Ghanaian Drum Master Yacub Addy to Perform With Wynton Marsalis

	Photo credit: Emma Dodge Hansen

Ghanaian drum master, Troy resident, and Rensselaer music professor Yacub Addy and his band, Odadaa!, will perform two concerts with jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center concert series. The two concerts, titled “African Jazz,” will take place May 2 and May 3 at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre.

Addy’s 12-member band, Odadaa!, combines African percussion, rich vocals, and traditional African dance. The concerts will explore the roots of jazz in African music, and Odadaa! will add a variety of drums, bells, shakers, bamboo flutes, guitar, and a voice ensemble to the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Addy, who teaches a popular music class in Ghanaian drumming at Rensselaer, formed Odadaa! in 1982. The band grew out of a succession of groups formed by Addy beginning in 1957 — first in Ghana, then in Europe and the United States.

Composer, choreographer, and educator, the 73-year-old Addy is the senior player in a well-known drumming family from Accra, Ghana. In 1957, the year of Ghana's independence, Addy organized and led the first public stage performance of traditional Ghanaian music and dance in Accra. Over the last 40 years, his music has spread across the world.

Wynton Marsalis was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts at Rensselaer at Rensselaer’s 1996 Commencement ceremony.

Tickets are $30 (students $15) and are available online at www.jazzatlincolncenter.org or by calling Center Charge at (212) 721-6500.