturday, December 31
NPR’s Radio to offer it over a worldwide jazz broadcast on Toast of the Nation.
Admission is $18 by purchase of a First Night button. The Julian Lage Trio performs two sets: 7:45 p.m. (NPR broadcast, and on nprmusic.org at 8:00 Eastern), and 9:30 p.m.
Jazz on WGBH host Eric Jackson will be the Boston broadcast’s master of ceremonies. Lage’s performance will be rebroadcast on NPR at 4:00 a.m. Eastern (1 a.m. Pacific) closing the broadcast as they started it off.
Hailed by All About Jazz as “a giant in the making,” 2008 Berklee graduate Julian Lage grew up in California and was the subject of an Academy Award-nominated documentary, Jules at Eight. He gained pivotal early exposure as a protégé of legendary vibraphonist Gary Burton, recording and touring with Burton on three projects: Generations (2004), Next Generation (2005), and Common Ground (2010).
Following his Grammy-nominated 2009 debut Sounding Point, Lage’s latest release is the evocative and finely wrought Gladwell. For New Year’s Toast of the Nation concert broadcast, he will be joined by two of his newest collaborators, the jazz virtuosos Larry Grenadier on bass, and Eric Harland, drums.
Fun, endearingly off-kilter jazz pianist Manami Morita, also a 2008 Berklee grad, performs the first set of the evening at 6:30 p.m. Morita leads a crack trio of fellow Berklee alumni that includes Zak Croxall on bass, and Tom Hartman, drums. Each of the three performances will be seated separately. The Berklee Performance Center is located at 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA. Please call 617-747-2261 for more information.
New Year’s Eve 2011 marks the eighth consecutive year that Berklee, 89.7 WGBH, and NPR have collaborated to kick-off the live holiday special Toast of the Nation. It is the fourth year that First Night Boston has been a partner as well.
Heard on more than 200 NPR affiliate stations, NPR Worldwide, Toast of the Nation begins in Boston and will move across the country, with highlights from the Newport Jazz Festival; a Tribute to Billy Taylor from the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Wynton Marsalis live from Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center; Sing the Truth, with Lizz Wright, Angelique Kidjo, and Dianne Reeves; The Junior Mance Quintet, live from Denver; and the Billy Childs Quartet, live from Los Angeles’ Blue Whale club.
At 1:00 am Pacific time, the Julian Lage Trio performance from Boston will be rebroadcast, closing this year’s broadcast.
For a full schedule of performances, and to find local participating NPR stations, please visit wbgo.org/toast.
The concert can be heard in the Boston area on 89.7 WGBH FM. Toast of the Nation is produced for NPR by WBGO-FM, Newark; WGBH Radio produces the Boston portion of the broadcast.
