Crosstown Arts will operate a full-time music department — centered around a performance space in Crosstown Concourse dubbed the “Listening Room” — once the organization is settled into their new space inside Concourse. But the contemporary arts organization isn’t waiting for its fall move to launch music programming.
The summer months will bring an array of diverse musical events to Crosstown Arts, beginning with a new Crosstown Jazz Series launching in early June. Crosstown Arts will then host a two-week music residency with ICEBERG New Music, a New York City-based composer collective, that will feature free concerts, workshops, and lectures. At the end of June, Chinese zither virtuoso Wu Fei will perform a show. Early August will bring Continuum, a three-day music festival organized by Memphis-based contemporary chamber music group, the Blueshift Ensemble.
The Crosstown Jazz Series, presented by Strictly Jazz in collaboration with Crosstown Arts, is designed to salute classic jazz music as contemporary musicians perform the work of the legends. The first performance, “The Music of Miles Davis: From Bebop to Hip Hop,” is scheduled for Saturday, June 10th, and will feature Paul McKinney and the Knights of Jazz. The second show in the series, “Thelonious Monk: The Music of Monk,” is set for Saturday, July 8th, and features Stephen Lee (piano), Johnny Yancey (trumpet), Sylvester Sample (acoustic bass) and Nygel Yancey (drums). Both shows will take place at the Crosstown Arts gallery at 422 N. Cleveland. Tickets for each show are $10 and available on Eventbrite. There will be a cash bar.
From June 11th-24th, Crosstown Arts will host ICEBERG New Music for a two-week residency. During that time, the 10 composers from ICEBERG will collaborate with contemporary chamber musicians from Blueshift Ensemble on two free concerts on Thursday, June 15th, and Tuesday, June 20th — both in the Crosstown Arts gallery. They’ll host two music workshops on Saturday, June 24th — a Mindful Listening Workshop and a Sound Scavenger Hunt — inside Crosstown Concourse. Workshops are free, but registration on Eventbrite is recommended. Additionally, a series of free music lectures on topics ranging from 1960s classical music to the psychological case for the need for contemporary music. All lectures will be held at story booth (438 N. Cleveland) and will be free and open to the public.
On Friday, June 30th, contemporary music podcast Sonosphere, in collaboration with Crosstown Arts, will present “An Evening with Wu Fei,” an interactive performance by the genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso, and vocalist from Nashville, at the Crosstown Arts gallery. Throughout her performance, Wu Fei will share stories and discuss the history of her ancient Chinese instrument. Wu Fei, who grew up in Beijing before emigrating to the United States, blends her Western and Chinese traditional sensibilities with a contemporary idiosyncratic, experimental dialect as she performs original compositions on the guzheng, an ancient 21-string Chinese zither. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased in advance through crosstownarts.org or Eventbrite. Guests may enjoy beverages from a cash bar.
From August 3rd-5th, Blueshift Ensemble will present Continuum, a genre-blending chamber music festival that juxtaposes performances by progressive chamber music ensembles, such as Nief Norf and Chatterbird, with shows by blues, rock, and hip-hop artists, like Don Lifted and Rob Junklas. More details on the line-up for this festival and locations for each performance will be announced later in the summer.
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SUMMER MUSIC CALENDAR OF EVENTS
** Crosstown Jazz Series
The Music of Miles Davis: From Bebop to Hip Hop
Saturday, June 10th
Doors at 6 p.m. | Performance at 7 p.m.
Crosstown Arts Gallery, 422 N. Cleveland St.
$10, cash bar
Jazz performance featuring Paul McKinney and the Knights of Jazz, celebrating the legacy of Miles Davis.
The Knights of Jazz features Paul McKinney (trumpet/flugel horn), Keenan Shotwell (piano), Vincent Oglesby (bass), Kelvin Walters (alto/soprano saxophone), and Renaldo Ward (drums).
Thelonious Monk: The Music of Monk
Thursday, June 8
Doors at 6 p.m. | Performance at 7 p.m.
Crosstown Arts Gallery, 422 N. Cleveland St.
$10, cash bar
Jazz performance featuring Stephen Lee (piano), Johnny Yancey (Trumpet), Sylvester Sample (Acoustic Bass) and Nygel Yancey (Drums) celebrating the legacy of Thelonious Monk.
** Iceberg New Music Collective Residency
CONCERTS
Concert I
Thursday, June 15th
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Performance at 7 p.m.
Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium
Free (donations accepted)
Alyssa Weinberg – Parallels for string quartet
Max Grafe – An Effulgence Fills the Southern Boughs for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion
Victor Baez – A Doe Leaps into the Rising Sun for solo cello
Will Healy – Mixed Feelings for clarinet, violin, and piano
Derek Cooper – Guernica for string quartet
Tuesday, June 20th
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Performance at 7 p.m.
Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium
Free (donations accepted)
Alex Burtzos – OMAHA (all the things you could be you are you were) for string quartet
Drake Andersen – Photons for flute and clarinet
Yu-Chun Chien – Co-Composition for a cellist
Jonathan Russ – Eat Your Vegetables for solo clarinet
Harry Stafylakis – Unrelent for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion
LECTURES
Hidden Mechanisms of Composition
Talk by Derek Cooper
Tuesday, June 13th, 6 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
Because Your Brain Wants It: A Psychological Case for the Need for Contemporary Music (And Why You Think You Don’t)
Talk by Victor Baez
Wednesday, June 14th, 6 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
The Crossroads of a Century: Popular and Classical Music In 1960s America
Talk by Alex Burtzos
Monday, June 19, 6-8 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
Improvised and Indeterminate Music
Talk by Drake Andersen
Wednesday, June 21, 4:30-6 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
Beauty Starts Where Habit Ends
Talk by Yu-Chun Chien
Saturday, June 24, 4:30-6 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
Contemporary Classical Indie Rock: Beyond The Quotation Marks
Both talks by Jonathan Russ
Saturday, June 24, 1-2 p.m.
story booth (438 N. Cleveland), Free
MUSIC WORKSHOPS
Mindful Listening Workshop
Led by Drake Andersen
Saturday, June 24, 11 a.m.-noon
Meet at the reception desk in Crosstown Concourse’s Central Atrium
Free (register on Eventbrite)
A workshop in which participants move through a series of Pauline Oliveros-inspired sound/meditation exercises designed to attune participants to the sounds around them and develop a richer vocabulary for describing them.
Sound Scavenger Hunt
Led by Drake Andersen
Saturday, June 24, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
Meet at the reception desk in Crosstown Concourse’s Central Atrium
Free (register on Eventbrite)
In two sessions, participants search for sounds that meet certain criteria (i.e. “high, short, loud” or “low, short, soft”) and record them with portable recorders. The sounds will then be used to create an online “sound” map that lists the sounds’ qualities, source, and location, allowing anyone to download the sounds to use in a creative project.
An Evening with Wu Fei
Friday, June 30
Doors at 7:30 p.m. | Performance at 8 p.m.
Crosstown Arts Gallery, 422 N. Cleveland St.
$15, cash bar
Presented by Sonosphere in collaboration with Crosstown Arts
An interactive performance with Wu Fei, a genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso, and vocalist from Nashville — by way of Beijing. Wu Fei blends her Western and Chinese traditional sensibilities with a contemporary, idiosyncratic, experimental dialect as she performs original compositions on the guzheng, an ancient 21-string Chinese zither.
Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-wu-fei-tickets-34368851159
Continuum Music Festival
Thursday–Sunday, August 3-5
Crosstown Arts
Locations/times TBA
$25 per day or $60 for weekend pass
Presented by Blueshift Ensemble in collaboration with Crosstown Arts
Collaborative music festival juxtaposing performances by contemporary chamber music ensembles such as Nief Norf and Chatterbird, with blues, rock, and hip-hop artists, like Don Lifted and Rob Junklas. More details on the line-up for this festival will be announced later in the summer.
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PARTNERSHIP ORGANIZATIONS
Strictly Jazz is committed to cultivating a growing community in the knowledge and the appreciation of jazz. We facilitate dialogue and collaboration between the devoted supporters of jazz, and the brand new constituents – those new to the genre – for the furthering of the jazz community. We provide a bridge between leading artists and a community that typically does not embrace jazz by promoting concerts in various venues to generate an atmosphere that is viable for the absorption of pure jazz.
Founded by composer Alex Burtzos in 2016, ICEBERG New Music is a collective of ten young composers based in New York City. The mission of the organization is to promote the idea that substance – not surface – is the heart of music creation and perception. We live in an era where dogma is out of place; composers can, and should, draw from an unprecedentedly broad array of influences in their work – including popular music, avant-garde techniques, and everything in between. The ten ICEBERG composers hail from different schools and cultivate radically different sounds, but their contrasting musical languages belie shared emphasis on structure and depth of meaning. When these artists compose for the same ensemble and present their works during a joint concert, the result is a glimpse into the ever-widening possibilities of art music in the twenty-first century. ICEBERG is committed to radical stylistic inclusiveness, excellence of craft, dialogue with the audience, and a modernization of the concert-going experience.
Blueshift is a Memphis-based contemporary chamber music ensemble dedicated to bringing artists and audiences together through artistic collaboration. By programming both new and existing classical repertoire alongside multi-genre collaborations, Blueshift aims to connect a wider audience to today’s classical music. The ensemble draws upon Memphis’s uniquely diverse musical heritage by combining classical music with popular music genres such as rock, blues, and soul and featuring local musicians, visual artists, and composers.
Sonosphere is a Memphis-based podcast aimed at exploring sound in music and art movements through history and today.
Crosstown Arts — founding partner, co-developer, and future tenant of Crosstown Concourse — is a contemporary arts organization dedicated to further cultivating the creative community in Memphis by providing resources and creating opportunities and experiences to inspire, support, and connect a diverse range of creative people, projects, and audiences.
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