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Announcing: “Humanity” Mural by Alberto Villalobos

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with “Idle Witnesses” sound installation by Luis Villalobos

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The West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts (WCCMA) is proud to unveil Humanity, a powerful new mural by visual artist and musician Alberto Villalobos, accompanied by a moving sound installation by Luis Villalobos. The public is invited to join the celebration on Sunday, June 29, at 1:00 PM at the Claremont Creative Center, WCCMA’s vibrant arts hub located at 56 Opera House Square in downtown Claremont. The unveiling will include a meet and greet with Alberto Villalobos, as well as an artist chat that includes local artists Wayne Carter, Juniper Kim, and Ashley Jablonski. 

Commissioned in 2024, Humanity is the centerpiece of WCCMA’s mission to unite community and culture through the arts. Created over the past year in Alberto’s Brooklyn studio, the mural now brings its rich message of resilience and harmony to Claremont, gracing the largest wall of the Creative Center’s performance space in a dramatic 8 x 14-foot display.

“Our early conversations were about the layered history that shapes our lives—confluences of culture, conflict, and hope—and how art transforms communities,” said Melissa Richmond, WCCMA Executive Director. “When I first saw Alberto’s sketch, I was blown away. His message—that music holds humanity together—deeply resonates with our vision for this region.”

Rendered in watercolor, acrylic, and marker, the mural presents a trio of musicians—drums, upright bass, and violin—playing amidst a surreal, war-torn landscape. Bombs fall from the sky, representing chaos and destruction, yet the musicians persist. A large human heart, placed before the kick drum, pulses with life, symbolizing music as the rhythm that sustains us even in darkness. As the eye travels downward, the imagery darkens, reflecting a world where profit often overrides humanity. But at its core, the mural radiates beauty, blending a rainbow of colors into a joyful and uplifting tribute to music and the human spirit.

The mural is accompanied by a powerful sound installation by acclaimed musician and sound artist Luis Villalobos. Titled Idle Witnesses, the abstract sonic landscape adds a profound emotional dimension to the experience. Blending the haunting echoes of war with the raw frustration of confronting societal apathy, Villalobos crafts an immersive, meditative journey that resonates with urgency and fragile hope. The composition invites listeners to reflect deeply on collective responsibility in the face of publicly funded oppression and conflict, offering a poignant auditory counterpart to the mural’s visual narrative.

About the Artists

Alberto Villalobos, born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, is a Grammy Award-winning violinist, composer, and visual artist. Best known as one-third of the acclaimed Villalobos Brothers ensemble, he is also a gifted painter with a deep commitment to social commentary through art. His work includes murals in Mexico addressing endangered species and large-scale multimedia exhibitions such as Men of Clay—a protest piece honoring the 43 missing students from the Raul Isidro Burgos school in Mexico.

Alberto’s connection to WCCMA began in 2023 and has since led to a series of performances, workshops, and collaborative arts programming across the region.

Luis Villlalobos holds a Master’s Degree from both the University of Freiburg in Germany and Berklee College of Music. Villalobos draws from a richly diverse musical lineage, blending classical structure with experimental textures and electronic minimalism. His work defies borders, channeling the urgency of our time through sound, space, and emotional rawness. In Idle Witnesses, Villalobos does not hide his message and offers a sonic mirror—reflecting the indifferent self, the fractured world, the artist’s inner turmoil, and the quiet beauty that can still be found in broken things.

Community Support Needed

The Humanity project was made possible through a mix of grants and early donations, but recent funding limitations have created a gap. The project is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies. WCCMA is calling on the community to help bridge the gap to bring this vision to life and ensure its ongoing care. 

“We’re asking for our community’s support. If 100 people give $100 each—or more—this incredible work can be completed, installed, and cared for. Gifts will also help initiate future artistic programming,” said Richmond. “Donors at this level will be invited to a private pre-unveiling gathering with the artist and recognized as supporters onsite and online. It’s a chance to be part of something truly meaningful.”

To contribute and be part of this powerful statement for the arts, visit:https://www.wcc-ma.org/humanity/.

About the Claremont Creative Center

Opened in June 2024 after a decade-long visioning process led by Melissa Richmond and former Director of Planning and Development Nancy Merrill, the Claremont Creative Center (CCC) has quickly become a cultural cornerstone in the region. Housed in a beautifully restored Victorian-era bank in downtown Claremont, the CCC has hosted dozens of events and welcomed over 600 guests in its first year alone.

The space now serves as WCCMA’s main venue for concerts, community gatherings, artist residencies, rehearsals, and special projects. Together with the historic Union Episcopal Church and Broad Street Park, CCC forms one of three major stages WCCMA uses to bring world-class music and meaningful arts experiences to the Upper Valley.The Humanity mural is more than a visual statement—it’s a beacon of resilience, connection, and hope. WCCMA invites all to come witness its unveiling on June 28, meet the artists, and celebrate the transformative power of music and art in our lives. Visit the landing page for the mural at: https://www.wcc-ma.org/humanity/

Step back in time with the Newmont Military Band; new music by jazz duo Alexander Hawkins & Taylor Ho Bynum Duo

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Newmont Military Band

September 22, 2024 @ 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM at Union Episcopal Church (outside)

Join us from the annual Newmont Military Band concert, a fundraiser to support the WCCMA’s community arts programs. Newmont is a local gem, a band group that performs on period instruments keeping the tradition and history of the 19th Century town band tradition alive. Bring your own chair or blanket, rain location inside the Union Episcopal Church. Admission is by freewill donation, all funds benefit West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts’ community arts programs.

