Music

Saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts will be discussing her work, the practice of improvisation, and also offering "survival tips" for those interested in an art career in New York and elsewhere. Please bring your questions and get some answers from an exceptional artist who has paid her dues.

Prologue: Exploratory Soundwork for Alto Saxophone and Moving Image

Matana Roberts is an internationally documented, Chicago-born, sound experimentalist whose main instrument is the alto saxophone.

Working in various mediums of performance inquiry, she has created alongside visionary experimentalists of this time period in various areas of improvisation, dance, poetry, visual art, and theater. As a saxophonist, she has recorded as collaborator, side woman, and leader.

Recent work focused on the place/problem of memory/tradition as recognized, deciphered, deconstructed, interrogated through radical modes of sound communication, alternative styles of musical notation, and multi genres of improvisation.

Based in New York City, she holds two advanced degrees in music performance.

Photo by Brett Walker.

FACULTY SEMINAR SERIES

Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Assistant Professor of Music is the featured speaker. His talk is titled Community-building and Ethnomusicological Practice in the Afro-Colombian Hinterlands.

Open to faculty and staff.
Buffet lunch $3, or bring your own lunch.

Manhattan Transfer meets Monty Python...Robin Williams meets Bobby McFerrin...J.S. Bach meets Jimi Hendrix: Grammy-nominated vocal acrobats (and certifiable nutjobs), that's THE BOBS.

This original "band without instruments" has been skewering the classics, breaking all the rules and clear-cutting their own unique path in the world of vocal music for over 25 years, playing everywhere from Lincoln Center to Berlin's Passionkirche.

Tickets: $10.00 general public; free for Bowdoin ID holders at the David Saul Smith Union information desk (725-3375), and for members of the Association of Bowdoin Friends at the McLellan Building.

Sponsored by the Donald M. Zuckert Visiting Professorship Fund.

The concert will showcase composers of the Second Viennese School including Brahms and Schubert, and will feature Richard Strauss’s sumptuous Last Four Songs and works for clarinet, voice and piano, with Bowdoin physics professor Mark Battle.

Led by Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, the visionary behind the Buena Vista Social Club, the Afro-Cuban All Stars features the best of the next generation of hot Cuban musicians. The ensemble captures the exuberant spirit of Cuban music with a potent combination of driving percussion, a powerhouse horn section, piano, bass, tres, guitar and incomparable vocals.

Tickets on sale beginning February 11 at the Smith Union Information Desk, $25 public,$10 Association of Bowdoin Friends, FREE for Bowdoin students, faculty, and staff (limit 2 tickets per ID). Please call 207-725-3433 or email events@bowdoin.edu for more information.

Fortepianist David Hyun-su Kim will perform works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven on a late 18th-century Walter copy built by Maine resident Rodney Regier.

The ensemble, which includes Tim Kantor ’07 on violin, will perform three string quartets:  Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 5, the fantastic and under-appreciated quartet by Samuel Barber, the slow movement of which is the famous Adagio for strings, and Mendelssohn's stormy Op.80 in F minor.

Lev Polyakin, assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra and Martha Aarons, formerly flutist in the Cleveland Orchestra and principal flutist of the San Diego Symphony, will perform great works from the literature including Ravel’s Tzigane.

The Band, under the direction of John P. Morneau, will continue the celebration of its 25th anniversary.

The Bowdoin Middle Eastern Ensemble presents classical and contemporary music from the Arabic and Ottoman Turkish traditions.  The ensemble performs on traditional Middle Eastern musical instruments like the oud (Middle Eastern lute) and qanun (72-stringed Middle Eastern zither) as well vocals and Western instruments along with Middle Eastern percussion.

Under the director of Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Bowdoin’s Afro-Latin Music Ensemble will present a concert highlighting the scintillating rhythms and cultural richness of the descendants of Africans in Latin America, including music from Colombia, Cuba, and Peru.

Bowdoin Chorus and Mozart Mentors Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Antolini, will present the world premiere performance of Delmar Dustin Small's As It Began to Dawn – an oratorio about the awe and mystery of the morning of the Resurrection and Jesus's subsequent appearances to his disciples.  Open to the public; admission free of charge; no tickets or reservations; seating is limited.

Bowdoin Chorus and Mozart Mentors Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Antolini, will present the world premiere performance of Delmar Dustin Small's As It Began to Dawn – an oratorio about the awe and mystery of the morning of the Resurrection and Jesus's subsequent appearances to his disciples.  Open to the public; admission free of charge; no tickets or reservations; seating is limited.

Robert K. Greenlee will lead the Chamber Choir in a program of American music, including the premiere of a work by Elliott Schwartz.

Robert K. Greenlee will lead the Chamber Choir in a program of American music, including the premiere of a work by Elliott Schwartz.

Bela Fleck H'11 and Marcus Roberts return to Bowdoin College, this time together, to perform their special joint collaboration "Across the Imaginary Divide". Bela is often considered the premier banjo player in the world, with fourteen Grammy. The Marcus Roberts Trio, led by Roberts on piano, Jason Marsalis on drums, and Rodney Jordan on bass, are keen torch-holders of the classic jazz tradition.

Tickets on sale beginning April 15, $25 public, $10 for the Association of Bowdoin Friends, and FREE for Bowdoin students, faculty, and staff (limit 2 tickets per ID). For more information contact 207-725-3433 or events@bowdoin.edu

Aaron Larget-Caplan will be the featured soloist in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Romancero gitano” (Seven Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca) and the world premiere of “Pravasa: Travels of the Guitar” by Bowdoin composer Vineet Shende which was commissioned by Oratorio Chorale.  There is a preview event of April 13 as part of the Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival, Portland Conservatory of Music, and a second performance at 3:00 PM on May 19 at Falmouth Congregational Church.  Co-sponsored by the Bowdoin Department of Music.  Advance tickets: $20 adults, $10 students, free for children under 12 (see www.oratoriochorale.org).  Tickets at the door (if space available): $25 adults, $12.50 students, children free.  Discounted tickets will be available for members of the Association of Bowdoin Friends beginning May 1 at Bowdoin Friends Office, McLellan Building.  Free admission with Bowdoin ID; tickets limited and must be picked up in advance at the Smith Union Information Desk