The Jorge Sylvester ACE Collective

( Afro Caribbean Experimental)

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Jorge Sylvester – Alto Saxophone and Compositions

Nora McCarthy – Voice, Poetry and Compositions

Waldron Mahdi Ricks – Trumpet

Pablo Vergara – Piano

Donald Nicks – Electric Bass

Kenny Grohowski  – Drums and Percussions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The ACE Collective is a group of improvising musicians created and led by saxophonist/composer/arranger Jorge Sylvester.  An extension of the ACE Trio (alto saxophone, electric bass and drums), the ACE Collective includes three additional independent rhythmic and melodic elements: the voice, trumpet and piano expanding its harmonic colors, its scope of sound and its textural capacity.  The music is original, new and experimental and draws from the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, jazz and the free music art forms.

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A native of Colon, Republic of Panama, Sylvester's original compositions are indicative of the vast cultural mixture that is Central America.  The ACE Collective utilizes the rich spectrum of rhythms from the Caribbean and other Latin American countries as a vehicle to create new and undiscovered rhythmic melodic lines within the jazz tradition. Collective and free improvisation is an essential part of the concept utilizing juxtaposition and retrograde as main components of the experimentation. The poetry contributed by Nora McCarthy is as creatively historical as it is spiritual, mystical and political, painted with the pointed detailed strokes of activism  “reminiscent of the protest poetry of the ‘60’s and 70’s.” Will Connell, 2013…Composer/Arranger, Multi-Instrumentalist—Avant-Garde Jazz Artist, Activist

 

THE MUSIC:

Afro-Caribbean rhythms and their relationship to the avant-garde music form have not been documented. Unlike the work of composers such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and others who used Afro-Caribbean rhythms in their works without experimenting with their rhythmic pulse, the compositional structure of the music of the ACE Collective goes beyond an absolute interpretation, and delves deeper into the core of the rhythms breaking them down and expanding the pulse into a myriad of complex configurations that tap into the original primal properties of the music itself, reflecting its history and its origin, unraveling its many transmutations and adaptations over time and discovering new possibilities and applications within the tradition itself that are related to the avant-garde.

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