Music Department

Monica M. Tinyo ’13 interviews Noah Baerman (Nov. 2)

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This Friday, renowned jazz pianist and composer, and Wesleyan University Jazz Ensemble Coach, Noah Baerman will present a free concert entitled “Jazz with a Conscience” at the Green Street Arts Center as part of Wesleyan’s year-long celebration Music & Public Life. Monica M. Tinyo ’13 talked with him about this upcoming show.

Noah Baerman

“The concert presents music without lyrics, as vehicles for social consciousness,” Mr. Baerman explains. While two pieces will have vocal accompaniment by Jessica Best ’14, “the goal is to draw attention to instrumental music as emotionally resonant and capable for social consciousness and change.”

“People see the most direct connection between music and social causes in vocal music, thinking in terms of lyrics that are political in nature. Although I do some of that as well, my primary medium is instrumental jazz. The challenge is to evoke the same [emotional resonance of a piece with lyrics] as a piece without lyrics. Although in some ways it’s a challenge, it is also an opportunity. The reason I work with instrumental jazz is not because I dislike working with singers or writing lyrics. It is that a lot of what I am trying to express is emotional substance that is difficult to articulate. To me, a big part of why doing music is important or relevant is to express emotions that have no other vehicle for expression.”

Mr. Baerman is also participating in the formation of a non-profit called Resonant Motion. He explains, “The premise behind it is to explore and nurture the relationship between music and social causes, personal transformation and other extra-musical content. Music can be a means of raising awareness and inspiring people about causes that aren’t themselves related to music, whether it be as simple as discussing the connected cause during a performance or in the liner notes of a recording, or something that is more involved or integrated.”

“I had an experience over the weekend that validated the [communicative power of music]. I was asked to play something at a memorial service for my aunt. I took on the task of composing a piece in her memory and honor for this event (I will also being playing it at the concert at Greet Street this Friday). I called it Ripples thinking about the ripple effect of acts that affected people several generations removed from those who came in direct contact with her. I was a little self conscious about how palatable it would be for those in attendance [who did not prefer modern jazz] but it came off very positively. I was surprised by how many people were moved by the piece. What that validated for me is how being sincerely and uninhibitedly emotional with what you are trying to communicate can break through barriers of what people believe their stylistic preferences to be. Although this seems counterintuitive in the assumption that the most direct way to communicate with someone is verbal, [music] has a capacity to reach people in a uniquely direct way.”

The Green Street Arts Center of Wesleyan University is an ideal setting for Noah Baerman’s Jazz with a Conscience. “Green Street offers an eclectic mix of events, exhibitions, classes, and workshops to a diverse population [in a] three-story, state-of-the-art educational facility that includes a sound recording studio, black-box theater, computer and media labs, and dance and art studios. [It] has grown from a collaborative spirit of Wesleyan University, the City of Middletown, the North End Action Team, and other stakeholders who recognized their community’s potential to rise up and become a beacon of change.”*

We invite you to become part of Green Street’s unique community and join us this Friday at 8pm to celebrate Noah Baerman and his trio partners, bassist Henry Lugo and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza.

*Quotation from Green Street Arts Center’s website.

Noah Baerman: Jazz With a Conscience

Friday, November 2, 2012 at 8pm
Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green Street, Middletown
FREE!

Navaratri Honors its Founder at 36th Annual Festival (Oct. 17-21)

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Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge discusses working with T. Viswanathan, and the events of the 36th annual Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan (October 17-21, 2012).  

T. Viswanathan

I had the great fortune of working with T. Viswanathan soon after I arrived at Wesleyan to plan the annual Navaratri Festival. And in the two years I worked with him before he died in 2002, I learned so much.  I learned about the number of contacts Viswa had around the world, and how so many of them were interested in performing at Wesleyan because of our reputation as a place that honors and celebrates Indian music and dance.  I learned about Viswa’s family lineage and about his sister, the astonishing Balasaraswati, a bharata natyam dancer of the highest distinction, and his brother Ranganathan, a spectacular mridangam player.  And I learned about his talented students, from Jon B. Higgins, former Center for the Arts Director, who was one of the most renowned Carnatic singers in the world, to David Nelson, a mridangam player who is an Artist in Residence in the Music Department.

