From Bowie to Benin By STEVE MACQUEEN, Artistic Director


A season ends, a jazz festival happens, a few breaths are taken, then another season starts anew. Circle of life. But there’s no monotony—each one of these seasons differs from the other, or it would be a lot less fun than it is. And shows are unlike children, in that I can actually pick a few favorites, like these:


Jazzmeia Horn Jazz


The Flynn’s commitment to jazz has been going strong for 35 years. This year’s field includes two all-time greats and two of the best up-and-comers.


Pat Metheny and Herbie Hancock are two of the most prominent, forward-thinking, and influential jazz musicians alive. Guitarist Metheny, a 20-time Grammy winner (!!), created a new realm of jazz guitar exploration through his incredible chops, imagination, and embrace of technology. Hancock may only have 10 Grammys, but by the time he was 25 he’d already changed jazz history with his role in Miles Davis’ second quartet and released two classic records under his own name. Since then, he’s pioneered the use of synths in jazz and recorded the first hip-hop jazz song (Rockit) while authoring an incredibly wide-ranging career in music. His Flynn show celebrates his funky side with a band of young guns. Both players are legends, deservedly so.


If the future of jazz is in the hands of FlynnSpace jazz artists Julian Lage (guitar) and Jazzmeia Horn (vocal), then the music is healthy indeed. Lage is 30 years old, but has been a professional for more than 20 years, seamlessly traversing the space from prodigy to adult. His speed and dexterity are unequalled, and he brings influences from all eras of jazz, as well as places outside (country, pop, rock, etc). Horn’s rise to the top tier of jazz singers is still in its early stages, but it feels inexorable given her talent and vision. Having won a pair of international vocal competitions with big names attached to them—Sarah Vaughn in 2013, Thelonious Monk in 2015—she is building momentum through fabulous performances, and is definitely here for the long-term.


David Bowie/Talking Heads


The season features two remarkable reimaginings of seminal works: Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and David Bowie’s Blackstar, each explored and reinvented in a deeper, more interesting fashion than a mere regurgitation under the banner of “tribute.”


I love David Bowie—we all do, right?— and I’ve been searching for a way to acknowledge his impact on music and culture since he passed away in 2016. But it’s tricky. With a creative force like Bowie, you can’t just have some singers sing his famous tunes in a revue; it’s disrespectful. Once I heard the 30-piece Ambient Orchestra, conducted by Evan Ziporyn, play Bowie’s final work, Blackstar, in its entirety, I knew I’d found a way. Blackstar is an absolute masterpiece, though devoid of hits. The great cellist Maya Beiser assumes the role of Bowie, playing the melodies with liberal use of effects pedals to create the requisite weirdness. The result: a lush, glorious interpretation of Bowie free of mimicry, and full of surprises. Magical and mind blowing.


Angélique Kidjo, a singer from Benin who lives in Brooklyn by way of Paris, performs a remarkable act of musical repatriation in her show. For their 1980 record Remain in Light, David Byrne and his Talking Heads cohorts explored African textures—particularly those of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti—through their own off-kilter art-school perspective. It was African-influenced but certainly not African. Kidjo has given these songs the full polyrhythmic Afropop treatment, recreating them as music that is deeply, explosively, and joyously African. It’s one of the best records of the year and if you’ve ever seen Ms. Kidjo perform (she was at the Flynn in 2011), you know that once she and her nine-piece band take the stage, they will indeed be “burning down the house” (yes, I know that song is on a different record).


Egypt


The Flynn has brought international artists to the stage since its inception, and we’re not about to break with that tradition. This year, 13 countries are represented, but Egypt is highlighted with four very different performers.


Mohamed Abozekry first visited Burlington as part of the very successful Nile Project, a musical collaboration of countries on the Nile basin. Now, this virtuosic oud player returns with his


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