"I pray for all creation.

I pray for all nations."

Frank A. Stokes Presents

The Awakening *Live*

Preview and download a live quintet performance:

The Awakening

Contact for booking and fan club information:

theawakeninglive@hotmail.com

The

Awakening

*Live*

Medicine Wheel symbol ® 2001 Frank A. Stokes

Frank A. Stokes combines Native American drum singers and dancers with his electric jazz orchestra, fusing traditional and modern elements, bringing to the stage personal dreams and visions of vivid color and full sonic spectrum exploration in an original production based on Mr. Stokes' compositions

Painting by Frank A. Stokes seen on the album Present Tense

Frank A. Stokes

Dan Walsh

Drums

Charli Persip and Dan Walsh

Eric Roos

Keyboards

The Awakening Horns

David W. Morgan

Glenn Makos

The evolution of The Awakening

The Sacred Journey of a Sonic Alchemist

By Angelo J. Falanga

Alan Freed signed this program at Brooklyn's RKO Theatre for a child born in March of 1954. One of his relatives worked there, so from the age of three Frank Stokes spent days watching the stage being set and nights watching from the wings. He remembers the glow of the spotlight on Jackie Wilson ten feet away, Jerry Lee Lewis playing with his feet, Little Richard, whose performances inspired him above all others, The Teenagers, Frank Stokes remembers his sadness at the passing of Frankie Lymon. Hosted by Alan Freed and Murray The K the shows Frank Stokes spent his youth watching from a vantage point where the singers walked past him to go from the dressing rooms to the stage, many shaking his hand and saying, "Aren't you up past your bedtime?" included performances by Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Everly Brothers, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, The Shirelles, The Ronettes, The Platters, The Flamingos, Dion and the Belmonts, and even Wayne Newton.

As Frank Stokes was introduced to music, so too came his introduction to the medicine traditions of his Navajo ancestors, through a living link to a long gone era. Frank's paternal grandfather was a dark skinned man, 5 feet 2 inches tall, born in 1876, shipped off at age eleven from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to be schooled, living until 1961 on the East Coast. At the age of fourteen Frank Stokes composed Old Ones Song, a piece his orchestra performs to this day. He bought his first bass, a Zimgar, a copy of the Hoffner bass, in a pawn shop for $63 and began playing wherever there was a jam, the Prospect Park bandshell, cover bands in grind houses, churning out Rolling Stones covers behind strippers, in a nine piece funk band called Osmosis, in a trio with Neon Leon and Mark Bell, ultimately becoming a key player in the New York underground club scene of the 70's.

Frank Stokes played bass for Kongress from 1976 when the late Geofrey Crozier joined the act, and continued to play with Geofrey Crozier until 1979 in a second group known as Shanghai Side Show. Geofrey Crozier, an Australian illusionist, the inventor of the Dancing Cane, arrived in New York in 1973 to present the Moon-Rock Circus, described by the New York Times in November of 1973 as, "A combination of stage magic, melodrama, pantomime and rock music that had those invited to the preview this week alternately laughing, cheering and whistling. The act is a successful merger of music and magic that would make Alice Cooper envious." Frank Stokes developed an ability to compose on the spot in costume while running one of the loudest bass rigs in the city, amid cauldrons and incense, live animals, turkeys and chickens being pulled safely from the fire, rats perched on Geofrey Crozier's shoulders, an imposing sight as he stood well over six feet tall, choreography, pyrotechnics including a flamethrower on Frank's bass and, in a painful reality that was no illusion, explosives the magician had strapped to his body and ignited as he sat in his electric chair at te end of the show. Kongress and Shanghai Side Show were headline acts, with The Dead Boys and countless others opening for them at venues including CBGB'S, Max's Kansas City, The Elgin Theater and on tours that put Frank Stokes in front of audiences as large as the 100,000 people who gathered at the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C., for a July 3, 1977 rally where Shanghai Side Show played until the lights went out at midnight on their last note. As Frank said of those days, "The lights would go down, I would start to play and I'd never know what to expect." Shanghai Side Show broke up at the end of a tour. Geofrey Crozier returned to Australia, where he died in 1981.

