It's summertime, classes are out, and the living should be easy. But Frost School faculty are keeping the heat on with performances and projects. Here’s a look at what some of our artist educators have been doing this summer.
MacArthur ‘genius’ award winning percussionist and associate professor Dafnis Prieto will have a new work premiered this Saturday at Carnegie Hall. NYO Jazz, a jazz orchestra of talented young musicians brought together from across the country as part of the legendary concert hall’s National Youth Ensembles program, will play Prieto’s new big band work “Hopes and Wishes.” The event features Frost School connections. NYO Jazz is directed by trumpeter and composer Sean Jones, who performs with the Frost Jazz Orchestra in October as part of the Frost Music Live! Signature Series, and will feature GRAMMY-winning vocalist Luciana Souza, a former artist-in-residence at the Frost School. “This piece reflects, 'in sound' the hopeful and wishful times that many of us are striving for,” Prieto wrote on Instagram. “It is a candid reminder of the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The multi-talented Prieto also gave a presentation on his third book, “What Are the Odds: A Journey on Latin Rhythms and Meters,” at Miami’s celebrated indie bookstore Books & Books in June. He shared the evening with fellow Frost School educator Mark Lomanno, an assistant professor of musicology, celebrating the release of “The Improvisor’s Classroom,” which Lomanno co-edited. Published by Temple University Press, it looks at improvisation as a powerful tool for teaching and learning, fostering community and creativity.
Globe-trotting jazz professor and Guggenheim Fellow Etienne Charles brought the irresistible sound and spirit of Carnival from his native Trinidad to New York’s Lincoln Center on June 16th. Charles curated and led “Road March in Concert” for the world-renowned cultural center’s Caribbean Day, a concert featuring some of soca music’s greatest and most dynamic artists, which played to an enthusiastic crowd that packed Damrosch Plaza.
Also keeping us dancing were contemporary music faculty members Raina Murnak and Stephen J. Gleason, who collaborated to release “Lipstick and Shades,” an adventurous, light-hearted musical and stylistic take on definitive 1970s and 1980s new wave and pop-punk hits, such as “Head Over Heels” and “Lust for Life.”
Finally, Tom Collins, an associate professor of music engineering technology and a leader of CHAI, a Frost School project that aims to empower students and faculty to understand the impact of artificial intelligence on music, continued his work on the cutting edge of this technological frontier. Collins co-edited a special issue of Music & Science. This new peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal offers an interdisciplinary platform for scholarly research on how the sciences can enhance our understanding of music and its impact on our lives. Entitled “Explaining music with AI: Advancing the scientific understanding of music through computation,” the issue features seven articles by scholars from famed educational and research institutions in Europe, the United States, and South Korea.