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Alexander Hawkins & Taylor Ho Bynum Duo

September 25, 2024 @ 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM at Claremont Creative Center

Join us for this special duo concert at the Claremont Creative Center! Alexander Hawkins and Taylor Ho Bynum have collaborated for nearly twenty years, initially in the Convergence Quartet, and subsequently also in groups led by Bynum and Anthony Braxton. Despite these many years of a shared and complimentary aesthetic, however, this tour – featuring new compositions from both players – represents their first extended work as a duo, as well as their first performances in North America.

This program is presented by the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts, and presented at the Claremont Creative Center in downtown Claremont, NH. Admission is by sliding scale donation, suggested at $10-40 (pay what you can).

Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, and organist who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’. Regarded as one of his generation’s most innovative thinkers, his music has been said by The Guardian newspaper to sound ‘like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details.’ Amongst his many other activities (which range from solo concerts to larger-scale commissions), he is also a committed performer in the duo format, in which he has appeared live and on record with Sofia Jernberg, Nicole Mitchell, Evan Parker, Tomeka Reid, Hamid Drake, Esperanza Spalding, Angelica Niescier, John Surman, Wadada Leo Smith, and Han Bennink, amongst many others. Other collaborations have included with the likes of Marshall Allen, Anthony Braxton, Shabaka Hutchings, Joe McPhee, and Jonny Greenwood. For well over a decade, he has also been noted for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke. He has been widely commissioned, by the likes of the BBC, events such as the London and Berlin Jazz Festivals, venues such as the Pierre Boulez Saal, and contemporary music groups such as the Riot Ensemble. He was named ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri. www.alexanderhawkinsmusic.com

Taylor Ho Bynum is a musician, teacher, and writer, with a background including work in composition, performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, production, organizing, and advocacy. His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer and conductor, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and over a hundred as a sideperson. His past endeavors include his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he traveled to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles) and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation (which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects, including two operas, multiple festivals, and dozens of recordings). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor and currently enjoys playing with friends in collective ensembles like his duo with Tomas Fujiwara, Illegal Crowns (with Fujiwara, Benoit Delbecq, and Mary Halvorson), and Geometry (with Kyoko Kitamura, Tomeka Reid, and Joe Morris), and as a sideperson in groups led by Fujiwara, Reid, Jim Hobbs, Bill Lowe, Bill Cole, and William Parker. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Point of Departure and Sound American, and he has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since 2017. www.taylorhobynum.com

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Saturday: Dinuk Wijeratne Trio, and more upcoming events!

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Dinuk Wijeratne Trio

November 11, 2023 @ 7:00 PM at Union Episcopal Church

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Vivifying globally-inspired music effortlessly blending Classical, World, and Jazz. Compositions by award-winning composer Dinuk Wijeratne .

Vivifying globally-inspired music effortlessly blending Classical, World, and Jazz. Compositions by award-winning composer Dinuk Wijeratne. The Trio are Dinuk Wijeratne (piano, composer), Nick Halley (percussion, hand percussion), and Jon Sutters (upright bass, bass).

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Taylor Ho Bynum / Tomas Fujiwara Duo

November 20, 2023 @ 7:00 PM at WCCMA at Union Church

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Musician & educator Taylor Ho Bynum will lead open sessions dedicated to introducing listeners to jazz and other forms of improvised music.

Over the past thirty years, over twenty-five albums and hundreds of gigs in dozens of different bands, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum have developed one of the deeper levels of creative communication in the contemporary music scene – in groups under Fujiwara’s leadership like Triple Double and Shizuko, ensembles led by Bynum including his Sextet, 9-tette, and PlusTet big band, and collective projects like Illegal Crowns (with Mary Halvorson and Benoit Delbecq) and the Thirteenth Assembly (with Halvorson and Jessica Pavone). Throughout this history, they’ve maintained their duo, which has released four albums: “True Events” (2007), “Stepwise” (2010), “Through Foundation” (2014), and “Notice” (2022). Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming,” (Point of Departure) Brooklyn-based Tomas Fujiwara is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation. He leads the bands Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio, and Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up; is a member of the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); has a collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum; and engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Matana Roberts, Taylor Ho Bynum, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko.” His most recent work is “Dream Up,” a suite for percussion quartet, commissioned by NYSCA and Roulette Intermedium. “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.” (New York Times)

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SAVE THE DATE: Apple Hill String Quartet with Sally Pinkas

Nov 30th, 6:30pm

More details soon!

Community singing for the holidays

WCCMA’s community singing group will begin rehearsing holiday and Christmas tunes soon. If you’d like to join for the holidays or beyond just reach out [email protected]. All voice types are welcome. The group is currently primarily adults, but students are also welcome. Reach out with questions about student participation.