INTERPRETATIONS SERIES SEASON 32
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  Contact: Dan Joseph, 718-930-2286, info@interpretations.info

The Interpretations Series 32nd season continues on Thursday December 2nd, 2021 with a split program featuring the Amina Claudine Myers Trio and composer and multi instrumentalist Douglas Ewart with ensemble Quasar. Ms. Myers (piano & organ) will be joined by Reggie Nicholson (percussion), and Jerome Harris (bass, guitar & voice); and Ewart (winds and Ewart instruments), will be joined by Baba Warren Smith (percussion), Adegoke Colson (piano), JD Parran (winds and Ewart instruments) and a special guest. The concert will take place at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students & seniors, available at Roulette.org and Interpretations.info.

With a background steeped in the blues and gospel, Amina Claudine Myers was a founding member of the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) during the 1960s, taking her music in new directions, while remaining close to her roots. For this program she performs “Piano & Hammond B3 Excursions” with Harris (bass, guitar & voice) and Nicholson (percussion) as The Amina Claudine Myers Trio.

Another longtime associate of the AACM and Professor Emeritus at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, composer and visionary Douglas Ewart is joined by his ensemble Quasar in Bamboo Paradise, a work that celebrates the vast number of bamboo species and their many applications. The performance will include many of Ewart’s own handmade instruments and will feature Baba Warren Smith (percussion), Adegoke Colson (piano), JD Parran (winds and Ewart instruments).

PLEASE NOTE:  Prior to entering Roulette, everyone aged 12 and older must show proof of having received at least one dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine. We also ask that everyone please wear a mask.

About the artists:

Amina Claudine Myers, is a pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, master improviser, actress and educator. She has performed internationally throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America. She began her career in music in her preteens and throughout high school directing church choirs, singing and playing gospel and rhythm and blues. During college she started playing and singing jazz in and around Arkansas while earning her BA in Music Education from Philander Smith College in Little Rock.

After moving to Chicago 1963, Myers taught in the public school system for six years. After briefly attending Roosevelt University, she became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1966. As an AACM member she started composing for voice and instruments. Moving to New York City in 1976, her career became more multifaceted as she became involved in theater, acting and composed music for a number of Off-Broadway productions, and serving as assistant musical director for Ain’t Misbehavin prior to its Broadway production.

Ms. Myers has recorded and/or performed with Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, James Blood Ulmer, Lester Bowie, Bob Stewart, Joey Baron, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Muhal Richard Abrams, Bill Laswell, Eddie Harris, Von Freeman, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Frank Lowe, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and other well-known artists. Her recorded works include 11 releases under her own name and numerous guest appearances. Most recently Ms. Myers has been performing original works of jazz, blues, gospel, spirituals and improvisations for the pipe organ.

Ms. Myers has received many grants and awards, including National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame 2001 and the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame 2010. Ms. Myers resides and teaches privately in New York City.

Douglas R. Ewart, Professor Emeritus at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946. His life and his wide-ranging work have been inextricably associated with Jamaican culture, history, politics, and the land itself. Ewart immigrated to Chicago in 1963, where he studied music theory at VanderCook College of Music, electronic music at Governors State University, and composition at the School of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His varied body of work encompasses music composition, painting and kinetic sound sculpture, and multi-instrumental performance on the full range of saxophones, flutes, and woodwinds, including the flutes, pan-pipes, rainsticks and percussion instruments of his own design and construction for which he is known worldwide.

His visual art and kinetic works have been shown at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Ojai Festival, Art Institute of Chicago, Institute for Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and many others. Ewart is the leader of such ensembles as the Nyahbingi Drum Choir, Orbit, Quasar, StringNets, and the Clarinet Choir, and in addition to his many AACM colleagues, he has performed with Cedric Im Brooks, Ernest Ranglin, Cecil Taylor, James Newton, Anthony Davis, Robert Dick, Jin Hi Kim, Alvin Curran, Von Freeman, Yusef Lateef, Richard Teitelbaum, Mankwe Ndosi, Edward Kidd Jordan, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Lacy, and others.

His many honors include the Outstanding Artist Award by Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, two Bush Artists Fellowships, three McKnight Fellowships, as well as the U.S.–Japan Creative Artist Fellowship (1987), and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and others.

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The Interpretations series, now in its 32nd season, is a New York-based concert series focusing on the relationship between contemporary composers and their interpreters. Sometimes the interpreters are the composers themselves; more often, the series features performers who specialize in the interpretation of new music. Since its inception in 1989, Interpretations has featured leading figures in contemporary music and multimedia, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, FLUX Quartet, Joseph Kubera, Annea Lockwood, and Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Ursula Oppens, and Morton Subotnick.

Interpretations began as a collaboration with Robert and Helene Browning and the World Music Institute, presenting concerts at Merkin Concert Hall, then at Roulette, at its Greene Street location in Soho. When Roulette moved to the current space in Brooklyn, Interpretations moved with it. Interpretations is thrilled to co-produce at Roulette, which has developed into a premiere venue for new and innovative music, with excellent acoustics and world-class technical facilities.

UPCOMING:

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 18TH:  MARI KIMURA / JOSEPH KUBERA

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ROULETTE:
509 Atlantic Ave. Downtown Brooklyn
2, 3, 4, 5, C, G, D, M, N, R, B & Q trains & LIRR.
Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students & seniors, available at Roulette.org and Interpretations.info.
All concerts begin at 8pm unless otherwise noted.