The India Cooke and Bill Crossman duo, known for its unique unrehearsed raw improvisational art form, weaved elements of various genres while maintaining an African-rooted jazz and blues backdrop.
“India and I are about total improv with no rehearsals,” said Crossman.
The Berkeley Art Festival presented a full monthly calendar of scheduled concerts featuring some of the most creative musicians, composers and writers in Berkeley who brought a cornucopia of vibrant talents for all audiences.
The mid-month October calendar featured violinist Cooke and pianist Crossman joined by special guest artist, world-renowned saxophonist Lewis Jordan in concert on Oct. 23.
Cooke and Crossman have been featured on KCSM-FM radio, recorded three CDs and have also performed together in Crossman’s multi-genre musically-improvised opera John Brown’s Truth.
Whether it’s classical or jazz, Cooke, plays a wide range of music.
She has performed in the San Francisco Bay Area symphony and opera orchestras, chamber ensembles and Broadway shows, and is known for sharing the stage as a featured soloist with Joe Williams and the Louie Bellson Orchestra.
Cooke has also played with music greats Sarah Vaughn, Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra, as well as Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros and many others.
As an educator, Cooke was an Artist-in-Residence at the San Francisco School of the Arts and currently teaches at the San Francisco Community Music Center, Mills College, Santa Clara Children’s Shelter and at her private studio.
“India is my teacher, but it’s the first time I’ve seen her in a live performance,” said Cooke’s student Susan Hevrdejs.  “I love the music.”
With whispers of the classical music integrated with the avant-garde, Cooke is known for putting her entire body into a performance. Her wild facial expressions, soft smiles and bursts of laughter, while playing high-pitched notes are indicative of her passion.
“I am so enjoying this,” exclaimed composer Mary Watkins.
With eyes closed, Crossman anticipated long enough to relinquish the spirit and go wherever the music takes him.
When his solo parts grow contemplative, it never lost its sense of inherent tension, internal drama and communicative strength.
Crossman’s compositions are sometimes a fusion of gospel, blues, classical and jazz.
“Bill always does ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’ and ‘Danse Macabre’ by C. Saint-Saens, but this performance was the best,” said classical musician Carrie Weick, who was sitting in the audience.
Crossman is a natural innovator in freely improvised jazz piano, a composer and educator. He has performed with some of the world’s greatest jazz musicians and appears in performance venues and festivals from coast to coast and internationally.
He currently teaches at Berkeley City College and the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC). Crossman has also hosted OPC’s monthly free jazz and improv open-mike sessions.
Crossman is also a member of several other bands, including B-FREE, the Ritual Resurrection Band and the Troublemakers Union.
Clad in Afrocentric attire, San Francisco-born saxophonist Lewis Jordan heated up the stage with the sounds of the saxophone in an explosion of jaw-dropping virtuosity with a postmodernist embrace of the past, present and future of jazz like no other.
“I am into appreciating the music the way India and Bill approaches it,” said Jordan. “Improvisational music comes from the jazz idiom. We are all steeped in music history and it all comes out with other things.”