Immanuel Wilkins Performance

Sunday, March 5, 2023, 12 pm

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

In conjunction with Leslie Hewitt at Dia Bridgehampton, Immanuel Wilkins will present a solo saxophone interpretation of a score realized collaboratively by Hewitt and Jamal Cyrus titled For Solo Piano, Alto Saxophone, or Tambourine (This Score May Be Realized in Any Imaginative Way, or in conjunction with or in response to the recording of the song Evidence (Justice) 00:07:55 on the album Monk in Tokyo, Columbia Records (1963) with Thelonious Monk on piano, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Butch Warren on bass, and Frankie Dunlap on drums or Evidence 00:04:41 on the album Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, Blue Note Records (1957) with Thelonious Monk on piano, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Ahamed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums or Evidence 00:05:00 on the album Evidence, New Jazz (1962) with Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone, Don Cherry on trumpet, Carl Brown on Bass, and Billie Higgins (Abdul Kareem) on drums) (2022).

Visitors are invited to join the performance, which will take place over the course of approximately two hours, for as long as they wish. This special performance by Wilkins is the second of three matinees that punctuate the run of Hewitt’s exhibition. The event follows Jason Moran in November 2022 and will culminate with Rashida Bumbray in May.

Building upon traditions of indeterminate musical notation and the fractal logic of the jazz standard, Hewitt and Cyrus’s score is comprised of an arrangement of objects overlaid with metadata and sound that can be imagined in relation to Thelonious Monk’s song Evidence (first recorded in 1948). Just as the score calls attention to relationality, its interpretation occurs in the register of practice. Shifting attention away from linear notation and finished performance, the focus on practice emphasizes interpretation as an exercise in discovery and an opportunity to critically add to the score.

Immanuel Wilkins is a saxophonist and composer. His acclaimed debut album Omega (Blue Note Records, 2020) was named the #1 Jazz Album of 2020 by the New York Times. He recently released his sophomore album The 7th Hand (Blue Note Records, 2022). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.