The Jazz Foundation of West TN
Presents
Let Freedom Swing: A Tribute to the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Raised in Memphis, Joe Restivo got his start playing with punk bands at the Antenna Club as a pre-teen. By the end of high school, Restivo was running down to Beale Street watching blues and jazz musicians such as his formative influence, Calvin Newborn. Before long, Restivo was playing on Beale, gigging with the likes of Charlie Wood and Mose Vinson. "I came up playing music in a very organic way. Like a lot of people in town, I started doing it in a garage band. The you get to a popint where your're interested in rock and R&B," Restivo said during a 2019 interview with the Commercial Appeal. "Then I got interest in another style of music, jazz, that involves a certain harmonic and rhythmic complexity. So, you have to seek out training, whether its a high school jazz band or finding a mentoir. There's no real path to this stuff. I didn't grow up in a musical familyh per se, so I was kind of clueless. At a certain point I figured, 'I guess I'll go to school for this.'" After a short stint at the University of Memphis, Restivo moved to New York City to attend the New School, where he got a degree in performance. In New York, he was mentored by a host of jazz greats: Cannonball Adderley, pianist Junior Mance, Count Basie Band trombonist Benny Powell and guitarist Jack Wilkins. In 2005, after a few years in NYC, Restivo returned to Memphis.
A native of Memphis, Patrice Williamson is a scintillating, soulful singer who swings hard and can scat with tthe best of tem. She's rightly been compared to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan in publications such as thpe Los Angeles Times and the All-Music Guide to Jazz. A favorite of the Bost music scene, Patrice's sensitive ballad work and fluent scat style have garnered invitations to perform most recently with Danilo Perez, Joe Lovano and Terri Lynne Carrington for the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. As an Associate Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music, her work has taken her to Perugia, Italy, Seoul, South Korea and India, where she performed with saxophonist Donald Harrison in the New Delhi Jazz Festival. In 2014, she started the Ella Project, a multi-faceted tribut leading up to Ella Fitzgerald's 100 birthday, including a concert series, a biographical performance and recordings, including the recently releases Comes LOve, an album celebrating the collaboration between Fitzgerald and legendayr guitarist Joe Pass. Patrice received both her Master's degree and an Artist Diploma from the famed New England Conservatory of Music. In addition to perfroming, Patrice is actively passing on her knowledge and love of the jazz tradition through teaching, ensuring that new generations w2ill have an appreciation for this great American music.
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