Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, The Langston Hughes Project
"Live" at the Huntington Library Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 7:00p.m.

Featuring the Ron McCurdy Quartet

The concert will feature the Ron McCurdy Quintet with Eli Bruggemann,
piano, Peter Buck, drums, Gabe Noel, bass, Munyungo, percussion and
Ron McCurdy, trumpet and spoken word.

For ticket information contact: The Huntington: http://www.huntington.org/
Call: (626) 405-2100 Address: 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108

This multimedia presentation consists of spoken word, videography, and
jazz quintet is Langston Hughes’ commentary on the struggle for freedom and
equality of African Americans and Africans during the 1960s. By way of
videography, this concert performance links the words and music of Hughes’
poetry to topical images of Ask Your Mama's people, places, and events, and
to the works of the visual artists. Langston Hughes admired or collaborated
with most closely over the course of his career -- the African-inspired mural designs and cubist
> geometries of Aaron Douglas, the blues and jazz-inspired collages of
> Romare Bearden, t he macabre grotesques of Meta Warrick Fuller and
> the rhythmic sculptural figurines and heads and bas reliefs of
> Richmond Barthe, the color blocked cityscapes and black history series
> of Palmer Hayden and Jacob Lawrence. Together the words, sounds, and
> images recreate a magical moment in our cultural history, which
> bridges the Harlem Renaissance, the post World War II Beat writers'
> coffeehouse jazz poetry world, and the looming Black Arts performance
> explosion of the 1960s.