Olivia DrakeTHE MASH, inspired by Fete de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, highlights the student music scene at Wesleyan. The event, which took place on Sept. 6 on multiple stages around campus, provided students with the both the opportunity to listen to some of Wesleyan's most popular faculty and student bands, and to sign up and play for the audiences themselves. The event was sponsored by the Center for the Arts. (more…)
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Ronald Ebrecht, artist-in-residence and university organist, performed a "Bach to School" organ concert Sept. 6 in Memorial Chapel. Ebrecht performed major works composed for the organ in various styles during the 19th century by Marco Enrico Bossi, Cesar Franck, Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn. The event kicked off the Center for the Arts' Music Department Events for the 2013-14 academic year. View upcoming performances here. (more…)
To view up-and-coming CFA events visit this link. (Photos by Eki Ramadhan '16)
Natalie Robichaud ’14Su Zheng, associate professor of music, associate professor of East Asian studies, spoke in a recent China Daily USA article about the number of African musical artists in China and how their presence is “creating new types of harmony between the two lands.” Zheng starts off by pointing out that “Wherever there are Africans, there is good music - just like wherever there are Chinese, there is good food.” When she discovered that there were no reports on the presence of African music in China, she decided to research the music of the African diaspora herself. The research completed by…
Sumarsam, the University Professor of Music, is the author of Javanese Gamelan and the West, published by the University of Rochester Press on July 1. In Javanese Gamelan, Sumarsam examines the meaning, forms and traditions of the Javanese performing arts as they developed and changed through their contact with Western culture. The book traces the adaptations in gamelan art as a result of Western colonialism in 19th century Java, showing how Western musical and dramatic practices were domesticated by Javanese performers creating hybrid Javanese-Western art forms, such as with the introduction of brass bands in gendhing mares court music and West Javanese…
Composer, saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, pianist and music educator Anthony Braxton was named a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master for his unique approaches to jazz. The award is considered the nation's highest honor in the field. Braxton, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, will receive a $25,000 award along with the honor. According to the NEA, Braxton's compositions "almost defy categorization through his use of the improvised and rhythmic nature of jazz but moving it in a more avant-garde direction, such as in his Ghost Trance Music compositions." Braxton, who was born in Chicago, Ill. has redefined…
David LowFor his new study Japanoise (Duke University Press), David Novak MA ’99 has conducted more than a decade of research in Japan and the United States to trace the "cultural feedback" that generates and sustains Noise. Noise is an underground music—made through an amalgam of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects—that first emerged as a genre in the 1980s, circulating on cassette tapes traded between fans in Japan, Europe, and North America. This unusual kind of music has captured the imagination of a small but passionate transnational audience, characterized by its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances. For its dedicated…
NPR Jazz named Connecticut vibraphonist and composer Jay Hoggard's album Christmas Vibes All Thru The Year on its top "5 Jazz Christmas Albums for 2012" list. Hoggard, adjunct professor of music, has recorded more than 20 albums. For his latest, he draws upon the Christian tradition in which he was raised — his father was a clergyman — for a universal message surrounding all the good things of the season. Joining Hoggard are fellow respected veterans James Weidman on organ and Bruce Cox on drums.
In Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindistani Music (Wesleyan University Press), Matthew Rahaim ’00 studies the role of the body in Indian vocal music. Indian vocalists have long traced intricate shapes with their hands while improvising melody. Although every vocalist has an idiosyncratic gestural style, students inherit ways of shaping melodic space from their teachers, and the motion of the hand and voice are always intimately connected. Musicking Bodies is among the first extended studies of the relationship between gesture and melody. Rahaim draws on years of vocal training, ethnography, and close analysis to examine the ways in which…
Lauren RubensteinProfessor of Music Eric Charry is the editor of a new book, Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World, published Oct. 23 by Indiana University Press. The book is part of the African Expressive Culture series. Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa; the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, raga and gospel music; and the continued vitality of…
Cynthia Rockwell(more…)