Featuring: Sam Rivers
NoBusiness Records is pleased to announce publication of author Ed Hazell’s Energy Center, a pioneering study of Studio Rivbea, the arts and music center operated by saxophonist-composer Sam Rivers and his wife Bea. Perhaps the best-known and most influential of the artist-run venues of the 1970s New York Loft Era, Rivbea introduced wider U.S. audiences to artists such as Julius Hemphill, David S. Ware, the classic Anthony Braxton quartet with Kenny Wheeler, David Murray, Jemeel Moondoc’s Muntu, the Melodic Art-tet, and many others. But Rivbea was more than a concert space. It was the Rivers family home; a rehearsal site for Sam’s orchestra; a music classroom, a platform for playwrights, poets, dancers, and filmmakers; and a community focal point for musicians in Lower Manhattan. The book delves into the details of how Sam and Bea raised a family while keeping all these activities going. It chronicles the many artistic triumphs that took place at 24 Bond St., while also examining some of the conflicts and battles that shaped the Studio Rivbea story. Energy Center places Studio Rivbea in the context of an era when Black musicians and artists fought for self-determination and control of their art, resisting commercial pressures in order to develop their art. The book also includes the most accurate and complete sessionography of events at Rivbea ever compiled. In addition, dozens of previously unpublished photographs and a selection of posters and other ephemera add vibrant visual highlights to the unfolding story. In short, Energy Center is the most comprehensive history of a remarkable and utterly unique place that helped make possible some of the most important music of the late 20th century.
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