Hilliard Greene bends over his piccolo bass, tenderly. His face reminds me of Paul Robeson’s — a dignified sadness, tinged with anger. For some reason, I picture a purple shawl hanging from Hilliard’s shoulder. He seems to be singing with his body.
Hilliard is performing at the "Projects Room" of the Vision Festival, 2010. At first, there is a small audience, but word of his mastery spreads through the Henry Street Settlement, and the crowd grows.
Hilliard wrote all these compositions himself — except for Ornette Coleman’s "Lonely Woman." This is the music I have been awaiting for decades, I find myself thinking: post-avant-garde jazz, which uses dissonance and the Music of Battle only when the soul demands, not out of habit. Hilliard’s songs are brainy and populist. He could play his solos at a New York Philharmonic concert and the octogenarian music lovers would cheer. In Hilliard’s music, Aretha Franklin kisses Tchaikovsky.
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