Thank You for Telling Us What You Think
Out of hundreds of people who have submitted their comments from this season’s past events to the Fine Arts Center blog, we would like to congratulate Sara Upton and Bill Mullin. They are our winners of yesterday’s random ticket giveaway for this Thursday’s event: Cantus & Theater Latté Da’s “All Is Calm.”
Sara Upton’s comment from the Venice Baroque Orchestra earlier this month: “I haven’t been a committed fan of Philip Glass but after last night’s incredible performance, I have a very different view. Also, Vivaldi was much like a ‘conversation’ in which I was included. Thank you,”
Bill Mullin also submitted a comment about the Venice Baroque Orchestra: “The Vivaldi and Glass Seasons were remarkable. Robert McDuffie is a show-off but he plays his instrument wonderfully. I have loved Glass’s music for a long time and this confirmed it. I thought some of the violins might have to go into rehab after that performance!”
We appreciate all of the comments we read about our events here at The Fine Arts Center so please keep them coming. For each submission you make, you increase the chance of being picked in a future ticket giveaway.
Randy Weston
After six decades as a professional musician Randy Weston remains one of the world’s foremost pianists and composers, a true innovator and visionary. “Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk,” writes Stanley Crouch. In a career that began in the late 1940s, Weston has criss-crossed the globe connecting the African diaspora through sound. “Mr. Weston is a truth seeker who sees a power in music much greater than all of us,” writes The New York Times.
Born in Brooklyn in 1926, Weston’s first recording as a leader came in 1954 on Riverside Records, Randy Weston plays Cole Porter – Cole Porter in a Modern Mood. In the 50’s Weston played around New York with Cecil Payne and Kenny Dorham and wrote many of his best loved tunes, “Saucer Eyes,” “Pam’s Waltz,” “Little Niles,” and, “Hi-Fly”, now all jazz standards.
In the 1960s, Weston’s music prominently incorporated African elements, as in the large-scale suite Uhuru Africa (with poet Langston Hughes) and Highlife: Music From the New African Nations. On both these albums he teamed up with the arranger and his long-time collaborator, Melba Liston. In 1967 Weston traveled throughout Africa with a U.S. cultural delegation, and decided to settle in Morocco, running his African Rhythms Club from 1967 to 1972. For a long stretch he recorded infrequently on smaller record labels, but made quite an impact with the recording The Spirits of Our Ancestors (1992), which contained new, expanded versions of many of his well-known pieces and featured an ensemble including African musicians and North American such as Dizzy Gillespie and Pharoah Sanders.
Randy Weston has made more than 40 albums and performed throughout the world. He has been inducted into the ASCAP “Jazz Wall of Fame,” designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts, and named jazz composer of the year three times by Downbeat magazine. He is the recipient of many other honors and awards, including the French Order of Arts and Letters, the “Black Music Star Award” from the Art Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana, and a five-night tribute at the Montreal Jazz Festival. In October 2010, Weston will publish his autobiography, African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Duke University Press).
Randy Weston appears in Amherst as part of “Art & Power in Movement -Rethinking the Black Power and Black Arts Movements”, produced by the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts.
What did you think?
Poetry Prose Performance
a reading by visiting writers co-sponsored by the MFA Poets & Writers Program More Information
Fred Frith
Thursday, October 28
Bezanson Recital Hall 8:00 pm
$10; students: $5
Guitarist and composer Fred Frith is an icon of avant-garde music. “A musical consciousness of rare intelligence backed with an omnipresent sense of humour,” writes Libération, “Frith makes music that is amongst the most powerful and original of the present time”.
Born in 1949 and raised in Yorkshire, England, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been active across a broad spectrum of music-making since the late 1960s, starting with the iconic rock collective Henry Cow. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Frith is internationally renowned as an electric guitarist and improviser, songwriter, and composer for film, dance and theater. Through bands like Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, and Cosa Brava, Frith has managed to keep one foot in the rock world while continuing to branch out into almost every area of contemporary music.
His compositions have been performed by ensembles ranging from Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble Modern to the Baroque ensembles Concerto Köln and Galax Quartet, from the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra to ROVA and Arte Sax Quartets, from rock bands Hieronymus Firebrain and Ground Zero to the Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra. Film music credits include the acclaimed documentary Rivers and Tides, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, The Tango Lesson and Yes by Sally Potter, and Peter Mettler’s astonishing Gods, Gambling and LSD. His vast catalogue of recordings is available on Tzadik, Winter & Winter, ReR, and his own label Fred Records, among many others.
Frith has performed and recorded with a who’s who of modern music including Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Sylvie Courvoisier, Alvin Curran, Brian Eno, Evelyn Glennie, Carla Kihlstedt, Katia Labeque, Bill Laswell, Ikue Mori, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, The Residents, Christian Wolff, Robert Wyatt, Otomo Yoshihide, and John Zorn, among many others.
Frith is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzels’ award-winning documentary film, Step Across the Border. He is currently Chair of the Graduate Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California.
“….undying curiosity, bitter wit, child-like sense of play, and creeping melancholy percolate through the guitarist’s records,” writes Guitar Player. “It might be useful, perhaps, to think of him as a folk musician who makes miniatures of the world around him using scraps torn from corners of the map.”
Poetry Prose Performance
What is untouchable within each of us? Grief, fear, joy, confusion. What is unsayable? Experience and emotion sit at the edge of what is verbal. Join Maureen Buchanan Jones in exploring how art frees us to touch what we are. More Information
Tonight’s Performer and Son speak with WFCR Host
There’s going to be a public conversation with both Hugh Masekela and his son, Sal Masekela (host of programs on ESPN and E!) TODAY at 1:30 pm in Bowker Auditorium. WFCR’s host, Kari Njiiri, will also be included in this conversation. Don’t miss out!
Cedar Lake pre-talk
Benoit-Swan Pouffer, the Artistic Director of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet gives a talk to a few patrons before the evening’s performance on October 2nd.
*Photo credit: Kat Fry
Exploring Buddhism: 2010 Wisdom Teachings
Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobzang Tsetan Abbot, Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, Bylakuppe, Mysore Dist, South India Founder and Director, Siddhartha School, Leh, Ladakh, India with Professor David L. Gardiner, Chair, Dept. of Religion, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO; Co-founder, BodhiMind Center, Colorado Springs.
All sessions will begin and end with traditional Buddhist prayers led by Khen Rinpoche, following which Rinpoche will introduce and develop the topic for each session in dialogue with David Gardiner, who will provide perspectives from his scholarship and practice and further elucidate the session’s theme. Question and answer time will be part of each session. More information
Session 1
Friday, October 22 from 6:30PM to 9PM: Wisdom through the Buddhist Mahayana Path
Session 2
Saturday, October 23 from 3PM to 5PM : The Practice of Wisdom
Session 3
Saturday, October 23 from 7:00 to 9:00PM : Wisdom & Ethics
Session 4
Sunday, October 24 from 1: 30 to 4PM: Wisdom Deity Blessing by Khen Rinpoche
For more information call 413-577-2486 or email
What did you think of the Cedar Lake Ballet?
If any of you readers out there had the chance to see the dancers of Cedar Lake perform this past Saturday in the FAC’s Concert Hall, let us know what you thought of the performance. Was it the music that wowed you the most? Did you like the style of choreography? What didn’t you like? Would you ever want to see it again?
Feedback is a main way of gauging the success of our events so all of your comments are greatly appreciated.