Frank Stokes spent much of the eighties on a vision quest, including long stretches of time alone in the Mojave Desert. He spent as much of his time as a painter and fine line illustrator as he did making music while running a recording studio. To know the man is to understand how his instrument could speak to him once he got back to Brooklyn, telling him that if he put the Badass Bridge back on his bass would give him a song. The song that flowed out at a rehearsal is called Sacred Journey. It's a beautiful samba now part of every show. Frank Stokes came back from the desert ready for something new, learning to read music and going from audition to audition, when a chance encounter changed his life. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Frank was walking on the Bowery past a set of basketball courts, headed for CBGB'S. A lone figure caught Frank's eye, a man clutching a basketball to his stomach, sitting under a tree to wait for a pickup game. The man was Jaco Pastorius. Frank introduced himself. They chatted. Frank gave Jaco his number, never expecting to hear from him again. That Friday night the phone rang. Jaco took a cab out to Brooklyn. They jammed in the studio Frank ran. This was after Weather Report, roughly two and a half years before his passing, by Frank's recollection. Yes, they were friends, they picked up their basses and played together, but Frank does not speak often of what transpired. Jaco came to the studio wearing tennis shoes fished out of a dumpster and left wearing one of Frank's shirts because his needed a week of soaking in Pine Sol before anyone would go near it. That first Friday night in the studio Jaco played Chromatic Fantasy on Frank's brown bass, a 1967 Fender Precision. At the time Frank had just written Prelude. He was hesitant at first to play the song for Jaco, thinking the bass part perhaps came a bit too close to Portrait Of Tracy, but Jaco's immediate reaction was, "No, that's a whole different song." Jaco urged Frank to get a band together and get his sound out. Jaco left for Florida, keeping in touch over the phone. When word of Jaco's passing came Frank put his bass down and didn't play a note for a year.

Through a series of auditions, jams, recording sessions and gigs one quote sums up the challenge Frank faced, yearning, without a trace of ego, he spoke of these times saying, "I need the best musicians in the world to play this music." Under the name Present Tense Frank had a group win the battle of the bands at The Village Gate their first time out. More gigs followed, then tradgedy struck again as the talented, imaginative drummer Frank had been building the band with died of a stroke with time booked for the recording of a studio album as his guitar player left the project. Frank Stokes rehearsed three different groups of players in the three weeks then recorded eleven original compositions and a cover of My Favorite Things in a single day. Frank auditioned two hundred people who'd responded to his ad and began jamming with other bandleaders, one of whom introduced him to David W. Morgan. On saxophone, clarinet and flute Dave Morgan has become a remarkable interpreter of Frank's melodies. He's been praised by New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff for his work onstage with Ornette Coleman. He's worked for years on Broadway and for the Tony Awards. Within The Awakening he does what Frank has always dreamed of having someone do, he listens, he understands and he plays, sometimes powerfully, sometimes softly, but always beautifully. With Dave Morgan on board the next key player to join the band first appeared on a Sunday morning. When the New York Marathon winds its way through the city musicians play for the runners as they pass, over 30,000 of them. For the 1996 New York Marathon a sub for the drummer who appeared on the Present Tense album set his kit up in front of an apartment building on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. Dan Walsh has been playing drums with The Awakening ever since. He's a Berklee graduate with a degree in Commercial Arranging. Onstage and in the studio Frank Stokes and Dan Walsh have an absolutely telepathic bond, an ability to lock in and never lose one another that's critical given the freedom of expression when it comes time to solo. Eric Roos is an accomplished, classically trained pianist and a working, professional producer in his own right who plays in The Awakening most often on synthesizer. Eric had been invited to a show by Dan Walsh. He caught the ending, left for his native Switzerland and joined the band upon his return to New York. Given the choice of whom he'd want to play with, Dave Morgan invited Glenn Makos to join The Awakening. Glenn Makos is a highly accomplished jazz educator, teaching at an exclusive private school. He is a technically flawless and beautifully expressive trumpeter who shares the key ability anyone who plays Frank's music has to have, the ability to listen and understand, to sight read and stretch out.

