Gregg August

Gregg August is a bassist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. His musical command encompasses modern, post-bop, and Latin jazz, as well as classical music and the avant-garde. A longtime member of the JD Allen Trio and Arturo O'Farrill's Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra (with whom he has won five Grammys, including two Latin Grammys), August has also worked with Renée Fleming, Ray Barretto, Vince Mendoza, and Joel Harrison. In addition to playing the many varieties of jazz, the bassist has led several of his own recording dates, including the acclaimed Four by Six (2012). August is a classical musician of distinction: He is an associate member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and member of the American Composers Orchestra, Westchester Philharmonic, and Orchestra of St. Luke's, and he is a faculty member at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. In 2020, August issued the debut recording of Dialogues on Race, an extended jazz suite for big band, vocalists, strings, and a narrator. Originally a drummer, August began his study of the double bass while a percussion major at SUNY-Albany. Two years later, after transferring to the Eastman School of Music, he began studying jazz composition with arranger Ray Wright and performance with pianist Bill Dobbins. After earning his bachelor's degree, he relocated to New York City and received his master's degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied bass with Homer Mensch. Soon after graduating, August won the first bass chair with the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona in Spain. When his two-year tenure ended, he freelanced as a jazz bassist in Paris. After returning to New York, August, inspired by Latin music and newly armed with experience in Spanish culture and language, looked to play Cuban and Brazilian music and became a student of master Latin bassist Andy González. What he learned informed his own emerging musical world view, and he earned a spot touring and recording with Ray Barretto's New World Spirit. He appeared on Trancedance in 2000; the recording also featured billed appearances by saxophonist James Moody and percussion ensemble Los Papines. In 2001, he played bass on Eos Orchestra's Celluloid Copland, and in 2003, he played double bass on composer Michael Byron's avant-chamber work Awakening at the Inn of the Birds and Renée Fleming's Bel Canto. That year also saw August form his own sextet. His leader debut, Late August, appeared from his own Iacuessa Records in 2005, followed by One Peace in 2007. The latter was selected as a Top Ten recording by Hot House magazine. In July of that year, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered his Cuban son-inspired composition "Oriente." In 2008, August joined the JD Allen Trio alongside drummer Rudy Royston. They recorded Allen's vastly acclaimed Sunnyside debut, I Am I Am. Touring with the Allen group claimed most of the bassist's time. After the trio's 2009 date Shine, August received a commission from the Jerome Foundation along with Jazz Gallery to create a large-ensemble, multi-movement work. He responded with the first version of Dialogues on Race. Composed in the aftermath of Barack Obama's election as the first Black president of the United States, coinciding with media reports that America was now a "post-racial" country, August used the works of poets including Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Cornelius Eady, Francisco X. Alarcón, and more to examine that assertion in contrast to what he saw around him. After its premiere, the blog Lucid Culture raved, "August's richly melodic, aptly relevant compositions created a program that screams out to be recorded." August, ever busy, put the work in a drawer. He worked on Michel Legrand's Noel! Noel!! Noel!!!, Vienna Teng's Inland Territory, and on Vince Mendoza's dazzling cross-cultural work Nights on Earth. In 2012, August's quintet released Four by Six, which included his trio bandmates, trumpeter John Bailey, alto saxophonist Yosvany Terry, and pianist Luis Perdomo. In 2013, August joined Arturo O'Farrill and the Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra and appeared on 2014's Latin Grammy-winning Final Night at Birdland as well as the following year's Offense of the Drum (it took home the Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Album). Though the bassist was active in two touring, recording, and performing ensembles, he still found time for other work, and was part of film composer Jeff Grace's crew for several soundtracks including 2014's House of the Devil and 2015's House of the Dead. Work with the Allen trio was abundant: 2015's Graffiti was followed quickly by the widely acclaimed Americana (Musings on Jazz and Blues) in 2016. Between recording and touring, he taught, composed, and made his debut with jazz pianist and songwriter Lisa Hilton on her celebrated Horizons. Over the next several years, August played as a member of O'Farrill and Chucho Valdés' new big band on the massive, award-winning Familia (Tribute to Bebo + Chico) -- its "Three Revolutions" took home a Latin Grammy for Best Instrumental Performance. With O'Farrill's Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, August made Fandango at the Wall: Creating Harmony Between the United States and Mexico. He also played on Hilton's Escapism and cut the charting albums Radio Flyer and Love Stone with the JD Allen Trio. In the years after Dialogues on Race, musicians who had witnessed its premiere -- and many more who only heard or read about it -- prodded August to record the work. He was intrigued but hesitant, as he had seen the false veneer of America as a post-racial nation peel off while an unapologetic xenophobe entered the White House. He properly understood that not all would approve of his setting the tragedy of Emmett Till's torture and murder to music. Inspired by Keith Beauchamp's documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, August considered and examined 400 years of race relations in the U.S. He wrote Dialogues on Race out of respect and sorrow, but was keenly aware of the thorny issue of cultural appropriation. In response to his reservations, musician/journalist Frank Oteri reminded August that Mamie Till opened her son's casket so that everyone could see what had happened to him; she was determined to show the world just how ugly human beings could treat one another. August had appeared on guitarist Joel Harrison's conceptual meditation America at War, and he found inspiration in its example. He also found resolve in the poems he had selected for Dialogues on Race back in 2009. August relented. In early 2019, he assembled an all-star cast that included John Ellis, JD Allen, Frank Lacy, Marcus Rojas, Luis Perdomo, and Donald Edwards, as well as a narrator/reader, strings, and singers. He self-produced the recording and released it as Dialogues on Race, Vol. 1 on Iacuessa Records during the late summer.
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