Friday, February 15, 2008    8PM    $26
Jo Long Theatre for the Performing Arts
At The Carver Community Cultural Center

The Langston Hughes Project - Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, a masterwork written in twelve-parts by Hughes in the early 1960s. Brought to life in a multimedia production showcases Langston Hughes at his best: insightful, wise, poignant, funny and soulful. On stage the audience experiences the mood of the Harlem Renaissance in this 800-line suite of poems illustrated by the spoken word, accompanied by a live quartet and the large as life visual illustrations on screen of Hughes' world through his collaborators and contemporaries. Music director and composer Ron McCurdy orchestrates the original musical based on the music cues suggested by Langston Hughes.

Dr. Ronald C. McCurdy is Chairman of the Jazz Studies Department and Professor of Music in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California (USC) and is Past President of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE). Prior to his appointment at USC he served as Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at USC.For more information visit www.ronmccurdy.com.