Archie Shepp in La Villette

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and eminent jazz composer Archie Shepp is best known today as a pioneer of the free jazz movement. A prolific composer, Shepp's long career found inspiration in a variety of places: his experience working as a sideman John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor; his time as a member of the New York Contemporary Five; his studies in dramaturgy; and of course his significant involvement in the Black Arts Movement during the 1960s. Here in his late seventies, his experience and maturity shine as he offers us a swinging evening in shades of blue, performing a selection of his own compositions as well as songs by pianist-singer Amina Claudine Myers and guitarist Joe Louis Walker, who join him onstage at the Jazz à la Villette festival.