Afro-Brazilian Percussion Workshops with Bloco Gavião
The Robert E. Brown Center for World Music is pleased to offer Spring 2022 dates for our community samba group - Bloco Gavião -
Bettendorf Public Library is pleased to collaborate with the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music to present virtual performances by campus and community based global artists in and around the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Part II features performers of SPICMACAY Illinois, a registered student organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign promoting classical and contemporary performing arts of India in the Midwestern United States. Instruments featured are "travel" sitar, tabla, Carnatic vocal music, mridangam, and bansuri.
Video link available until the end of October:
https://youtu.be/sNgGOe7UXcs
The Robert E. Brown Center for World Music is a program of the School of Music at Illinois promoting understanding and appreciation of global music and dance. Established with a focus on active study of performance with tradition-bearing, folkloric artists, the center has emerged as a program embracing contemporary extensions of these forms and more. The center is dedicated to campus and community engagement programming that fosters respect and admiration for expressive culture across the globe as a presenter of performances, artist residencies and workshops. For more information, please visit cwm.illinois.edu
2021 Global Gathering World Tour is sponsored by The Bettendorf Public Library Foundation, Quad City Bank & Trust, Morgan Stanley, HNI Corporation, Bettendorf Rotary and Twin State.
The Fall 2021 Nick Rudd Music Experience features a series of programs on music improvisation with New England-based guitarist Joe Morris, who is widely recognized as one of the most original and important improvising artists of our time.
On Wednesday, October 6th Morris will offer a lecture at 4p and performance at 7:30p, followed on Friday, October 8 with an Improvisers Exchange workshop at 3p.
Please note that COVID-19 protocols of the University of Illinois are being followed and require masks to be worn throughout the duration of the programs.
Morris' short residency at Illinois begins with a lecture at Spurlock Museum at 600 S Gregory Street in Urbana. His presentation will draw from and expand on his 2012 book “Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music,” a concise volume on music improvisation developed (at the time) from nearly four decades of experience as a student, performer, curator, and educator in the field. “Perpetual Frontier” reflects Morris’ deep investigation into the methodologies of the field and encourages a practice that continually invites new possibilities.
Later on the same day as the lecture, Morris will perform in a special double-bill event hosted by the Humanities Research Institute at Levis Faculty Center. Joining Morris is Chicago-based cellist Tomeka Reid, featured on the recent duo release “Combinations” on RogueArt (2020).
San Francisco Bay Area musicians Larry Ochs (saxophone) & Don Robinson (drums) are also featured on this special night of improvised music. Ochs and Robinson are touring in support of their second duo release “A Civil Right” on ESP-Disk' (2021).
Program curator Jason Finkelman states, "Not only will these two ensembles offer listeners an opportunity to hear distinctly different directions in Free Music, they will illustrate performance aspects of Morris’ earlier lecture through a first-time collaboration among all four players."
An Improvisers Exchange workshop with Joe Morris will be offered on Friday, October 8th from 3-5p in the Orchestra Rehearsal Room at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. This workshop is open to musicians of any level of experience and stylistic background. For more information please contact Jason Finkelman at finkelma[at]illinois.edu
These programs were made possible by the Nick Rudd Music Fund. Initiated by Rudd’s surviving wife Gina Manola and stepson Townes Durbin with a goal of the fund reaching endowment levels to ensure Nick Rudd Music Experience becomes established as an ongoing and permanent part of the music culture of our campus and community. To make a contribution towards the endowment please contact David Allen at the School of Music. allend[at]illinois.edu
These programs were also made possible with support from Humanities Research Institute, Improvisers Exchange, School of Music, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and Spurlock Museum of World Cultures.
HRI Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/37D8yd7vW
HRI event listings:
OCTOBER 6 | 4:00 p.m.
"Properties of Free Music" at Spurlock Museum
https://bit.ly/3CRoRNx
OCTOBER 6 | 7:30 p.m.
Performance: Joe Morris & Tomeka Reid Duo | Larry Ochs & Don Robinson Duo at Levis Faculty Center
https://bit.ly/3EKm62f
OCTOBER 8 | 3:00–5:00 p.m.
