Zack Lober: the Ancestry Project at The Jazz Gallery

The Jazz Gallery is proud to present bassist/turntablist/composer Zack Lober’s work: The Ancestry Project. The 90-plus minute through-composed piece written for quintet, turntables, and video projection is based on the personal and musical history of Lober’s family as told to him by his Zaida (Yiddish for grandfather), Hyman Herman.

The music for The Ancestry Project was created based on a series of recorded interviews that Lober conducted with his Zaida, who was born in Poland 89 years ago to a Jewish musical family in a town known then as Borshov. As a young child, his family fled the climate of rising anti-Semitism to settle in the new world of North America where they ultimately ended up in Montreal, Canada. Both he and his brother Benny (a jazz bassist) followed in their father’s footsteps to pursue careers in music. Hyman raised his family by holding down a day job and leading commercial bands in the evenings and weekends. His love for music led him to seek out the best musicians he could find, including young up and coming players who would go on to become some of the world's greatest jazz figures like Oscar Peterson, Paul Bley, and Maynard Ferguson. ...

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The Jazz Gallery is proud to present bassist/turntablist/composer Zack Lober’s work: The Ancestry Project. The 90-plus minute through-composed piece written for quintet, turntables, and video projection is based on the personal and musical history of Lober’s family as told to him by his Zaida (Yiddish for grandfather), Hyman Herman.

The music for The Ancestry Project was created based on a series of recorded interviews that Lober conducted with his Zaida, who was born in Poland 89 years ago to a Jewish musical family in a town known then as Borshov. As a young child, his family fled the climate of rising anti-Semitism to settle in the new world of North America where they ultimately ended up in Montreal, Canada. Both he and his brother Benny (a jazz bassist) followed in their father’s footsteps to pursue careers in music. Hyman raised his family by holding down a day job and leading commercial bands in the evenings and weekends. His love for music led him to seek out the best musicians he could find, including young up and coming players who would go on to become some of the world's greatest jazz figures like Oscar Peterson, Paul Bley, and Maynard Ferguson.

The show takes us through Hyman’s life by integrating his recorded narratives directly into the compositions which are also accompanied by visual projections directly related to the subject matter.

The Ancestry Project breaks new ground in the world of live music performance as the lines between composition, live improvisation, emotion, and human interest are blurred into an altogether new and engaging experience.

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