BRATTLEBORO-Sixteen years ago Eugene Uman, director of the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC), launched the Convergence Project, a concert that fills the VJC’s aesthetically cool Cotton Mill space in Brattleboro with a blend of hometown excellence and invited talent.
For Uman, this annual concert offers an opportunity to invite his favorite musicians to join him on stage to showcase new compositions, review old favorites, and connect with the VJC’s growing, and loyal, audience.
The event wraps up each year’s September-to-June season in which jazz professionals from around the world offer concerts curated and produced by Uman and a team that includes his wife, artist Elsa Borrero.
This Saturday, June 13, the Convergence Project carries on the ever-evolving uniqueness of Uman’s offering: an ensemble concert of his own compositions, many of which are based on the Indigenous South American rhythms of Borrero’s native Colombia.
“Each year, it’s not like I reinvent myself, or the music, though I always try to present tunes I’ve been working on,” Uman recently told The Commons.
Each year, though, he always chooses “a new artist or two that will illuminate what I’m feeling in terms of the content of the music.”
This year, inspired by the success of a faculty concert he gave at Amherst College, he’s assembled a more pared-down ensemble that gives “more chance to dig deeper into the pieces themselves. And to give a little bit more space to improvisations rather than to the content of the compositions.”
In so doing, Uman aims for more camaraderie and trust, generating “a sense of unity with the band itself, knowing the tunes already and performing them at the very highest level.”
Uman is looking forward to performing his new tunes with the Convergence ensemble and “to hearing them in that context of piano, bass, drums, percussion, plus saxophone as the melodic voice.”
“I can’t wait to hear what they sound like” with some preparation and collaboration, he says, and “having them still be super fresh.”
Mix of old and new
Joining Convergence 2026 is Stacy Dillard, someone Uman describes as “a wonderful saxophone player” who commands “respect and love for his playing.”
Uman will visit New York to work on material with him, and “he’s already close with the drummer and the bass player, so we’ll maintain that sense of unity, and add some energy.”
Having taught saxophone and ensembles at the VJC Summer Workshop for approximately 10 years, Dillard, according to a VJC press release, has recorded four albums as a leader and more than 40 as a sideman.
He credits his stride to a fortunate encounter with Wynton Marsalis in Dayton, Ohio, after graduating from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. That led him to New York City.
Convergence Project drummer Brian Shankar Adler had been on the faculty of the VJC Summer Workshop for more than a decade. He’s played in a trio Uman pulled together for various concerts, and he’s been playing with the Convergence Project since 2022.
The VJC release notes that Adler is a multidisciplinary percussionist and composer once described by JazzTimes magazine as “a polyrhythmic force” who has “a penchant for compositions that are mind-bendingly complex and New York City gritty yet still [is] somehow capable of evoking the delicacy of a summer breeze.”
He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, among other notable venues. He’s heard on more than 40 recordings, including several as a leader.
Adler’s been featured in Jason Bivins’s book Spirits Rejoice, as well as in Newsweek, DownBeat, and Modern Drummer magazines and on NPR. Having recorded and/or toured with a range of performing artists from Ballet Hispánico to Elizabeth Swados, he teaches at Bates College, Bowdoin College, and the University of Maine.
Of the Project’s bass player, Mimi Jones, Uman says, “She’s a first call bassist in the New York scene. I heard her first playing with Tia Fuller’s quartet [at the VJC] some 15 years ago. And I was really impressed with her sound, her sense of time, and her spirit.”
Jones attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and then the Manhattan School of Music on full scholarship.
As described in a news release, she “studied bass with and has been mentored by a host of big names; as a U.S. State Department Jazz Ambassador, she toured Africa to Russia, China to South America. She’s played with a range of artists from Kenny Barron to Ravi Coltrane, Beyoncé to Dee Dee Bridgewater and Kevin Mahogany. Jones has released three albums as a leader and appears on recordings with many others.”
Uman adds, “I’ve always loved her time feel because she has one of the most solid quarter note feels I have ever heard. When you play with her and a good drummer like Brian, everything just locks in automatically and it feels solid and buoyant at the same time.”
Because “she’s really familiar with the music of other cultures, […] her playing of music from Latin cultures is deep and really strong and authentic,” he says.
In short, Uman says, “Mimi is incredible: I really love playing with her.”
Looking for a percussionist to round out the ensemble, Uman heard a recommendation from a colleague in Colombia, who’d said, “This guy from Peru, Jhair Sala, is beyond belief. You should check him out.”
“So I listened to some of his recordings,” Uman recalls. “I looked at his bio and I saw the people he’d played with.”
Sala, he explains, “is one of these people who came up through family lineage. Like in New Orleans, Peru has that same kind of thing. If your parents were musicians, then you’re expected to be a musician. He follows in that tradition. His mother is one of the great singers of Peru and, like his uncle, is one of the great percussionists, so he grew up in that environment.
“When he plays, it’s like the natural element of life just flows right out of him,” with “all of that history of the Afro-Peruvian culture, which is so powerful and delightful to listen to,” Uman says.
When Sala first started playing in the Convergence Project last year, “he showed he’s one of these people who’s really easy to relate to and who wants the chemistry to be a positive experience. So, when I heard him play, I was like, ‘This is the guy.’”
Sala, who plays a wide range of traditional Latin percussion instruments, is “known for his deep roots in Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Cuban traditions, blending them with a fresh, contemporary edge,” the news release says.
He has performed and recorded with Rubén Blades, Pedrito Martinez, Eric Clapton, and Steve Gadd, and he was twice named Rising Star Percussionist of the Year by Drum! Magazine.
Drawing from his mentors
Uman himself, according to the VJC release, is a “pianist and a composer who enjoys playing energetic rhythms and bold melodies that reflect his musical journey.
“His writing draws equally from the jazz traditions he absorbed through mentors like Sheila Jordan, Howard Brofsky, Mike Longo, and Jimmy Heath, and from the folkloric rhythms he encountered during years living in Colombia where he founded jazz studies programs at Universidad EAFIT and el Colegio de Música de Medellín.”
“The Convergence Project” name is from Uman’s “incorporation of rhythms such as cumbia, pasillo, bambuco, and currulao, with the North American styles he absorbed and studied in his youth,” he says in the news release. It’s essentially a mash-up of the styles he loves “where groove reigns supreme.”
The VJC concert and educational season runs from September through June. This summer, the VJC also offers an intensive vocal workshop from Thursday, July 23, to Sunday, July 26, with vocalist Charenee Wade, and will include a concert with her and Uman on July 23. Workshop participants will close the session with a concert.
Other VJC activities include a Music Under the Stars concert in collaboration with the Brattleboro Music Center. The VJC’s Big Band will perform repertoire from the Great American Songbook at the Retreat Farm on Saturday, July 11, with vocalist Peter Eldridge. The VJC Sextet will also appear as part of the Retreat Farm’s Food Truck Roundup on Thursday, July 23.
Tickets for the Saturday, June 13, Convergence Project concert at 7:30 p.m. at the Vermont Jazz Center, 72 Cotton Mill Hill, begin at $25 for general admission. To purchase tickets and for more information on the VJC, visit vtjazz.org or call 802-254-9088, ext. 1.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.