Viswa taught at Wesleyan from 1975 to 2002, and he founded the Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan 36 years ago. A panel of his students will open the festival on Wednesday at 4:15pm in CFA Hall and discuss aspects of his profound legacy to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his passing. Wesleyan Music Department faculty members B. Balasubrahmaniyan and David Nelson will be joined by Josepha Cormack Viswanathan Ph.D. ’92 and Douglas Knight ’70.

The festival continues with a concert of South Indian vocal music on Friday at 8pm by B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, joined by David Nelson on mridangam [and violinist L. Ramakrishnan] in Crowell Concert Hall. On Saturday, T.V. Sankaranarayanan, one of the most widely sought after Carnatic vocalists in the world, comes to Wesleyan from India to perform at 7pm in Crowell Concert Hall [along with Vittal Ramamurthy on violin and Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam on mridangam]. The festival closes on Sunday with a puja (Hindu worship service) at 11am in World Music Hall, and a bharata natyam dance concert by Rama Vaidyanathan in Crowell Concert Hall. Ms. Vaidyanathan was scheduled to perform at last year’s Navaratri Festival, which had to be cut short due to a rare October snow storm.

We invited Hari Krishnan, Assistant Professor of Dance, to write to us about Sunday’s performance by Rama Vaidyanathan.  Here’s what he said:

Rama is a leading Bharatanatyam dancer from her generation in India today. Through sheer hard work and constantly creating new innovative dances, Rama has transformed the traditional solo dance of Bharatanatyam into a vibrant, dynamic and engaging solo dance style—current and relevant for a 21st century global audience. This is why she is much sought after by the most avant-garde theaters/festivals in Europe to the most conservative classical arts-friendly venues in India. Rama’s Bharatanatyam cuts across linguistic, social, political and cultural boundaries.

Rama is also a dear friend and I remember in the summer of 2010 when we were on the teaching faculty for a dance residency in the U.K., the students had insisted that we perform together. Not having prepared any piece, we improvised right there and performed a nouveau-Bharatanatyam duet to the delight of all present.

Being a contemporary dance and Bharatanatyam dance artist myself, I wasn’t too sure if Rama would be game to improvising a duet with me involving close physical touch. I was struck at Rama’s versatility—not only does she collaborate passionately  but she also boldly brings her art into new experimental terrains while still maintaining her identity of that of a classical Bharatanatyam dancer. She is able to bring out the inherent beauty of the Bharatanatyam form with her creativity and genuine love for the dance.

I am delighted Rama is performing at Wesleyan with her team of stellar musicians [vocalist Indu Sivankutty Nair, violinist Vikram Raghukumar, K. Sivakumar on nattuvangam, and Kalapurakkal Arun Kumar on mridangam], offering her dazzling, highly individual brand of Bharatanatyam.  Wesleyan is truly in for a treat of innovation, grace and pure joy—a Bharatanataym 21st century gazelle will be strutting her stuff on the Crowell Concert Hall stage this Sunday afternoon.

36th annual Navaratri Festival
www.wesleyan.edu/navaratri

Colloquium: The Wesleyan Legacy of T. Viswanathan (1927-2002)
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 4:15pm

CFA Hall 

FREE!

Henna and Chaat hosted by Shakti
Thursday, October 18, 2012 from 7pm to 8:30pm
Olin Library Lobby
FREE!

B. Balasubrahmaniyan: Vocal Music of South India
Friday, October 19, 2012 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Pre-concert talk on the music of T. Viswanathan at 7:15pm by Wesleyan Ph.D. Candidate Joseph Getter

T.V. Sankaranarayanan Concert
Saturday, October 20, 2012 at 7pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Saraswati Puja (Hindu Ceremony)
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 11am
World Music Hall
FREE!

Rama Vaidyanathan: Bharata Natyam Dance
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 3pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Monica M. Tinyo ’13 on MiddletownRemix

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CFA Arts Administration Intern Monica M. Tinyo ’13 talks about “MiddletownRemix”, which is part of “Music & Public Life”, a year-long campus and community-wide exploration celebrating and studying the sounds, words, and spirit of music.

Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Technology can foster insularity and just as easily foster limitless synthesis. MiddletownRemix utilizes the synthetic faculty of technology and the internet, inviting all members of the Middletown community to share and remix the sounds of Middletown in an open, online forum. The program, part of Wesleyan’s year-long campus and community-wide exploration Music & Public Life, lets all residents express and share their experiences living in greater Middletown through one minute sound recordings that are organized by theme or location. The website brings together a perspectival spectrum of Middletown sounds to form a cohesive and collaborative record of Middletown as a place and as a creatively-charged community.

Sound bites can be posted and remixed by anyone—high school students or retirees, new residents or residents who have been in Middletown all their lives. MiddletownRemix, a subset of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s UrbanRemix program, “geo-tags,” organizes and presents every sound visually by the location of the recording as points on a map online. The creators of MiddletownRemix have made certain their website is easy to use and accessible: there is a step-by-step guide to recording and downloading sounds, a smartphone app, and by the end of this month, anyone will be able to check out an iPhone or iTouch for recording purposes from Green Street Arts Center.

I had the opportunity to talk with Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts Program Manager Erinn Roos-Brown about MiddletownRemix. Erinn explained that Music & Public Life, and specifically MiddletownRemix, was created as a celebration of music in Middletown and music as activism. MiddletownRemix acts as a creative solution that allows the Wesleyan campus and greater community to engage their surrounding environment through music in a more interactive way.

Erinn explained further that all participants of MiddletownRemix can become composers in their own right, either by documenting sound or creating new acoustic identities in mash-ups. The sound recordings and remixes ask the questions: what is music, what is Middletown, and how do the sounds and remixes reinforce or redefine communal and personal perspectives on Middletown?

Participants are challenged to think not only about the sounds around them, but also about four Middletown locations: Main Street, Middlesex Hospital, the North End neighborhood, and the Connecticut River. There are also monthly themes like “Elections” or “Emotions” that can be taken as literally or abstractly as one would like. While participants can be guided by these themes and locations, they have the flexibility to record whatever sounds they believe represent their city.

Music and Public Life has partnered with Middletown Public Schools, Green Street Arts Center, and Middletown’s arts stakeholders group to create the broader range of participants for MiddletownRemix. The DJs of Wesleyan radio station WESU 88.1 FM will air the sounds and remixes that they find the most interesting every month. At Wesleyan University specifically, MiddletownRemix is incorporated into the Music Department‘s curricula by Professor Ronald Kuivila and Assistant Professor Paula Matthusen. More broadly, Music and Public Life is incorporated into every aspect of campus life at Wesleyan, from classes to performances to colloquia.

MiddletownRemix’s year-long exploration will culminate with a community-wide celebration on Saturday, May 11, 2013, featuring the world premiere of a composition for laptop orchestra by Jason Freeman of UrbanRemix.

MiddletownRemix.org
Listen to this week’s featured sounds and remixes, then start gathering your own sounds: sign-up, download the free app for your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android phone, and start recording!

Music & Public Life
www.wesleyan.edu/mpl
A year long campus and community-wide exploration, including concerts, lectures and discussions, symposia and colloquia.

A Star of Radio Kabul Performs at Wesleyan (September 28)

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Ustad Farida Mahwash is an astonishing woman.  She was a secretary in the 1960s at Radio Kabul and someone heard her singing.  Before she knew what had happened, she was singing on the radio and soon became one of Afghanistan’s most beloved singers.  In the 1970s, the Afghan government awarded her the title of “Master” or “Ustad,” the first woman in the country ever to be awarded this title.

But in 1991, after the Taliban took over, she was forced to flee Afghanistan and went to Pakistan until she was given political asylum in the United States.  She settled in Fremont, California, a suburb of San Francisco, in a neighborhood that is referred to as “Little Kabul.”

Voices of Afghanistan
“Voices of Afghanistan” performs Friday, September 28, in Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan

The internationally renowned director, Peter Sellars, asked Ustad Mahwash to perform inan evening that also featured Dawn Upshaw in George Crumb’s Winds of Destiny, about a female veteran returning from the war in Afghanistan.  The ensemble that performed with her during those performances became Voices of Afghanistan, now on its first U.S. tour.  On Friday night, Wesleyan audiences will have the opportunity to hear instruments and music that are rarely seen in this country.

