David LowNew Haven, Conn. resident Taylor Ho Bynum ’98, an acclaimed avant-garde jazz cornetist and composer, is undertaking a strenuous 1,000-mile bicycle concert tour in September of all six New England states. He will travel by bike for two weeks to 10 venues from New Haven to Portland, Maine, and back. As part of his Acoustic Bicycle Tour, Bynum will perform at Wesleyan’s Crowell Concert Hall on Saturday, Sept. 11 at 8 p.m. with vibraphonist and Wesleyan music professor Jay Hoggard ’76. (Click here to order tickets.) Bynum has also performed with Wesleyan music professor Anthony Braxton in several jazz concerts…
Olivia DrakeAnthony Braxton, professor of music was honored at the “Tri-Centric Modeling: Past, Present and Future” benefit concerts June 18-19 in Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, N.Y. Braxton joined the performance at points, playing with his former students Taylor Ho Bynum ’98, James Fei ’99, Mary Halvorson ’02, and Chris Jonas '99. Proceeds from the concerts benefited the nonprofit Tri-Centric Foundation, set up to archive Braxton’s work and perpetuate his exuberant legacy. Braxton performed excerpts from his new opera, “Trillium E," which featured a cross-section of past and present collaborators, including pianist Marilyn Crispell, drummer Gerry Hemingway and cornetist Ho Bynum. In…
For two years, music graduate student Garrett Field will live in Sri Lanka studying the lives, music, poetry and writing of three composers who influenced Jatika Gi, the Sinhala nationalist poetry-song. As a 2010 recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship, Field will have the opportunity to complete his dissertation on Sunil Santha, W.D. Amaradeva, and Ananda Samarakone - whose careers, music, and poetry articulated different strands of Sinhalese nationalist thought. The fellowship comes with a $26,000 award. “The Jatika Gi artists played a significant role in the development of Sinhala cultural nationalism and thus served as…
Yonatan Malin, assistant professor of music, is the author of the book Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied, published by Oxford University Press in May 2010. This book explores rhythm and meter in the 19th-century German Lied, including songs for voice and piano by Fanny Hensel née Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf. The Lied, as a genre, is characterized especially by the fusion of poetry and music. Poetic meter itself has expressive qualities, and rhythmic variations contribute further to the modes of signification. .
David PesciFlora was the first ballad opera performed in North America, and one of the most popular opera’s of its time – the mid-1700s. Opera fans have long been eager to hear and see it performed, but a full scale revival faced a bit of a problem: only 18 pages of the opera’s music has survived. Recreating this piece in the style and scope faithful the original production would be a daunting task, but one Neely Bruce, professor of music, professor of American Studies, was excited to undertake. The result of his work will be premiered at the 2010 Spoleto Festival,…
Adjunct professor of music Angel Gil-Ordóñez's Post-Classical Ensemble was mentioned in the April 20th edition of The New York Times for performing in Falla and Flamenco at the Brooklyn Academy of Music April 17. The orchestra, paired with a Spanish pianist, performed “a muted by graceful account,” of “Nights in the Gardens of Spain," a tour of Spanish music "that touches not only on the Gypsy influences that crystallized as flamenco but on Moorish influences as well," according to the article. After intermission, Gil-Ordóñez, who also is director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles and music director of the Wesleyan Orchestra…
The sophomore effort Congratulations was released by electro-pop duo MGMT (a.k.a. Ben Goldwasser ’05 and Andrew VanWyngarden ’05) this month and covered by media across the United States and abroad. Goldwasser and VanWyngarden first wrote and played their music as students at Wesleyan and found success after graduation that many musicians would die for. They were signed to the major label Columbia, and their full-length debut album, Oracular Spectacular, went gold on the Billboard charts with more than three million songs downloads globally. They had a hit single, “Time to Pretend” that won adoring fans who started to dress like…
Cynthia RockwellVibraphonist, composer and Adjunct Associate Professor of Music Jay Hoggard ’76,will perform in the 32nd annual Playboy Jazz Fest, held at the Hollywood Bowl on June 13. Performing as a member of the latest version of emcee Bill Cosby’s “Cos of Good Music” band, Hoggard will be playing with NduguChancellor, Dwayne Bruno, Ingrid Jensen, Mark Gross and D.D. Jackson. The invitation to join the band wasn't really a surprise for Hoggard. He has worked with Cosby before, including on the soundtrack to the Cosby TV show. “When Dr. Cosby calls, I drop everything and I’m there,” says Hoggard. Currently taking…
Wesleyan's Center for the Arts received an $800 grant from the Middletown Commission on the Arts (MCA) on March 5. The funds will support "Wesleyan Gamelan Live," through Feb. 28, 2011.
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles, adjunct professor of music, music director of the Wesleyan Orchestra and Wesleyan Concert Choir, received a grant from Spain's Ministry of Culture and that of Foreign Affairs to conduct the orchestra in Falla and Flamenco April 17 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Falla and Flamenco is a program of three works by Manuel de Falla (1876—1946) that imbue 20th-century music with flamenco’s ancient gypsy traditions. Gil-Ordóñez's musicians will premiere "The Three Cornered Hat," in the U.S. for which Picasso created the scenery and costumes for the original. This original version was a ballet/pantomime called "El…
Something Sweet, Nina Zeitlin’s ’03 family/kids’ album, was named in the Top 10 on NPR’s “2009 Best Music for Kids and Their Families." In a story for WXPN’sKids Corner in Philadelphia, host Kathy O’Connell noted that she’d remember 2009 as “the gold standard in kids’ music,” and included Zeitlin’s musical ensemble, King Pajama, as one of the groups “whose kid-centric themes (love of the library, train rides, ice cream) provide a clue to their intended audience, since the songs themselves work for everyone.” Zeitlin, a sociology major at Wesleyan, sang, recorded and produced the collection, which also won a 2009…