Passion for Bach & Coltrane with Imani Winds and Harlem Quartet

Full title: Passion for Bach & Coltrane with Imani Winds; Harlem Quartet; Alex Brown-Edward Perez-Neal Smith; & A.B. Spellman, Poet and Orator

Imani Winds & Harlem Quartet have built parallel legacies around their virtuoso musicality as well as expanding the canon of great works through their commitments to commissioning, composing, and arranging— particularly by African-American and Latinx composers — for their ensembles and former and founding hornist of Imani Winds, Jeff Scott, composed Passion for Bach and Coltrane, a concert-length oratorio, for Imani Winds; the Harlem Quartet; a jazz piano trio featuring Alex Brown, piano, Edward Perez, bass and Neal Smith, drums; and jazz historian, poet and retired National Endowment for the Arts Deputy chairman A.B. Spellman.

The group has performed the Passion many times together since 2015, and, in 2023, they released their album, Passion for Bach and Coltrane, which won the 2024 Grammy Award for Classical Compendium. Synthesizing classical and jazz styles, the work is inspired by and features Spellman’s poetry and interweaves orated poems with music in a manner inspired by J.S. Bach’s Passion settings. Scott selected one masterwork by each composer — Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme — and used each as source material to construct a mosaic tapestry around the drama and imagery in Spellman’s text. “Pensive, ethereal moments are punctuated by Bach, while the tone for moody, dark passages is set by Coltrane’s work” creating a piece that is “powerfully forward looking” (San Francisco Classical Voice), an enduring testament to the potential of musical creativity, and “a piece of astonishing originality.” As Toyin Spellman-Diaz, Imani Winds oboist and A.B Spellman’s daughter, notes, “Every time we have performed this has been such a healing experience, almost transcendental. I believe this is partially because of the sacredness of the piece, but not necessarily because of its religious material. When music is made with true collaboration, fearlessness, and love, it can elevate those who experience it to a higher realm.”

In addition to poet and narrator, A.B. Spellman the evening features Imani Winds with Brandon Patrick George, flute and piccolo; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mark Dover, clarinet; Kevin Newton; horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon; the Harlem Quartet with Ilmar Gavilán, violin; Melissa White, violin; Jaime Amador, viola; and Felix Umansky, cello. And the accompanying jazz trio is comprised of Alex Brown, piano, Edward Perez, bass and Neal Smith, drums.