LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jazz and drama fans will have a double treat March 6-10 when the University of Louisville offers its production of “Trane: Beyond the Blues.”
The Christine Rusch play about avant-garde jazz saxophonist John Coltrane will be performed at 8 p.m. daily with an additional Sunday matinee at 3 p.m. March 10. Performances will be in the Thrust Theater at Floyd and Warnock streets on the U of L Belknap Campus.
Tickets are $10 for the general public, $9 for senior citizens and U of L employees and $7 for students. For reservations or group prices, call the box office at (502) 852-6814.
The play, directed by theater arts department faculty member Nefertiti Burton, is a production of the department’s African-American Theater Program. It examines Coltrane’s life from his North Carolina youth to the musical career in which he emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as an influential, experimental performer and composer. Coltrane worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and also formed his own musical groups.
Davis, Charlie Parker and other jazz contemporaries are included among the play’s many characters; some of the 11 actors take on as many as 10 roles a performance.
U of L graduate student and writer-composer John Chenault designed the production’s music. Chenault has shared composing commissions from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, American Composers Forum and orchestras in Louisiana and Ohio. He has performed as a percussionist with the Black Arts Ensemble, founded two musical groups and written volumes of poetry and plays, including a television drama that won the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ Brotherhood Award.
For more information or for photos, call Rinda Frye at (502) 852-8445.