There will be a pre-concert talk at 7:15pm given by Wesleyan Professor of Music Mark Slobin. Slobin is the author of Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan and is one of the foremost scholars of Afghani music of the 1960s, said to be the cultural and political golden age of Afghanistan. Slobin explains that with the plethora of languages and ethnicities in Afghanistan, unification was difficult but crucial. The creation of a popular music style, played on the national radio station Radio Afghanistan, aided in Afghani cultural unification. The music style takes from both localized folk music and nineteenth century sub-continental courtly music, what Slobin calls “light classical Indian music.” Ustad Mahwash was a star of this new popular music style and consequently an icon in Afghanistan at the time. Although Mahwash has spent a large part of her life outside of Afghanistan, her music has continued to be a reflection of the 1960s “golden age,” evoking nostalgia in the Afghani people and giving an authentic snapshot of Afghanistan in the 1960s through the lens of evocative and beautiful music.

 

Voices of Afghanistan

New England Premiere
Featuring Ustad Farida Mahwash, Homayoun Sakhi
& The Sakhi Ensemble:
Khalil Ragheb, harmonium
Pervez Sakhi, tula (flute)
Abbos Kosimov, doyra (frame drum)
Zmarai Aref, Afghan tabla

Friday, September 28, 2012 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
Pre-performance talk by Wesleyan Professor of Music Mark Slobin at 7:15pm
$22 general public; $18 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty & staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Buy tickets online.

“The ensemble’s music, alive with cyclic tabla rhythms and spiraling rubab phrases, somehow echoed the sounds and intensity of the times.”

—The New York Times

Vocalist Ustad Farida Mahwash, the only woman to receive the title of “master” in Central or South Asia, is celebrated around the globe for her exquisite approach to poetic ghazals (folk songs). Artistic Director and rubab (double-chambered lute) virtuoso Homayoun Sakhi creates an acoustically rich crossroads for sawol-jawab (an interplay of questions and answers), exploring traditional and contemporary Afghan melodies on the inaugural tour of Voices of Afghanistan, which includes the musicians of The Sakhi Ensemble on tabla, harmonium, doyra (frame drum) and tula(flute). A Crowell Concert Series event presented by the Music Department and the Center for the Arts.

Watch and listen to a music video for the song “Josh,” composed by Homayoun Sakhi. The song features Homayoun Sakhi and Abbos Kosimov of Voices of Afghanistan.

Voices of Afghanistan is the first performance of Music & Public Life, a year-long campus and community-wide exploration of sounds, words, and the spirit of music in public. Music & Public Life consists of concerts, workshops, gatherings, and courses, all designed to cross disciplines and to engage the campus and Greater Middletown communities. For more information, please visit www.wesleyan.edu/mpl

Fall Events include World, New England & Connecticut Premieres, Navaratri Festival

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Rama Vaidyanathan performs on October 21, 2012 as part of the 36th annual Navaratri Festival

Over the course of the next year, a campus-wide steering committee has put together a far-reaching series of global performances, talks and participatory projects, all with the intention of bringing us into an examination of the role of Music & Public Life. We will celebrate and study the sounds, words and spirit of music in public at the local, national and transnational levels, all designed to cross disciplines and to engage the campus and community-at-large. From performances by Middletown’s own Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem to the legendary Hugh Masekela; showcasing student research in the role of music in the current political campaigns; to the creation of MiddletownRemix–there are points of entry for everyone.

In September, we feature dance and theater companies who are exploring the role of the audience as actively engaged in the live creative process of the theatrical event. In ZviDance’s Zoom, patrons use their smartphones to integrate their own photos and text into the work; in Anonymous Ensemble’s Liebe Love Amour!, the audience is engaged in constructing the “performance script.”

October and November bring the return of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women in a stunning work she co-created with Nora Chipaumire (visible) that features an international cast of all-star dancers; as well as the CFA’s commission of a work by the fiercely interdisciplinary writer/director Rinde Eckert (this year’s winner of an inaugural Duke Performing Artist Award). The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy has been developed with students and faculty in Music, Animal Studies and Neuroscience and is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Creative Campus Initiative.

It’s a robust fall, rich with work that brings us into new conversations with art and its possibilities. We hope you’ll join us!