Improvisers Exchange Workshop with Joe Morris at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Orchestra Rehearsal Room
https://bit.ly/3ELkTHJ
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About Joe Morris
Downbeat Magazine called guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser Joe Morris “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in WIRE magazine, called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”
He was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music.
Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, Jaimie Branch, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Ikue Mori, Charmaine Lee, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Sunny Murray, Zeena Parkins, Joe McPhee and many others.
Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 180 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil , Korea and Japan.
He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).
About Tomeka Reid
Described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by the New York Times, cellist and composer TOMEKA REID has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years.
Reid grew up outside of Washington D.C., but her musical career began after moving to Chicago in 2000. Her work with Nicole Mitchell and various Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-related groups proved influential. By focusing on developing her craft in countless improvisational contexts, Reid has achieved a stunning musical fluency. She is a Foundation of the Arts (2019) and 3Arts Awardee (2016), and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017.
Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015, with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, a vibrant showcase for the cellist’s improvisational acumen as well as her dynamic arrangements and compositional ability. The quartet’s second album, Old New, released in Oct 2019 on Cuneiform Records, has been described as “fresh and transformative--its songs striking out in bold, lyrical directions with plenty of Reid’s singularly elegant yet energetic and sharp-edged bow work.” Another reviewer noted that “while Reid’s compositional and technical gifts transcend jazz, they exemplify the tradition wondrously.”
Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton (ZIM SEXTET) and Roscoe Mitchell (ROSCOE MITCHELL QUARTET, ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO), as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell (BLACK EARTH ENSEMBLE, ARTIFACTS), vocalist Dee Alexander (EVOLUTION ENSEMBLE), and drummer Mike Reed (LOOSE ASSEMBLY, LIVING BY LANTERNS, ARTIFACTS). She co-leads the adventurous string trio HEAR IN NOW, with violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Silvia Bolognesi, and in 2013 launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, a semi-annual three-day international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. In the Fall of 2019 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.
About Larry Ochs and Don Robinson
Celebrating the recent release of their second and definitive duo recording, "A Civil Right", the San Francisco Bay Area’s Larry Ochs – Don Robinson Duo will perform pieces steeped in the spirit of free jazz and improvisation. Ochs is a founding member of the great Rova Saxophone Quartet, one of the Bay Area’s avant-garde treasures since 1978. Robinson - “a percussive dervish,” according to Coda Magazine – has worked with luminaries such as Cecil Taylor, Glenn Spearman, Lisle Ellis, Wadada Leo Smith, and was the drummer of choice for ROVA’s revivification of John Coltrane’s Ascension. From The Wire (Bill Meyer, 2021): “Even at its most restrained, the playing is forcefully muscular, with Ochs leveraging emotional impact from the grit in his tone on both tenor and sopranino, and Robinson operating with the economy of a long distance runner. “
Bettendorf Public Library is pleased to collaborate with the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music to present virtual performances by campus and community based global artists in and around the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Part 1 features community artists Jean-René Balekita from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Africa, Bourema “Ibrahim” Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso, West Africa, and Denis Chiaramonte from São Paulo, Brazil. Each musician introduces and demonstrates an instrument they play, followed by performances in collaboration with Jason Finkelman, artistic director of Global Arts Performance Initiatives at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Video link available until the end of September:
https://youtu.be/w1c3Goy_nGg
The Robert E. Brown Center for World Music is a program of the School of Music at Illinois promoting understanding and appreciation of global music and dance. Established with a focus on active study of performance with tradition-bearing, folkloric artists, the center has emerged as a program embracing contemporary extensions of these forms and more. The center is dedicated to campus and community engagement programming that fosters respect and admiration for expressive culture across the globe as a presenter of performances, artist residencies and workshops. For more information, please visit cwm.illinois.edu
2021 Global Gathering World Tour is sponsored by The Bettendorf Public Library Foundation, Quad City Bank & Trust, Morgan Stanley, HNI Corporation, Bettendorf Rotary and Twin State.