Virtual Colloquium Series: BLACK SOUNDS MATTER—INTERSECTIONAL (re)CONNECTIONS OF AFRICAN and AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICS AT WESLEYAN

Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 4:30pm
YouTube

FREE! Reservations required.

Dwight Andrews
Professor of Music Theory and African American Music, Emory University
Connections and Contradictions: Spirituality, Religion, and Jazz

Bill Lowe
Professor of Jazz Studies, Performance and Composition, Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Makanda Ken McIntyre and Bill Barron: Inside Out or Outside In?

Moderated by Professor of Music Jay Hoggard.

 

PROFILES

Dwight Andrews is Professor of Music Theory and African American Music at Emory University and Pastor of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, the Yale Divinity School, and a PhD in Music Theory from Yale University. Andrews is presently a Dubois Research Fellow at Harvard University, working on a manuscript on spirituality, religion, and jazz. His research interests include twentieth-century music theory and aesthetics, and the intersections of race, gender, and commodification of African American music. As a multi-instrumentalist, he has appeared on over twenty-five jazz and ‘new music’ recordings with artists such as Jay Hoggard, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Davis, and Geri Allen. Andrews has also been recognized for his collaborations with playwright August Wilson, having served as musical director for the Broadway productions of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, and Seven Guitars. His film credits include the documentaries W.E.B. Dubois: A Biography in Four Voices, Homecoming, The Old Settler, The Piano Lesson, and Miss Evers’ Boys. 

Bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe has been a major force in the music world for close to fifty years as a performer, composer, producer, and educator. He has worked with most of the masters of African-American creative music, across all genres and musical cliques, from musical legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Eartha Kitt, and Clark Terry, to the leaders of the avant-garde like Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, and Cecil Taylor, to under-heralded greats like Frank Foster, Jaki Byard, George Russell, James Jabbo Ware, and Bill Barron. As an educator, Lowe has taught at several major universities, lectured throughout the world from Cuba to Paris, and mentored countless young musicians. In November 2021, Lowe toured New England and recorded with his SIGNIFYIN’ NATIVES Ensemble.

 

View more Black Sounds Matter Colloqium Series events.

See also Wesleyan Jazz Weekend: Friday, April 22; and Saturday, April 23, 2022 featuring The Makanda Project.