Sayon Camara
November 3, 2023 @ 6:30 PM at WCCMA at Union Church
Join Sayon Camara and friends for a participatory drumming performance at WCCMA!
Join Sayon Camara and friends for a participatory drumming performance at WCCMA! Sayon Camara is a cultural ambassador for his people, the Malinke (or Mandingo), of the Sankaran region of Guinea. He is a keeper of generations of music that he loves to share, creating joy and carrying his culture forward in the world. Sayon is joined by Dave Kobrenski who is a long time participant in Malinke culture and music, Grant Ellerbeck who has played, studied and taught the drumming music of Guinea and Lev Camara who loves to dance. Together they will bring you to the heart of Sayon’s culture through drumming, fula flute, bolon, song, story and dance!
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THB’s Music Appreciation Hour/Questions & Improvisations
November 6, 2023 @ 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM at WCCMA at Union Church Hall
Musician & educator Taylor Ho Bynum will lead open sessions dedicated to introducing listeners to jazz and other forms of improvised music.
On the first and third Mondays of October and November, musician and educator Taylor Ho Bynum will lead open sessions dedicated to introducing listeners to jazz and other forms of improvised and creative music. The first hour will consist of listening to classic albums in their entirety, with introductory comments and post-listening discussion around the history and aesthetics of the recordings. The second hour will consist of musical and verbal dialogues prompted by audience questions, with THB performing solo and occasionally with invited guests. Attend in person in Claremont, or join us online via zoom (advanced registration required). The series kicks off on October 2 with “And His Mother Called Him Bill”, Duke Ellington’s tribute to his compositional partner Billy Strayhorn, and will conclude on November 20 with a live performance of Bynum’s collaborative duo with acclaimed drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara. Registration for the first three sessions is sliding scale donation suggested at $10-50, with all proceeds going to support WCCMA, and sliding scale tickets for the November 20th concert.
Dinuk Wijeratne Trio
November 11, 2023 @ 7:00 PM at Union Episcopal Church
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
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)
