Friday, December 16th, 2022, 7:30 pm
Piano on Park Live presents:
Sarah Elizabeth Charles (voice) & Jarrett Cherner (piano)
Sarah Elizabeth Charles -voice/effects/compositions
Jarrett Cherner -piano/compositions
About:
Vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles and pianist Jarret Cherner are excited to bring their original duo album, TONE, to Piano on Park. The captivating duo presents sublime original work steeped in jazz harmony, timeless melody and poetic verse that addresses the need for care in the world.
Having weathered the brunt of pandemic, and more recently stepped into their new role as parents, Charles and Cherner are thrilled to finally be able to present their co-written project, which they began recording before the Covid-19 crisis. Assembled over the span of 4-years, Tone was mastered and finalized amidst quarantine in the couple’s Brooklyn apartment, where the studio became a haven for improvisation. “We’re both coming from the jazz tradition, the Black American Music tradition,” Charles says, “so improvising has brought so much to our creative process. It’s an approach that we’ve taken to both writing and recording that feels rooted in the tradition we’re coming from.”
Between Cherner’s expansive piano harmonies and Charles’ intricate multi-tracked vocal parts and subtly placed echoes and effects, Tone’s sonic space is filled by growing elements. Each song touches on transcendent themes of selfless love and living with purpose and intention. Shaped by eight emotive and richly melodic original compositions, its sound is fittingly intimate and warm, yet dynamic in range.
About the artists:
In addition to her “soulfully articulate” (The New York Times) recordings with SCOPE (the acclaimed Red, Inner Dialogue and Free of Form), Sarah Elizabeth Charles performs and collaborates with Yacine Boulares’ world-jazz collective Ajoyo, piano legend George Cables, visionary trumpeter and composer Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, keyboard master/producer Jesse Fischer (on Fischer’s latest release Resilience) and more. She had a commissioned composition performed at The National Gallery via The Canales Project’s “Hear Her Song” theater initiative. She is also an accomplished educator, as a participant in Carnegie Hall’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility and Future Music Project youth workshops; as developer of an early childhood music education program with the Haiti-based nonprofit Rise2Shine; and as an adjunct professor teaching her self-designed Jazz and Gender course at The New School.
Jarrett Cherner has captivated listeners with his lyricism and technical facility on his trio releases Burgeoning and Expanding Heart, both on his own label BaldHill Records. As a driving force behind the collective quintet Sketches (sketchesmusic.com) he also released Sketches Volume One (BaldHill) and Volume Two (Brooklyn Jazz Underground). At New England Conservatory he studied with Danilo Pérez, Jerry Bergonzi, Frank Carlberg and Michael Cain, among others, and during graduate studies at Manhattan School of Music he studied with Jason Moran, Garry Dial and Dr. J. Mark Stambaugh. An adjunct professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, Cherner also teaches through the New York Jazz Academy.