Jazz, classical and world music: Norton announces concert series for 2022-23

WEST PALM BEACH — Everything from Mary Lou Williams to Johann Sebastian Bach, and from John Adams to the traditional music of China, will be on the bill this season at the Norton Museum of Art, which announced its concert series earlier this month.

The six concerts also include a program of music by Jewish composers affected by the Holocaust, presented by violinist Arnaud Sussmann, whose grandfather survived Auschwitz.

Glenn Tomlinson, the museum’s officer of learning and community engagement, said in a prepared statement that the series is being funded by Lois Ebin and the Gayle and Paul Gross Education Endowment Fund.

“Thanks to their commitment to the arts, we are excited to bring great musicians and an eclectic mix of musical styles to our audiences,” Tomlinson said.

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The series starts this Sunday with jazz pianist Bill Mays, a familiar face on the South Florida concert circuit, and a legendary session pianist whose extensive worklist includes 40 albums under his own name, hundreds of TV and film credits, and collaborations with vocal luminaries including Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra.

Mays will present an overview of jazz piano history, beginning with pioneers such as Jelly Roll Morton and including male and female titans of the art such as Thelonious Monk and Marian McPartland. Mays’ history also will examine the various styles of jazz piano, such as ragtime, swing and bebop.

On Jan. 8, the series continues with a multimedia program called “Sounds That Inspired Them: American Modern Artists and Music.” Pianist Leslie Amper has created a compilation of photos, video and audio clips, and her own playing, to illustrate how works in the Norton’s 20th-century American art collection were inspired by composers such as Bach, Schubert, Gershwin, Enrique Granados, Amy Beach and the modernist Mario Davidovsky.

Amper will narrate the concert, which also will reference the current exhibit — Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature — of natural-world paintings by the Italian-American artist Joseph Stella.

The third program in the series touches on world music, with two appearances by Min Xiao-Fen, a master of the pipa, an ancient Chinese string instrument similar to a lute. Min, now based in New York, is also a singer and composer who has performed with numerous jazz artists.

On Friday, Jan. 20, Min will be joined by the Pakistani-American jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi for a concert in the Art After Dark series. On the following afternoon, Jan. 21, she will play traditional pipa music in a concert for the Norton’s annual Chinese New Year celebration. Both of these concerts are free admission.

Violinist Sussmann, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach’s artistic director, is joined by the American pianist-composer Michael Brown on March 20 for “Jewish Voices II,” the second installment in the musicians’ survey of pieces by Jewish composers whose careers were ended or interrupted by the Holocaust.

On April 16, the museum welcomes Mr. Ho’s Orchestrotica, a quintet led by percussionist and composer Brian O’Neill; the Orchestrotica (which also has a 22-piece big band) is billed as a “story-driven mashup of global jazz and classical connections.” The five musicians, which include players of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and oud (the Arab predecessor of the lute and guitar), perform O’Neill’s original pieces as well as his arrangements of music by Gershwin, Shostakovich and John Adams.

The final concert, set for May 7, is called “The Baroque Masters” and features violinists Andrew Sord and Mari Sato, with pianist Eriko Uzimada, in classics of the Baroque violin repertoire, including Corelli’s “La Folia,” Bach’s Partita in E and his Double Concerto, and Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill.”

The music will be preceded by a gallery talk about Baroque artworks including “Interior With a Sick Woman by a Fireplace,” by the 17th-century Dutch painter Jacobus Vrel, on view at the museum from Dec. 17 through December 2024.

Most of the concerts begin at 3 p.m. in the Stiller Family Foundation Auditorium at the Norton. Tickets are $15 (plus general admission), and $10 for members. The Art After Dark concert Jan. 20 begins at 7 p.m., as does the “Jewish Voices” concert March 20.

Tickets can be had online at norton.org the day before the concert, or by walk-in if seats are available. Tickets for the “Jewish Voices II” concert are offered by the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach at its website: www.cmspb.org.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Norton Museum announces six concerts for the new season