‘Jazz Music and Social Change: A Conversation & Concert’ Set for April 3

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Toshi Reagon
Toshi Reagon

The Valley Jazz Network (VJN) presents “Jazz Music and Social Change: A Conversation & Concert” featuring Toshi Reagon, Christian Scott and Helen Sung on Tuesday, April 3 from 7-10 p.m. in the Old Chapel Great Hall.

Conversation begins at 7 with performances to follow at 8:30.

Admission is free but tickets are required. Tickets available in person at the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center Box Office; online at finearscenter.com and by phone at 413-545-2511 or 888-999-UMAS.

Through their work, musicians often focus or dedicate their talent on giving voice to civil rights and social change, strengthening the breadth and depth of social activism. This event creates a public platform for sharing and understanding how some artists use their talent to forward social issues and contribute a positive impact on society.

Toshi Reagon has performed and worked with many artists in every genre – blues, rock, R&B, country, folk and jazz, and is well-known for her work with her mom, Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Her most recent project is an adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.”

Christian Scott’s musical selections are inspired by his experience with human rights, community-building and music in his native New Orleans. Christian is the nephew of famed saxophonist Donald Harrison, and is a big chief in the Mardi Gras Black Indian tradition. Scott is well known for being the trailblazer of the “stretch music” – a jazz rooted musical form that attempts to “stretch” jazz’s rhythmic, melodic and harmonic conventions to encompass as many other musical forms, languages and cultures as possible.

Helen Sung is an accomplished pianist and composer, a graduate of the New England Conservatory and winner of the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition. She toured southern Africa as a U.S. State Department Jazz Ambassador, and she performed on Terri Lyne Carrington’s Grammy-winning album “The Mosaic Project,” which featured an all-female group, highlighting the accomplishments of female artists.

The event is presented by VJN, an outreach arm of the Fine Arts Center, focused on preserving the legacy of jazz, and the UMass Fine Arts Center with support from the UMass Amherst Office of Equity and Inclusion; the UMass Amherst Campus Climate Improvement Grant Fund; the UMass Amherst Chancellor’s Office and the W.E.B. Du Bois department of Afro-American studies; the UMass Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success; the Five College Lecture Fund; the Amherst College music department; Mount Holyoke College Division of Student Life; Hampshire College; and UMass Amherst departments of political science and public policy.