Craig Harris and Tailgater’s Tales Perform the Music of Sam Rivers

Trombonist, composer, and bandleader Craig Harris has performed around the world with a wide range of progressive jazz luminaries, including Sam Rivers, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Charlie Haden, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, and Oliver Lake, since 1976. Harris co-composed the score for the Academy Award-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for “Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation Album” the next year. Harris’ most recent recording as a leader, Managing the Mask, was released in 2022. At Wesleyan, Harris’ sextet Tailgater’s Tales will make their Connecticut debut, performing the music of saxophonist Sam Rivers (1923–2011) in celebration of Rivers’ centennial anniversary at 8pm. A brilliantly innovative composer, Rivers taught at Wesleyan in the early 1970s.

The concert opens at 7pm with a 45-minute set performed by members of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra, directed by Professor of Music and African American Studies Jay Hoggard ’76, MA ’91. This concert is the conclusion of the 21st annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend.

$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students, youth under 18