On July 21, 2003 in a large midtown Manhattan rehearsal space Frank Stokes began the process of . This bold move of combining world class jazz musicians with an award winning Native American dance, vocal and drum ensemble has given Frank Stokes the opportunity to bring to life his original vision of this eclectic project.

Dance Tunes

On November 4, 2002 The Awakening's first studio album, Dance Tunes, was premiered on 88.9 WEAA-FM, Baltimore MD, by George "Doc" Manning on his program, "In The Tradition." In an extensive interview following the broadcast of six of the eight songs on the album Frank Stokes spoke about his music and the vision behind it. These are his words, taken from the interview:

"I'm using this album to re-understand for people, for people to understand that dance served a purpose. The purpose was to pray. Before the drum, before any instrument, we danced. We prayed and we danced and celebrated, we dance, you know, weddings, baptisms, Bar Mitzvahs, all those things, we dance, it's part of the prayer ceremony, and part of life. Every piece of the Earth a human being has danced, it still goes on today, and that's why I wanted to celebrate the dance through this record. Each song has the choreography in my mind. I do the artwork, I have drawings on how they should look... My gifts that the Creator has given me, I mean… The music comes to me in dreams, in the air, in the bird song, in traffic, you know what I'm saying, I hear it, walking down the block, when I wake up in the morning, you know, there's birds that sing at three A.M., I've heard them, and they speak. I've been playing in New York and what, all over the country for like, since, like Seventy or something, I would play hundreds of hours of tape that I'll never see. I still have fifty tunes to record of my own. I have a whole catalog of my own songs, I'm getting ready this week to start up again, do another record, plus, you've got the live record, that's just edited, I dig the recording. I like playing, 'cause every note is a prayer and a gift. It's always a gift."

The Awakening *Live*

Now remastered, The Awakening *LIVE* is a collection of powerful, long and flowing Frank Stokes originals performed in 1997 and 1998 by quartet and quintet lineups at club gigs and also in an intimate art gallery cafe setting where the true sound of the instruments is captured with minimal sound reinforcement. The album begins a pulsating ten minute romp through the band's signature song, The Awakening. Next there's a genuine treat, The Broadway Groove. The sights and sounds of New York City inspired this piece. Imagine the song beginning like that first step out of a taxicab then walking, weaving through a tapestry of people and vehicles, of shop windows, fresh food smells coming from the restaurants, the flowers for sale in front of a bodega, onward the song runs for twelve minutes, with a gorgeous muted trumpet solo from Glenn Makos. Next there's Dream. The song is built around a subtle, nuanced bass line beautifully accented by the drumming of Dan Walsh. Eric Roos blends a seamless keyboard performance with the sensitive, intuitive trumpet playing of Glenn Makos and a standout performance by Dave Morgan on flute, perfect to the last note. Fiesta is another ten blazing minutes of fun, a song that showcases the Latin influence on Frank's writing, a catchy, danceable tune with a surprisingly powerful flute performance by Dave Morgan. The next song is a cafe recording, from the first gig Glenn Makos played. Prelude is one of those special songs, a truly trance inducing meditation as Frank uses processing to orchestrate the sound of his fretless bass. There's a swinging B section, ambience and structure, improvisation and strutting, a true fulfillment of what Frank wanted when he played the song for Jaco. The album concludes with Then there's another of the cafe recordings, a song called Trees. The song begins with a beautiful bass solo and something going SPLAT. It's the sound of a knife and fork accidentally being swept off the table next to a microphone, followed by the laugh out loud reaction of Dave Morgan, laughter that set the tone for what was to follow, a high energy smooth and flowing tune with plenty of improvisation leading to the album's final track, a truly inspired twelve minute performance of Sacred Journey.

"Healing energy in all directions..."

ORIGINAL ARTWORK

"The Awakening *LIVE* medicine wheel symbol ® 2001, Frank A. Stokes, ADF Publishing

All rights reserved. 2005, Frank A. Stokes, ADF Publishing

Frank A. Stokes is a member of ASCAP