UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State will present “We Insist! 2025,” starring four-time Grammy Award-winning musician Terri Lyne Carrington and featuring vocalist Christie Dashiell, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in Eisenhower Auditorium on the University Park campus. Carrington will lead a live band in a reimagining of songs from the “free” jazz era and “Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.”
Call 814-863-0255 or visit “We Insist! 2025” online for more information and to purchase tickets.
‘We Insist!’ — now and then
Morgan Guerin, Milena Casado and Matt Stevens, all featured on “We Insist! 2025,” also will perform live.
Originally released in 1960, the avant-garde jazz response “We Insist!” (subtitled “Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite”) features five works concerning the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights era.
In 2022, Roach’s album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
While Roach’s recording became avant-garde and protest music of those turbulent times, the Carrington-Dashielle tribute calls on his legacy while expanding its sonic palette with hints of gospel, neo-soul, funk, Afro-Latin, West African traditions and blues.
“I had a history with reimagining projects in other people’s work, and helping that legacy continue, but doing it in a way that also has my own identity involved in a way that really feels new, in a sense,” Carrington said in an interview with the LA Times. “The music is not new, but so many elements around those things are new. So I feel like it’s reshaping these things a little, even though we didn’t change the lyric content. By changing the music around the lyrics, it gives the lyric a different slant.”