Media Contact: Priscilla Hunter 312-344-7805 or Micki Leventhal 312-344-7383
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 11, 2006
CHICAGO, IL - The music produced by the peoples of African descent encompasses an enormous range of genres and styles. The music has influenced - and has been influenced by - countless cultures and has served as a major vehicle for creative and cultural expression in the African Diaspora. The upcoming concert by the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble (New BMRE) will celebrate a vast selection of these traditions including African gourds and the roots of black banjo and fiddle traditions, classic gospel, jazz and the world premiere of three new works for chamber orchestra.
The New BMRE, the performance organization of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago, will present this special evening concert celebrating the black musical experience at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15 at The Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park, Chicago. Tickets are $15-$40 and are available online at www.harristheaterchicago.org or at 312-334-7777. (Group sales: 877-447-7849.)
Program includes:
•Vocal performances by Maggie Brown of blues, gospel, Negro spiritual and jazz and by the Boyer Brothers (Horace and James) of classic gospel.
•A special demonstration on the development of the banjo from African gourd instruments and the subsequent development of the blues song. Featuring Cheik Hamala Diabate (ngoni), James Leva (banjo and fiddle), Mike Seeger and Joe Thompson (perhaps the only surviving practitioner of the black short-bow fiddle tradition).
•Music of New Orleans, including Edmond Dede (a "Creole of color" who expatriated to France in the 19th century), and 1920s blues and jazz as performed by Sippy Wallace and Louis Armstrong.
The New BMRE concert is the public event of the 2006 Conference on Black Music Research which is presented jointly with the 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for American Music. Developed and hosted by the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Columbia College Chicago, the Conference on Black Music Research will welcome scores of musicians and ethnomusicologists to the city to explore such scholarly topics as Black Women's Activism through Music, Black Music in Italy, Diasporal Connections in Black Music of the Americas, John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom and Researching and Teaching Black Music. For more information on the conference visit www.cbmr.org.
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The New BMRE concert is supported in part with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, The Chicago Community Trust and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. American Airlines is the official carrier of the CBMR.
The public is also invited to visit "Gifts of New Orleans Music and Culture," an exhibition mounted by the CBMR as a component of Columbia's African-American Heritage Celebration 2006. The exhibition runs through February 17 in the Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash. Visit http://cspaces.colum.edu for more information.
The Center for Black Music Research was founded in 1983 by Samuel A. Floyd Jr. in recognition of a need for an integrated approach to the study of black music that encompasses the arts and humanities as well as social, political and historical approaches to scholarship. The CBMR documents, collects, preserves and disseminates information about black music in all parts of the world and promotes understanding of the common roots of the music, musicians and composers of the global African Diaspora. The CBMR presents public lectures, performances and symposia throughout the year as well as hosting international conferences and publishing two scholarly journals, a monograph series, a number of newsletters and a book series with the University of California press. In addition, the CBMR works with the Chicago Public Schools to provide classroom teachers in the system's Fine and Performing Arts Magnet Cluster Schools with scholarship and pedagogy on the history and contribution of the music of the African Diaspora. The CBMR is a research unit of Columbia College Chicago and its programs have been funded by a number of major foundations and giving agencies. Visit www.cbmr.org for more information.