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The sculptures of the late African-American artist and civil rights activist Elizabeth Catlett are the inspiration for a new jazz composition. Rufus Reid, a bass musician who's been playing jazz for half a century, uses Catlett's artwork to explore the intersection between music and the visual arts. In his new project, called "Quiet Pride," Reid tries to convey Catlett's sculptures in sound. NPR's Allison Keyes has more.
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: Rufus Reid says he chose five Elizabeth Catlett sculptures from a book of her work because they jumped out of him. Though he did not keep pictures of them on the piano for inspiration while he was composing, Reid remembers each vividly.
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KEYES: Take Catlett's 1981 bronze, "Glory." It's the bust of a woman's head.
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RUFUS REID: There's angst in the face. There's power in the face. There's maybe some anger in the face and yet composure in the face.
KEYES: So how do you capture that in music?
REID: You would take, maybe, something that was fast, something that was angular and harmonically skips in intervals that kind of make you a little uneasy hearing them, etc. I don't know. These are the kinds of things because it's not tangible. But I think there's a feeling.
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KEYES: To get his vision across, he showed the musicians pictures of Catlett's work. Tanya Darby plays lead trumpet in the ensemble. She and Reid picked apart a section of "Glory" in our studio.
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KEYES: Darby says as a black woman, it was important to be involved in a project honoring another woman of color whose work radiates passion.
TANYA DARBY: It was special for me because just seeing that artwork, you can kind of follow the lineage, you know, of African-American history.
KEYES: Darby says the musicians played differently after they saw Catlett's work.
DARBY: It makes all of those notes that you see on a page, all the black and white notes that you see on the page, all of a sudden, like, that starts to turn into a lyric. As opposed to just playing notes, like, it turns into wanting to tell a story with what's on the page.
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MORA CATLETT: I was very pleased with the work. It's emotional like my mother was emotional.
KEYES: Percussionist Francisco Mora Catlett is one of the sculptor's three sons. He loves the five pieces Reid chose to focus on, including the 1997 black marble Stargazer. It's a female figure reclining, face turned upward. Mora Catlett says his mother's work speaks to him.
MORA CATLETT: I can't stand my mother's work. It's too powerful. It moves me so much, especially her woodwork. Her woodwork is alive, and it shakes me.
KEYES: He's the son of Elizabeth Catlett and the Mexican artist Francisco Mora. She spent most of her adult life in Mexico after moving there in 1946 for a fellowship and eventually became a citizen there. Catlett once said she learned to use her art for the service of people.
MORA CATLETT: The expression of her work, especially women, is the beauty of black woman - but not the stereotype-covered front magazine, you know, something like that - but the inherent beauty and the strength and the power of black woman. That's what she found also in the Mexican movement. In a broader scale, the universal aspect of the power, you know what I'm saying, of just regular, ordinary people.
KEYES: The U.S. government denied her a travel visa for nine years, declaring her an undesirable alien because she was a suspected communist. Yet her work was shown in exhibitions around the world. But in the country of her birth, it was a different story. Elizabeth Catlett told NPR in 2003...
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ELIZABETH CATLETT: I, as an artist, a black woman artist, have been invisible in the art world for years.
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KEYES: But Rufus Reid intends to change that. He has organized several programs at universities, including Louisiana State, that blend his music and her sculpture.
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REID: We had two days of performance with the LSU jazz ensemble in the 400-, 500-seat hall. And upstairs, on the fifth floor, they had 17 pieces of Elizabeth's art on exhibit. And it was incredible.
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KEYES: Elizabeth Catlett had a chance to hear an early version of this work before her death in 2012. But Rufus Reid wishes she could hear it now.
REID: What I was concerned about was just to get this music up to the level where I put her art.
KEYES: Reid says he thinks "Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project" got close. Allison Keyes. NPR News.
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