Best regards,

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

A Beautiful Mystery: David Liebman Group (July 19)

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As some of you may know, in addition to my work as the Press & Marketing Manager at the Center for the Arts, I am also a drummer/percussionist, composer and bandleader. Several of my projects are improvisational ensembles that feature the crossing of genre borderlines, including jazz, funk/fusion, and rock. I am always excited when Wesleyan features jazz artists—from Charles Lloyd (who was one of David Liebman’s teachers), Kenny Barron, Sherrie Maricle, Anthony Braxton, and Jay Hoggard, to Lionel Loueke, Taylor Ho Bynum and Noah Baerman—so I was happy when I heard that the summer programming committee had selected Mr. Liebman’s group as one of the evening performances this month, at the suggestion of Gene Bozzi. Mr. Liebman’s group has explored a wide variety of contemporary styles, ranging from bebop and free jazz to fusion and Brazilian.

At Wesleyan, Mr. Bozzi is a Private Lessons Teacher for percussion/drums, and the Music Department Chair at the Center for Creative Youth, a summer residential arts program here on campus. He is also the principal timpanist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (one of my previous employers). Over the weekend, Gene shared with me a bit about his work as a jazz sideman:

“I met Dave Liebman in the late 1970’s, when I was playing drums in a local Hartford group called Jazz Icarus. We were just out of college, and trying to get our ‘jazz chops’ together, but fortunate enough to score one night a week at Mad Murphy’s on Union Place. We would bring Dave in as our guest artist and give him all the money for the gig. It was like on the job training for us, we learned a lot. He would talk about his gigs with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones. I am thrilled that the Center of the Arts is bringing in artists of this caliber to perform and interact with our Center for Creative Youth students.”

David Liebman, Miles Davis, and Michael Henderson in 1973.

I first remember hearing David Liebman’s sax playing during the spring of my junior year of college in 1998. I was studying music at Syracuse University, and graduate student/saxophonist Chris Mannigan put Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974 – a Miles Davis remix album by producer/bassist Bill Laswell – on the stereo at a party. I soon sought out the original albums On the Corner (1972) and Get Up With It (1974). Mr. Liebman also appears on Miles’ live album Dark Magus, recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1974.

Writer Alan Bisbort talked to David Liebman this past Saturday morning, following Mr. Liebman’s return from a tour that had stops in Austria, Finland, Switzerland, and Italy:

Liebman thinks what makes a “classic” recording is something of a beautiful mystery.

“Look at [John Coltrane]. He recorded his Giant Steps and then played on Miles’ Kind of Blue within a month of each other. Both are totally different, both are now musical milestones. And yet, if he thought about how they’d be received he probably never would have gotten out of bed in the morning,” says Liebman laughing. “There was a lot of traffic for musicians back then. Each session was a musical challenge, but you are also making a living.”

Liebman promises a “variety of things” at the Wesleyan gig.

“It really depends on the audience, the vibe, the size and even the sound of the room. I don’t really know until I see all this,” said Liebman. “I’ll have my martini, then check out the crowd from backstage and draw up a set list. I can quote from a huge repertoire, everything from Ornette [Coleman] to [Antonio Carlos] Jobim to Cole Porter.”

You can read the rest of Alan’s article in the print edition of the Advocate on July 19 (or online here), and then head to Crowell Concert Hall that night to hear David Liebman’s group, which features guitarist Vic Juris, bassist Tony Marino and drummer Marko Marcinko.

David Liebman Group
Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 8pm

Crowell Concert Hall
$22 general public; $19 seniors, Wesleyan faculty & staff; $10 students

Peter Hadley discusses WesWinds (May 8)

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Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge talks to Private Lessons Teacher Peter Hadley about directing the Wesleyan Wind Ensemble, who perform a spring concert on May 8, 2012.

In 2000, Angel Gil-Ordóñez was the new Music Director of the Wesleyan University Orchestra and Peter Hadley was a Ph.D. student.  The two were talking and Angel said, “Peter, Wesleyan needs a wind ensemble and you’re the person to lead it.”  They put up a sign for auditions and only one student showed up.

