This Boiler House Jazz Series at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation takes place in the Museum's Main Gallery, the former Boiler House of the Boston Manufacturing Company, at the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill complex, on the left bank of the Charles River in the heart of downtown Waltham, Massachusetts. 

Led by saxophonist Ken Field, curator of the Boiler House Jazz Series, Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is a costumed funk/street beat improvisational brass band performing a unique blend of original and traditional music.  "New Orleans brass band meets Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman - fiery yet booty-shaking music - it's a stone cold killer diller! ... Most bands can't get the New Orleans stuff right, but the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is one of the few who does and then takes it in fascinating directions."--- OffBeat (New Orleans)

Doors open at 7:00pm and the show begins at approximately 7:30pm. Arrive early and enjoy a self-guided tour of the museum!

Beverages are included in the ticket price, non-alcoholic for everyone, and beer & wine to those 21+.

To learn more about Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, and to view some videos of the group,please visit their website.

Musaner is about bringing together, blending, juxtaposition; the local and the universal, the intimate and the public, the festive and the contemplative.

Ancient melodies, new arrangements. Traditional instruments, modern harmonies. Tension and peacefulness. Angst and celebration. 

The group has performed widely in the Boston area, with additional appearances in New York, Washington, Zurich, and Milano.

Musaner has been featured on radio programs in New York City, Boston, Armenia, Lebanon, and France.

“It’s about what you inherit,” declares Ara Sarkissian, the composer and classical pianist behind modern Armenian fusion experiment Musaner. The group has plunged into the caves of tradition to rescue melodies once left for dead and renew them in the airy architecture of the halls of modern jazz.

On Musaner’s sophomore release, Once Upon a Time (release: October 26, 2012), the polished folk-fusion ensemble plucks stories and spins them into musical gold. From sweeping mountaintop vistas to intimate nights around the fire, Musaner takes the listener on an hour-long journey through the sonic landscape of old Armenia.

Though Musaner’s sophisticated performances reflect the discipline of conservatory-trained jazz artists, Sarkissian’s compositions begin with strands of tradition. Once Upon a Time features the ensemble’s organic intermingling of jazz structure and folk improvisation, but at its heart are the ballads and social music of Armenian folk life. “I think it’s about surface, what’s at the top, brewing,” expounds Sarkissian. “Every phrase there on the surface will help the narrative move along.”

In Musaner’s hands, hazy folk tunes gain a vigorous new life through modern jazz orchestration. On the title track, Sarkissian’s atmospheric piano draws the listener through a veil of clouds to find, perched atop a mountain crag in the harsh Armenian interior, a bird with a broken wing. Saxophones soar, a duduk rises, and Musaner battles to give the bird flight.

Ensemble founder Sarkissian, of Armenian heritage, was born in Cyprus and grew up in Beirut. In 1989, the young piano prodigy moved to Boston, where he honed his craft at some of the world’s top schools of music. He composed and performed, pushing at his own boundaries to try to bring the folk music of his ancestors to a modern stage. Eventually, he realized, “No one really teaches you all of this stuff I was looking for. You have to just have it. I don’t know if I have it, but I’m trying to search for it.”

Sarkissian needed the Muses – in Armenian, musaner.

Every member of the ensemble comes to Armenian folk-jazz fusion from somewhere else, and their collaboration has produced a style that engages diverse genres while respecting the music’s folk roots. “So many old songs are gone, lost in a sense,” Sarkissian reflects, nostalgic but optimistic. This experiment, he hopes, will  reinvigorate the tradition by making it both interesting and meaningful.

Doors open at 7:00pm and the show begins at approximately 7:30pm. Arrive early and enjoy a self-guided tour of the museum!

Beverages are included in the ticket price, non-alcoholic for everyone, and beer & wine to those 21+.

To learn more about Musaner and Ara Sarkissian, please visit their website.

The Boiler House Jazz Series at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation will be inaugurated by the Fernando Brandão Trio. - This concert takes place in the Museum's Main Gallery, the former Boiler House of the Boston Manufacturing Company at the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill complex on the left bank of the Charles River in the heart of downtown Waltham, Massachusetts. 

Flutist, composer, author and educator Fernando Brandão has performed extensively as a bandleader, soloist, sideman and chamber musician with various ensembles and prominent orchestras, both in his native Brazil and the US. Using concert, alto, bass flutes and pífanos, Fernando performs across an eclectic repertoire of traditional and contemporary choros, sambas, frevos, ijexás, baiões and other styles, allyingjazz improvisations to an authentic Brazilian sound.

His new album,  Sem Tradução (Without Translation) features nine original songs with Marcella Camargo as the lead singer and 14 prominent musicians from the Boston area. His vocal and instrumental compositions are centered mostly around Brazilian styles including choro, samba, bossa, ijexá, and baião, and feature traditional and contemporary language and arrangements. With precise technique and refined sound, his interpretations on concert, alto, bass flutes and pífanos combine jazzy improvisations to a truly Brazilian language and sound.

He leads the Fernando Brandão Ensemble, which has been featured at the First Cambridge Jazz Festival, the Isabella Gardner Museum Concert Series, the Beantown Jazz Festival, and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. He also leads the group Alma, the gafieira band Bohemia Carioca, and he is an active member of the groups Pablo Ablanedo Octet, Trio Choro Brasil, Sergio Brandão & Manga Rosa and Teresa Inês Quintet. He has also played or recorded with Oscar Castro-Neves, Rosa Passos, Luciana Souza, Kris Adams, John Stein Quartet, Leandro Braga, Maria Teresa Madeira, Emmanuel Music Orchestra with conductors Criag Smith, Seiji Ozawa, and pianist Russell Sherman.

Mr. Brandão is a Professor at Berklee College of Music and a faculty member of the Community Music Center of Boston, both where he's been teaching for over 20 years. A leading educator in Brazilian music, he has given many lectures about its music styles, history and composers, and he is the author of the play-along book Brazilian and Afro-Cuban Jazz Conception, published by Advance Music. His compositions have been recorded by Choro das Três, guitarist Almir Cortes and New World Guitar Trio. He was the first prize winner of several national music competitions in Brazil, and the 1991 Pappoutsakis Flute Competition in Boston.

Doors open at 7:00pm and the show begins at approximately 7:30pm. Arrive early and enjoy a self-guided tour of the museum!

Beverages are included in the ticket price, non-alcoholic for everyone, and beer & wine to those 21+.

To learn more about Fernando Brandão, please visit his website.