Paul Cornish | Make Jazz Culminating Concert

18th Street Arts Center is pleased to present a culminating concert of new compositions from pianist Paul Cornish, live streamed from the World Stage in Leimert Park on April 25, 2021 at 7pm. Cornish is 18th Street Arts Center’s 2021 Make Jazz Fellow and brings his dedication to community engagement and music education to a new body of work he will create while in residence at 18th Street Arts Center. Conducting this fellowship under a time of great crisis, Cornish was inspired by the Larry Neal quote about the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s as being “radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community.” Taking this quote as both a prompt and a challenge, Cornish asks himself, what does community mean during a pandemic? The new music he creates during this three-month residency period will be based on a series of engagement experiments interacting virtually and socially distanced with local Santa Monicans, weaving personal experiences, collective trials, and interpersonal connections during this unprecedented time into a new body of work.
These never-before-heard compositions will be presented in a multi-media experience, live streamed from the World Stage in Leimert Park on April 25.
To contribute thoughts on the question “How do you create community during a pandemic?” that will inform Cornish’s work, please visit our website.
This concert and Paul Cornish’s 18th Street Arts Center residency is generously supported by the Herb Alpert Foundation.
ABOUT PAUL CORNISH
18th Street Arts Center’s 2021 Make Jazz Fellow is Los Angeles based pianist Paul Cornish. Hailing from Houston where he was a student at the prestigious Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Cornish was one of seven jazz prodigies worldwide selected to be awarded a full fellowship to attend the esteemed Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at UCLA. Here, he completed his Master’s degree, and studied and performed with such renowned artists as Carl Allen, Jerry Bergonzi, Billy Childs, Herbie Hancock, Bob Hurst, Geoffrey Keezer, Dick Oats, Chris Potter, Walter Smith, and Terell Stafford. Paul Cornish is one of the top young jazz pianists and composers on the scene today. Besides being a gifted pianist and composer, Cornish is a dedicated jazz educator and enjoys teaching students of all levels and presenting jazz workshops around the world.
He was the recipient of the Los Angeles Jazz Society’s 2020 New Note Commission and was the winner of the 2018 American Jazz Piano Competition. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Cornish has performed extensively throughout Southern California and across the globe with such notable artists as Gary Bartz, David Binney, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Louis Cole, Theo Croker, Sara Gazarek, John Legend, Steve Lehman, Terrace Martin, Mary Stallings, Thumpasaurus, and Kanye West.
ABOUT THE MAKE JAZZ FELLOWSHIP
Sponsored by the Herb Alpert Foundation to honor and support jazz artists, 18th Street Arts Center annually hosts its Make Jazz Fellowship, awarded to a jazz composer for a three-month, fully funded residency. This opportunity is for an individual jazz artist to advance or complete a body of original compositions. For three months the Make Jazz Fellow lives and works among artists in sunny Santa Monica, California. The award supports the artist by providing a monthly stipend, a furnished live-in studio, and arranged opportunities to inspire Jazz students in partnership with Los Angeles-area colleges and universities.
For more information and to RSVP visit our website.