Flash forward, twelve years later (Peter has his Ph.D.):  there are 39 members of WesWinds;  approximately 50% are Wesleyan students and the remaining members come from the Greater Middletown community.  “After that first semester, we decided to be inclusive. We didn’t hold auditions. To this day, we invite people to come to the first rehearsal and they self-select depending on the difficulty of the material.” One of the people he called on for help in the early years was his friend and colleague, Marco Gaylord, head of arts programming for Middletown Public Schools.  “I tell Marco what instrumentation we’re lacking and he sends me wonderful students.”  One was percussionist/pianist Eli Fieldsteel, now an accomplished composer.  “So alongside Wesleyan students and Middletown high school students, we have a doctor, a retired music teacher, and other students whom I’ve taught from CCSU.”

A mother of one of the Middletown students sent me a note last week, and I asked if I might publish an excerpt.  It was one of those rare emails that appear on your screen and for a few moments, you are transported:

“All I know for certain is that when I come to Weswinds, I often sit in the dark and cry.  I can’t help it.  I see my child sitting on that stage and l listen to all the musicians, and feel overcome.” 

“As I prepare to go to another meeting where people struggle with why we must reduce arts funding, or why the arts are more needed today than ever, I find myself thinking about how I grew up in a hard place with little reason to think that anything worth having or doing would ever be mine. But because I attended an urban public high school with a strong arts program, I found theater.  By my junior year, I had worked in a few theaters around the city and won a full scholarship and a way out. Thanks in part to a (very) little talent.  But more importantly, I had access to the building blocks: exposure, context, training and opportunity.” 

“I don’t take for granted the wonderment I feel when I sit in Crowell Concert Hall and watch this assorted community come together to make music. Our kids play instruments.  And I feel we are all one tiny step closer to grace.”

“The humanities are for all of us.  Whatever our kids do in this life, the experience of participating makes them and the world they will encounter the better for it.  We can never let it just be the kids of privilege, however talented.  Let it also be the children and future artists who beat the odds because at some point they, too, stumbled over the building blocks we positioned along their paths.”

“On May 8, family and friends will be attending the next WesWinds concert. Over the years, we have all come to expect to encounter unusual arrangements, moments that highlight superb musicians, and innovative ways to include all the greener musicians who sign on for the season. Last year Jay Hoggard played with them – and they left the hall after that concert on the balls of their feet, practically levitating up the stairs.”

“Thank you to Wesleyan for all their acts of inclusivity. Each Middletown student who purposefully steps onto campus, begins to imagine their future differently.” 

“And thank you, Peter, for being gracious, skilled and undaunted.  I’m so pleased that my kids (and the other Middletown musicians) are participating in this wonderful ensemble.”

Here’s hoping you are able to join us tomorrow night!

WesWinds: Sounds In Motion
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
FREE!
An exploration of form and emotion by the Wesleyan Wind Ensemble under the direction of Peter Hadley, featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Percy Grainger, Johan de Meij, and others.

JoAnna Bourain ’12 interviews Jay Hoggard (April 28)

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On Saturday April 28, the Wesleyan Music Department and the Center for the Arts present the Jay Hoggard Quartet. CFA Intern in Arts Administration JoAnna Bourain ’12 interviewed Wesleyan Adjunct Professor of Music Jay Hoggard about his upcoming performance.

Jay Hoggard. Photo by Santina Aldieri.

On Saturday night,  accomplished vibraphonist and Wesleyan music professor Jay Hoggard will be performing with the Jay Hoggard Quartet in Crowell Concert Hall. He will be joined by pianist and organist James Weidman and drummer Yoron Israel.  His special guests include Wesleyan Professor of Music and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, master percussionist Kwaku Kwaakye Martin Obeng, bassist Santi Debriano, woodwind player Marty Ehrlich, and harpist Brandee Younger.

Professor Hoggard explained that he has performed with the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra both officially and unofficially for the past 20 years.  Saturday’s performance is different because the Jay Hoggard Quartet will be playing his original compositions. His excitement about the performance is infectious:  “Performing in Crowell Concert Hall is like performing in my living room – I feel at home there.” He explained to me, “Teaching is my day job – I am also a professional musician who performs and tours.” Jay Hoggard’s performance will be an occasion for his students, both past and present, to hear him play his own work. Mr. Hoggard is also well known in town as the charismatic band leader who takes the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra to give free performances in Middletown schools.  Local families now have the chance to hear Mr. Hoggard’s music played as it should be played: in a major concert hall alongside his talented musician-friends.

