Jazz News: Milagro Beanfield War revived by San Luis high schoolers; Marsalis work debuts at NO Diaspora conference; Anat Cohen release

This is Jazz News, a look at what’s news in jazz, music and the arts.

San Luis area high school students are staging John Nichols’ historical novel “The Milagro Beanfield War” at Su Teatro this coming weekend. John Moore reports in The Denver Gazette the play is hosted by Millie Duran from the non-profit Casa Milagro Youth Solutions and will be produced at Su Teatro on September 27.

The celebrated 1988 film starring Ruben Blades and scored by Dave Grusin was mostly skipped over, as the students wrote and produced the play from their reading of the novel. Many students are descended from those who lived through the water-rights disputes on their ancestral lands in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.

(SOURCE: Denver Gazzette/Arts & Entertainment/Theater-Milagro Beanfield War)

Our guest musicians at this year’s Live at the Vineyards Delfeayo Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra have a new project with the African Diaspora Consortium in New Orleans, where he is Artistic Director. Actress and art collector CCH Pounder is also presenting. Delfeayo Marsalis likens his new theme music to a movement by Beethoven or Mozart, featuring a conversation between a small orchestra of saxophones, trombones, trumpets, and rhythm section.

The Fourth Annual Celebration of the African Diaspora runs from October 3 to 6. (SOURCE: Ad Exchange)

Clarinetist Anat Cohen’s next project called “Bloom” hits the street this Friday. It’s the second album with her band Quartetinho – bassist-guitarist Tal Mashiach, pianist-accordionist Vitor Gonçalves & vibraphonist-percussionist James Shipp. There’s original work on the album that has a piece of neo-American chamber music that meets modern jazz feel, plus a cover of Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle.” The popular clarinetist and band tour the U.S. for a couple of weeks before hitting Europe in October and November. (SOURCE: Anat Cohen)

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