UPIKE Newsroom

 A multimedia concert performance of Langston Hughes’ “Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz” featuring the Ron McCurdy Quartet

The University of Pikeville will host a multimedia performance with The Langston Hughes Project on Tuesday, February 25, in Booth Auditorium. The doors to the event will open at 7 p.m., with the show beginning at 7:30 p.m. 

The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance of Langston Hughes’ kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite titled, “Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz.” This is Hughes’ homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. It is a twelve-part epic poem that Hughes scored with musical cues drawn from blues and Dixieland, gospel songs, boogie woogie, bebop, progressive jazz, Latin “cha cha,” Afro-Cuban mambo music, German lieder, Jewish liturgy, West Indian calypso and African drumming – a creative masterwork left unperformed at his death.

Initially, Hughes created “Ask Your Mama” in the aftermath of his participation as an official for the five-day Newport Jazz Festival in July 1960, where he shared the stage with such luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, Dakota Staton, Oscar Peterson, Otis Spann, Ray Charles and Muddy Waters. The musical scoring was designed to serve not as mere background but to forge a conversation and a commentary with the music. Though Hughes originally intended to collaborate with Charles Mingus, and then Randy Weston, on the performance of this masterwork, it remained only in the planning stages when Langston Hughes died in 1967. Its recovery now in word, music and image provides a galvanizing experience for audiences everywhere.

Utilizing engaging videography, this concert performance links the words and music of Hughes’ poetry to topical images of “Ask Your Mama’s” people, places and events and to the visual artists Langston Hughes admired and/or collaborated with most closely throughout his career including the African-inspired mural designs and cubist geometries of Aaron Douglas, the blues and jazz-inspired collages of Romare Bearden, the macabre grotesques of Meta Warrick Fuller, the rhythmic sculptural figurines, heads, and bas reliefs of Richmond Barthe, and the color-blocked cityscapes and black history series of Palmer Hayden and Jacob Lawrence. Together the words, sounds and images recreate a magical moment in cultural history, which bridges the Harlem Renaissance, the post-World War II beat writers’ coffeehouse jazz poetry world and the looming Black Arts performance explosion of the 1960s.

The performance is brought to life by the extraordinary talents of the Ron McCurdy Quartet. Dr. Ronald C. McCurdy is a professor of music in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California (USC) and is past-president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). Prior to his appointment at USC, he served as director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at USC. 

He has released two CDs, the first one titled “Once Again for the First Time” on the INNOVA label and the most recent CD titled “April In Paris” with his vocal funk group, The Ron McCurdy Collective. He is co-author of a vocal jazz improvisation series titled “Approaching the Standards,” published by Warner Bros.  

McCurdy is the director of the National Grammy Vocal Jazz Ensemble and combo, and also serves as director of the Walt Disney All-American College Band in Anaheim, Ca. 

McCurdy has performed with a host of legendary jazz artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Joe Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Terence Blanchard, Leslie Uggams, Arturo Sandoval, Diane Schuur, Ramsey Lewis, Mercer Ellington, Dr. Billy Taylor, Maynard Ferguson, Lionel Hampton and Dianne Reeves. He is a performing artist for the Yamaha International Corporation. 

The campus and the community are encouraged to attend the February 25 event. For more information, contact Adam Llanos, UPIKE Student Activities, at (606) 218-5222 or adamllanos@upike.edu.