PRESS RELEASE – If the purpose of Creole Heritage Month is to celebrate creativity, then it is not surprising that the School of Music and Labowi Promotions have included two Creole Jazz concerts in this month’s calendar.
With musicians like Luther Francois, Emerson Nurse, Ronald Boo Hinkson, Ricardo Francois or Augustin “Djab” Duplessis, Saint Lucia has made a huge contribution to the creation of a genre of music recognised as “Creole Jazz”.
It is jazz music, rooted in the culture of the islands, influenced by all the traditional genres of music of the Caribbean. With support from Alliance Française and Bank of Saint Lucia, and in collaboration with the Laborie Development Foundation, there will be two Creole Jazz concerts.
The first takes places today, Thursday 22 October at 7:30pm at the Laborie Parish Hall, as a production of Jazz in the South. At this concert, there will be performances by theJocelyn Ménard Quartet from Guadeloupe and Alibi from Saint Lucia.
Admission is EC$ 25, and EC$ 10 for students.
Jocelyn Ménard is a francophone Canadian who has made Guadeloupe his home and who has created a unique blend of Caribbean rhythms and harmonies, mixed with the specific sound of North American bop and blues.
Alibi is a quartet comprising four of Saint Lucia’s most accomplished musicians (Zack Popo, Teddyson John, Francis John and Richard Payne) who will offer their own arrangements to well known hits (particularly Caribbean popular music) in the language of modern Jazz fusion.
The second concert takes place on Friday 23 October at the MusicBox, located at the Golden Palm Event Centre in Rodney Heights.
It begins at 7:30 sharp, and admission is EC$ 50.
At the MusicBox, the Saint Lucia School of Music offers a series of concerts of very high quality in various genres of music, and this concert will be no exception, as it will feature the Jocelyn Ménard quartet and a piano solo performance by Richard Payne.
Richard Payne is an accomplished Saint Lucian pianist and composer with over twenty years experience as an actively performing musician.
A co-founder of Bluemangó (a regional Caribbean Jazz sextet) and bandleader of additional groups,he has performed extensively on festival stages in the United States, South America, Europe and across the Caribbean and has opened for a variety of renowned artistes including John Legend, Richard Bona, Hugh Masekela, Monty Alexander, Mario Canonge, Sheila E and CheikTidianeSeck among others.