Contemporary Arts Inc., in partnership with Free Fall Baltimore, presents The Carl Grubbs Jazz/String Ensemble in performance. Carl Grubbs, a recipient of a 2014 Ruby Artist Project Grant, has a distinguished career as an international recording artist, composer and educator. The Jazz/String ensemble will perform his original work The Inner Harbor Suite Revisited: A Tribute to Baltimore.

*** PLEASE NOTE: Due to pending weather, this FREE CONCERT will now be held on Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 4 pm at Pier 5 Hotel, in the Harbor West Ballroom, at 711 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD***

Click here to reserve your tickets to this FREE event!

This performance will feature a stellar group of top-ranked musicians: Carl Grubbs on saxophones; Eric Byrd, piano; Blake Meister, bass; John Lamkin III, drums; Eric Kennedy, percussion; Cleveland Chandler, violin; Samuel Thompson, violin; Daphne Benichou, viola and Kenneth Law, cello.

The Inner Harbor Suite is a musical love letter to the city of Baltimore, Carl’s home since 1980. Inspiration for The Inner Harbor Suite began in 1983, after he coordinated a concert series featuring international artists at the Inner Harbor Pratt Street Pavilion and coordinated accompanying workshops for these same artists at Southern High School. Carl was inspired by these experiences to begin writing new music. In 1995, the first performance of The Inner Harbor Suite took place at the Amphitheater in the Inner Harbor. In the intervening years, Carl spent time reworking and restructuring the piece, with major work culminating after receipt of a 2014 Rubys Artist Project Grant. The current version of The Inner Harbor Suite includes melodies, counter-melodies, blues elements of call-and-response, bebop rhythms, Afro-Cuban rhythms and avant-garde elements and features saxophones, strings, group improvisation, and ensemble performance.

Carl has traveled around the world with the Julius Hemphill Sextet as well as his own Carl Grubbs Ensemble. In addition to heading several jazz programs at several area schools, including St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, Maryland, where for twenty years he has served as Jazz Band Director, strengthening students skills in jazz performance and jazz improvisation, he is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Contemporary Arts, Inc., a non-profit arts organization that aims to preserve the art form of jazz through performance and education. Each year he conducts two jazz arts camps for children, ages 4 to 17, in Baltimore City and Howard County. Among his many awards are the 2009 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, two grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, two Traditions Apprenticeships and the Traditions Project Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a Rubys Artist Project Grant

Free Fall Baltimore is made possible by the Office of Promotion & The Arts, an independent 501(C)3 non-profit organization, and the generous contributions of BGE, The Abell Foundation, American Trading & Production Corporation (Atapco), The Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation, and the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Charitable Funds. Additional support from the Rubys Artist Project Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Eddie C. & C. Sylvia Brown Family Fund, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund (creators of the bakerartistsawards.org), the Citizens of Baltimore County, The Maryland State Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.