Concerts like Professor Hoggard’s and other faculty productions are important because we (students) get to see how the faculty that have shaped us as artists work and perform. We are given the chance to understand how the skills and theory they have shared with us are called into practice in their own creative process. Faculty productions give us the opportunity to witness the necessary diligence and skill it takes to be a professional artist.

Perhaps, most importantly, these productions are the time in which we come to understand how impressive our faculty is and to reflect on how much knowledge we have gained from these substantial professors. Maybe I am feeling sentimental because graduation is just around the corner but faculty productions remind me of the inevitable transition from a student to a creative peer of our teachers. My confidence in making this transition is a testament to the arts faculty’s ability to share skills and information and their ability to cultivate creative students.

11th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend
Jay Hoggard Quartet

Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 8pm

Crowell Concert Hall

Tickets: $15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

As a part of the 11th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend, the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra, directed by Jay Hoggard, and the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Jazz Ensemble Coach Noah Baerman, will perform an exciting free concert of classic jazz compositions on Friday, April 27, 2012 at 8pm
 in Crowell Concert Hall
.

Neely Bruce discusses Fernando Otero (April 14)

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CFA Intern in Arts Administration JoAnna Bourain ’12 interviewed Wesleyan Professor Neely Bruce about the importance of the Fernando Otero Quartet (Apr. 14).

Fernando Otero

The Fernando Otero Quartet mixes the sounds of classical music, improvisational jazz and tango. The result of this mixture produces music that is quite impressive—the lofty instrumentation creates the illusion of a vibrant narrative playing out. The Fernando Otero Quartet plays the work of the Argentine composer and pianist Fernando Otero, winner of the 2010 Latin Grammy for “Best Classical Album” for his album Vital. The performance will feature Pablo Aslan on acoustic bass, violinist Gabrielle Fink, and cellist Adam Fisher.

Neely Bruce, Professor of Music at Wesleyan, spoke to me about the music of the Fernando Otero Quartet. He explained that, “It’s exciting, it’s full of variety, it’s very dramatic, very rhythmically complex; it sounds like tango on steroids.” The music clearly conveys the sense of a narrative, a narrative that could really be anything — as Professor Bruce put it, “It could be a car chase or even two lovers.” When I asked Professor Bruce why people should see the concert, he explained to me that, “I think people should attend the concert because it’s dramatic music that has sudden shifts in moods that not everyone can cultivate these days — I think that he has a fresh voice that’s very distinctive. He’s also a virtuoso performer which in itself is a great thing to see.”

I deeply appreciate music that can appeal to both the trained ear and to the everyday person. It became evident to me after my conversation with Professor Bruce that Fernando Otero’s music manages to appeal to both my untrained sensibilities and Professor Bruce’s qualified ear. This inclusive quality mixed with a unique and interesting sound is surely to result in a very enjoyable concert.

Fernando Otero Quartet
Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 8pm

Crowell Concert Hall

Pre-concert talk by Professor of Music Neely Bruce at 7:15pm

Lecture/demonstration with quartet at 3:30pm in the Daltry Room (Music Rehearsal Hall 003) 

Tickets: $22 general public; $18 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

JoAnna Bourain ’12 Interviews Mark Sussman ’85, Co-Founder of Great Small Works (Feb. 3 & 4)

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Great Small Works

Tonight and Saturday night, the Theater Department and the Center for the Arts present Great Small Works, a New York-based theater collective that creates work about contemporary issues. CFA Intern in Arts Administration JoAnna Bourain ’12  interviewed co-founder Mark Sussman ’85 about his time at Wesleyan and about the production you’ll see this weekend.

JoAnna Bourain ’12:  Great Small Works’ website lists the company’s major influences, many of whom I’ve encountered in my coursework at Wesleyan, namely Walter Benjamin, Bertold Brecht and Erik Satie. Tell me about some of your Wesleyan classes that influenced your creative process.

Mark Sussman ’85:  At Wesleyan I was a double major in Theater and Religion. The theater side of my education was mostly in directing and design and I knew that after Wesleyan I didn’t want to join the workforce of the American Theater. After working in a collaborative setting at Wesleyan with groups like Second Stage I knew I wanted to have a company and to work collectively in a series.

