The Generous Exchange Book Launch at Real Art Ways

Skip to main content
The Generous Exchange Book Launch
Join us on Saturday, April 26, 4:00 – 6:00 pm for a conversation with author Maria Sirois, Psy.D to celebrate the launch of her new book, The Generous Exchange: How Attention to Beauty, Goodness, and Excellence Restores Us and Our World.

“This profound book is a gift to you and our shared future.” – Tal Ben Shahar, Ph.D, author of Happier, No Matter What

PROGRAM:

Check back soon

This event is FREE to the public, but will require advance registration.

Books will be sold onsite on the day of the event. Concessions will be open and available if guests want to purchase beverages, popcorn, and snacks.

Maria Sirois, Psy.D. has spent more than three decades in the board rooms of businesses, the bedsides of the dying, and everywhere in between – to do one thing: offer the data, stories, tools and perspectives that enable us to cultivate resilience, health, wisdom and a greater capacity to lead ourselves and others well – no matter the strain or suffering of the moment. As a resilience expert, positive psychologist and international consultant, she is known for her authenticity, wisdom and compassion. She is the author of three books: the newly released, The Generous Exchange: How Attention to Beauty, Goodness and Excellence Restores Us and Our World, A Short Course in Happiness After Loss (And Other Dark, Difficult Times) and Every Day Counts.

Learn more about Maria Sirois here.

 

A Community Gathering & Concert Celebrating Zaccai and Luques Curtis
Saturday, March 15, at 7 pm – Real Art Ways, in partnership with the Greater Hartford Arts Council, Hartford Jazz Society, Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz, Artists Collective, WWUH, Jackie McLean Institute at The Hartt School, and Hartford Public Library, presents a concert and community celebration featuring the Curtis Brothers & Friends!

On February 2, 2025, pianist-composer Zaccai Curtis, along with his bandmates Luques Curtis, Willie Martinez, Camilo Molina and Reinaldo De Jesus, achieved their first-ever GRAMMY® win for Zaccai Curtis’ album Cubop Lives! in the Best Latin Jazz Album category.

Released on Truth Revolution Recording Collective last May, Cubop Lives! is a vibrant homage to the Afro-Cuban Jazz and Bebop tradition, performed by the renowned rising star. This award represents a significant milestone in Zaccai’s career, and we are incredibly proud of these superb musicians.

 

Performing on Saturday, March 15, are:

Zaccai Curtis – piano

Luques Curtis – bass

Reinaldo De Jesus – percussion

Willie Martinez – timbales

Marcos Torres – percussion

Special guest Jeremy Bosch – flute

Damian Curtis & Friends:

Damian Curtis – piano

Benny Velasquez  – bass

Miguel Rios – drums

Nelson Bello – congas

Ray Gonzalez – trumpet

Anthony De Leon  – trombone

 

This event is made possible with generous support from the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

WWUH is the official media sponsor for the event.

 

 

     

Zaccai Curtis is an acclaimed recording artist and producer, recently honored with the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. He leads his own groups, the Zaccai Curtis Quintet and Sonido Solar, and after five successful releases, is set to drop his new album Sonoluminescence in 2025.

Together with his brother, Luques, Zaccai co-founded the record label TRRcollective, a collaborative space for musicians to produce and release their own music. He is proud to have produced the Grammy-nominated album Entre Colegas by Andy González (2016).

A native of Connecticut, Zaccai moved to New York City in 2005, where he has performed with renowned artists including Christian Scott, Donald Harrison, Santana, Cindy Blackman, Eddie Palmieri, Brian Lynch, the Mambo Legends, and Avery Sharpe. In addition to his performance career, Zaccai is a respected educator, teaching at the University of Hartford’s Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division and Western Connecticut State University. He is also an author, having written two instructional books: Art of the Guajeo and Theory of the Common Voicing, which support students in their Jazz and Latin Jazz studies.

A three-time ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award winner, Zaccai is a prolific composer and arranger for his own groups, as well as artists like Little Johnny Rivero, Steve Kroon, and Sonido Solar. His quartet was chosen by the U.S. State Department for the American Music Abroad (Jazz Ambassadors) program twice, touring South Asia in 2006. In 2007, he received the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Artist Fellowship for original composition. In 2017, he was awarded the Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant, and in 2020, he was named Rising Star in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

Luques Curtis was born 1983 in Hartford, CT. After having formal training on piano and percussion, he found himself wanting to play the bass. Luques studied at the Greater Hartford Academy of Performing Arts, Artist Collective, and Guakia with Dave Santoro, Volcan Orham, Nat Reeves, Paul Brown, and others. While attending high school, he was also very fortunate to study the Afro-Caribbean genre with bass greats Andy Gonzalez and Joe Santiago. With his talent and hard work he earned a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College Of Music in Boston. There he studied with John Lockwood and Ron Mahdi. While in Boston he was also able to work with great musicians such as Gary Burton, Ralph Peterson, Donald Harrison, Christian Scott, and Francisco Mela.

Now living in the New York area, Mr. Curtis has been performing worldwide with Eddie Palmieri, Stefon Harris, Ralph Peterson, Christian Scott, Sean Jones, Orrin Evans, Christian Sands, and others. He is the recent recipient of the 2016 Down Beat Rising Star Bassist on the Critics Poll and also received the Ralph Bunche Fellowship to complete his Masters Degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. He co-owns a record label called Truth Revolution Records along side his brother, Zaccai. They have five releases under “Curtis Brothers” with the most recent being “Algorithm.” Luques was also part of Brian Lynch’s Grammy-winning CD “Simpatico” and Grammy-nominated “Madera Latino,” as well as Christian Scott’s Grammy-nominated CD “Rewind That.” He also produced Grammy-nominated “Entre Colegas” by Andy Gonzalez. You can hear him on Eddie Palmieri’s “Sabiduria” and “Mi Luz Mayor;” Gary Burton “Next Generations;” Dave Valentin “Come Fly With Me;” Sean Jones’ “Im*Pro*Vise,” “Roots,””Kaleidoscope,” and “The Search Within;” Orrin Evans’ CD “Faith In Action.” As a sideman, Luques Curtis has participated in over 100 recordings.

