Bobby Previte's Pocket Orchestra plays Bitches Brew

 

Friday June 26th 2026 7:00PM | Azrieli Studio, National Arts Centre

Vendredi 26 juin 2026, 19 h | Studio Azrieli, Centre national des Arts

 

Bobby Previte is a composer and performer whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. Previte is the recipient of the 2015 Greenfield Prize for Music and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, as well as multiple awards for composition from the NEA, NYFA, and NYSCA. Mr. Previte has been an artist-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, Civitella Ranieri, The Montalvo Arts Center, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and nine times at the MacDowell Colony. Masterclasses include Princeton University, the Eastman School of Music, The New School, and NYU. He is the creator of “Music 360º - The Improvisation Workshop,” a five day intensive conducted twice yearly. His original compositions have been recorded and released on Sony, Elektra, Nonesuch, Rykodisc, Cantaloupe, New World, and Rarenoise. Recent larger works include NO BELLS, NO WHISTLES, for solo drum set, TERMINALS, with SO Percussion, Zeena Parkins, Jen Shyu, Nels Cline and John Medeski, MASS, for choir, pipe organ, and metal trio, and RHAPSODY, a song cycle. Most recent is BLUEPRINTS, a free-wheeling, spontaneous, conducted reading of, and improvisation on, fragments of every composition he has written from 1979 to the present, projected on screen for ensemble and audience members alike to read.

One of the greatest works of the twentieth century, Bitches Brew, released in 1970, changed the entire landscape of not only Jazz, but Rock, Funk, Soul, and Pop as well. Hailed as a masterpiece upon release, it has become even more influential in the fullness of time. Previte and musicians begin at the point Bitches Brew left off, and using it as a springboard, point towards new directions.