 |
Writer PAUL AUSTER and clarinetist DON BYRON
appear together at MIT March 4
Paul Auster
©Cato Lein |
Don Byron
©Cory Wells Braun |
For Immediate Release: Feb. 7, 2005
Contact:
Mary Haller
Director of Arts Communication
MIT Office of the Arts
20 Ames St., Rm E15-205
Cambridge, MA 02139
e-mail haller@media.mit.edu
617.253.4006 |
Cambridge, MA... Poet/author/film director Paul Auster and jazz clarinetist/composer Don
Byron will be guest artists with the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and clarinetist Evan Ziporyn in a program
titled “Words and Music and other Sonic Collaborations” at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, on Friday, March 4 at 8 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium (48 Massachusetts Ave). Admission
is $5 at the door.
The performance is part of MIT’s new “Words and Music” series which pairs spoken word
artists with composers and improvisers.
This is the second time that Auster and Byron will appear in concert.
Joining Byron at this MIT concert will be guitarist David Gilmore, bassist Lonnie Plaxico and drummer Ben Wittman.
One of America's leading novelists, Paul Auster's most recent novel "Oracle Night" has just
appeared in paperback. He has published poems, essays, translations, movie scripts but is best known for his
novels, among them "The New York Trilogy," "The Music of Chance" and "The Book
of Illusions." For NPR's National Story Project he edited "I Thought My Father Was God." New
York Newsday has called his novels "beautifully designed artifacts, intellectual puzzles dedicated to the
proposition that life is a mystery ruled by chaos and chance."
For over a decade, Don Byron has been a singular voice in a dizzying range of musical contexts,
exploring widely divergent traditions while continually striving for what he calls "a sound above
genre." As clarinetist, composer, arranger, and social critic, he redefines every genre of music he
plays, be it classical, salsa, hip-hop, funk, klezmer, or any jazz style from swing and bop to cutting-edge
downtown improvisation. He has been consistently voted best clarinetist by critics and readers alike in
leading international music journals since being named "Jazz Artist of the Year " by Down Beat
in 1992. Acclaimed as much for his restless creativity as for his unsurpassed virtuosity as a player,
Byron has presented a multitude of projects at major music festivals around the world, most recently in
Vienna, San Francisco, Hong Kong, London, New York, Monterey, and New Zealand. He recently received his
first Grammy nomination in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category for his performance on "I Want
To Be Happy" from Ivey-Divey.
The MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, directed by Frederick Harris, is a student ensemble that
performs a broad range of repertoire spanning the gamut of traditional and contemporary jazz styles.
Recent guest artists have included Kenny Werner, Steve Turre, and Joe Lovano.
An acclaimed clarinetist and composer in his own right, MIT Professor Evan Ziporyn
has collaborated with Don Byron for the past several years, most recently on a soon-to-be-released CD
for Cantaloupe Records. He is a member of the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America's 2005 Ensemble
of the Year) and the Steve Reich Ensemble, as well as director of MIT's Gamelan Galak Tika. Ziporyn has also
worked with, among others, Paul Simon, DJ Spooky, Meredith Monk, Matthew Shipp, Henry Threadgill, and
Cecil Taylor. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT.
Words and Music is presented by the MIT Music and Theater Arts Section in collaboration with the
MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. For more information, call 617/253-9800.
--end--
|
|