I bring from my own years at Wesleyan an interest in working in a more collective situation- this comes from the late Fritz DeBoer (Theater Department) who really inspired me. Certain experiences that I had in the Music Department along with the atmosphere within that department were really important to my creative development – both experimental music and world music. Susan Foster and Alvin Lucier co-taught a class that was essentially about site specific performance art, as well as a class by Jon Barlow who taught the work of John Cage and Erik Satie that brought together a really interdisciplinary vision of art. These classes helped me to make connections to my experience in theater. All of those experiences have stuck with me and help me to inform my every day creative processes.

JB:  Your website cites that Benjamin’s theory of the ‘state of emergency’ was an early catalyst for the first miniature theater piece. Considering the group’s beginnings in Bread and Puppet (a Vermont-based political theater company directed by Peter Schumann, who is speaking in CFA Hall on April 9) how do politics figure in Great Small Works?

MS:  I think we imagine everything that we do as having a political aspect. I think the reason that we are really drawn to Benjamin (who I first read in a tutorial in the Religion Department) was due to the fact that he looked at both aesthetics and politics and their inseparable relationship. If you look at something like the Republican Primary, we see that images play such an important role in how people are politically perceived. In Benjamin’s essay, The Thesis on the Philosophy of History, he talks about the notion of a Marxist view of history in which a state of emergency is used to encourage and create the rhetoric of a crisis where, actually, that state of emergency is a constant in capitalism. It’s a falsification to even think of it as a momentary state of emergency rather than a constant. That idea was we eventually applied to the toy theater.

Jenny Romaine, during the first Gulf War in the late 90s, remembers how the war was portrayed as a catastrophe day after day, and was filtered through us in the everyday banal act of opening The New York Times. The idea was to communicate this sense of every day terror as it is read in banal everyday actions.

The toy theater is an outmoded form that is low tech, handmade and has associations with folk theater.  It was a form we rediscovered from 19th century Europe that was a popular amateur form you would perform in the home.  It was something kids and adults would do together. Very often the scripts were melodramas from London’s West End. The popularity of the form coincided with colored lithography and with mass communication and mass culture; it’s a form that existed between printing, book making and puppetry.

JB:  Can you talk a little bit more about translating this particular process, a form that has more associations with the home than with the high-theater, into an actual show? I have read that you use a camera to project the miniature theater onto a screen in order to show the piece larger. This process creates an interesting tension between what the form stands for historically and what it becomes on the stage.

MS:  We started these [miniature theater] shows before we were even a company. We found that using the toy theater was a quick and easy way to talk about big ideas- there is a weird inverse relationship between the scale of the show and the ideas. In [Toy Theater of] Terror as Usual, one of the shows we will be performing, we see the performers operating the puppets. In a lot of puppet shows you never get to see the puppeteers. You see us operating the puppets, singing and talking and making sounds. That Brechtian act of revealing the performers is a big part of the show. I think that still works when we use the video camera and the projection when we are creating it before you. The image is taken apart and constructed in front of you. For an audience, this shows how history is created and constructed.

JB:  Why do you think that it is important that people see Great Small works?

MS:  It’s interesting and fun and unexpected. It is interesting how you see an idea and stories. Much of traditional theater expresses characters differently than we do – we present a story within a larger set of ideas with an analysis. We provide a visually appealing message and a way to comprehend and digest complicated ideas in an accessible form.

Great Small Works
Friday, February 3 and 
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 8pm
CFA Hall, 287 Washington Terrace
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Each performance will be followed by a post-show discussion.

Cassandra Burrows, John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Jenny Romaine and Xavier will perform the works “Short, Entertaining History of Toy Theater”; “Toy Theater of Terror As Usual, Episode 12: Desert and Ocean”, a surreal serial drama using excerpted texts and images quickly cut from The New York Times, Hans Christian Anderson, Grace Lee Boggs, and Democracy Now!; and “Three Graces”, a “cantastoria” (picture-based storytelling work) in which three mythical graces – Harmony, Strategy and Splendor – float down to earth for an op-art romp inspired by Grace Paley, Grace Kelly, Grace Jones and Grace Lee Boggs.