The Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival 2023

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Friday, February 17, 2023

Christian McBride: The Movement, Revisited and Joe Sealy’s Africville Stories

Eight-time Grammy Award-winning bassist Christian McBride is joined on stage by his Big Band, choir, and four narrators to perform his acclaimed opus. Toronto jazz pianist and composer Joe Sealy opens the night with Africville Stories featuring Jackie Richardson.

The Movement Revisited

Eight-time Grammy Award®-winning bassist, bandleader, and host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America Christian McBride presents his acclaimed opus The Movement Revisited as an epic concert event honouring five civil rights icons: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Barack Obama. Performed by the Christian McBride Big Band and featuring electrifying vocalist Alicia Olatuja, Toronto Mass Choir, and four stellar narrators, this is an event not to be missed.

Africville Stories

Joe Sealy will open the night with Africville Stories featuring Jackie Richardson, a reworking of his 1996 Juno-winning recording Africville Suite telling the tragic yet inspiring story of Canada’s oldest Black community.

Through the power of music, Joe Sealy’s Juno-winning album, Africville Suite, pays homage to one of the most misunderstood and forgotten cultures in the Maritimes—Africville, Nova Scotia.

Established in 1847, Africville was nestled on the shores of the Bedford Basin at the north end of Halifax and was Canada’s oldest Black community, until it was razed in the late 1960s as an “urban improvement” measure. Africville overcame a multitude of challenges by pulling from the hearts and souls of its residents in order to survive for more than a century until the final building was demolished in 1970.

Africville Stories is Sealy’s new presentation that expands Africville Suite, telling this legacy in a narrative and musical journey. It will be an abridged version of the full 90-minute piece with quartet.

Press

"Oscar Peterson festival brings true jazz to Ontario"
- Peter Goddard, The Globe and Mail

"A grand festival to celebrate the genius of Oscar Peterson"
- Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune

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