 

North Sun Book Launch Party
Join us on Friday, March 14, 6:30 pm for a conversation with author Ethan Rutherford to celebrate the launch of his new book, North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther

“NORTH SUN is a deeply wonderful, strange and magnificent book. I swam through its unique pages with glee and horror and joy and came up for air gasping at what a deeply brilliant writer Ethan Rutherford is. The novel is completely exhilarating.”- Edward Carey, author of Little, The Swallowed Man, and Edith Holler: A Novel

“This book is bonkers and I loved every rollicking, awkward, solemn, gorgeously written, isolated, melancholic, beautiful moment I spent with Arnold Lovejoy, his thoughts, his crew, the unending ice, and the sea, the empty-not-so-empty sea. Ethan Rutherford’s NORTH SUN is a damn harrowing sorrowful delight.”—Manuel Gonzales, author of The Miniature Wife and The Regional Office is Under Attack!

“Haunting, hallucinatory, and unrelentingly gorgeous, NORTH SUN feels as real as a history and as strange as a myth. The depths of Rutherford’s imagination left me enraptured and unsettled. This is the kind of book that will keep talking to you long after you’ve finished reading.” – Jennifer duBois, author of The Last Language

“I don’t know how, but Ethan Rutherford did it: He wrote Moby Dick for our times.”- Emily Barton, author of Brookland and The Book of Esther

“The evocative first novel from Rutherford (after the story collection Farthest South) depicts the end of the whaling era in the late 1870s. Worn-out captain Arnold Lovejoy is tasked by whaling baron Mr. Ashley with retrieving his son-in-law, Benjamin Leander, who’s gone native on the Alaskan coast after his ship was crushed by the ice, leaving his wife Sarah and their frail child behind. Accompanying Captain Lovejoy aboard the whaleship Esther are two others with tasks of their own: mysterious passenger Edmund Thule and a presence unseen by most, a seabird-man spirit named Old Sorrel who
begins to haunt the crew halfway through the voyage.

As Lovejoy sails the Esther to the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska in search of Leander, his crew hunts whales for oil and sport. Chronicling in brisk and poetic prose their numerous travails, needless deaths, and hidden perversions, Rutherford plumbs the depths men will sink to in extracting what they desire from nature and their fellow man. This harsh and stark ballad of a bygone time will move readers.” – Publishers Weekly

PROGRAM:

6:00 – Doors Open

6:30 – 6:45 – Poet Clare Rossini will open the program

6:45 – 7:15 – Ethan will show a short presentation and read an excerpt from North Sun

7:15 – 8:00 PM – Book signing

Music courtesy of Sinan Bakir

This event is FREE to the public, but will require advance registration.

Books will be sold onsite by River Bend Bookshop, on the day of the event. Concessions will be open and available if guests want to purchase beverages, popcorn, and snacks.

(Photo of Ethan Rutherford by Lou Russo)

Ethan Rutherford is the author of two story collections—Farthest South and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories—and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther is his first novel.

 

The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History
Join us on Saturday, February 22, 4:00 pm for a conversation with author Kent Dunlap to celebrate the launch of his new book, The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History

“Attitude and attention, thought and speech, movement and sensation, air and sustenance, they all depend on the neck….Mr. Dunlap’s fascinating discourse travels through anatomy, paleontology, anthropology, the arts, the zoo, museums, medicine, murder and more.” – WSJ

A 300-million-year tour of the prominent role of the neck in animal evolution and human culture.

Humans give a lot of attention to the neck. We decorate it with jewelry and ties, kiss it passionately, and use it to express ourselves in words and songs. Yet, at the neck, people have also shackled their prisoners, executed their opponents, and slain their victims. Beyond the drama of human culture, animals have evolved their necks into various shapes and uses vital to their lifestyles. The Neck delves into evolutionary time to solve a living paradox—why is our neck so central to our survival and culture but so vulnerable to injury and disease?

Biologist Kent Dunlap shows how the neck’s vulnerability is not simply an unfortunate quirk of evolution. Its weaknesses are intimately connected to the vessels, pipes, and glands that make it vital to existence. Fun and far-reaching, The Neck explores the diversity of forms and functions of the neck in humans and other animals and shows how this small anatomical transition zone has been a locus of incredible evolutionary and cultural creativity.

PROGRAM:

4:00 – 4:30 – Refreshments

4:30 – 5:00 – Kent will be interviewed by Tema Kaiser Silk from New England Public Media

5:00 – 5:30 – Audience Q&A

5:30 – 6:00 – Book signing

This event is FREE to the public, but will require advance registration.

Books will be sold onsite by River Bend Bookshop, on the day of the event. Concessions will be open and available if guests want to purchase beverages, popcorn, and snacks.

Photo by Nick Caito

Kent Dunlap is a Professor of Biology at Trinity College in Hartford, where he teaches physiology and anatomy and researches the neurobiology and behavior of fish (animals without necks!). In the summers, he makes pottery and sculpts ceramic animals.

 

Distant Bystander
Priya N. Green
Real Art Ways presents Distant Bystander; a solo exhibition by Priya N. Green 

Priya N. Green’s work delves into the fragile interplay between sight, perception, and reality. Anchored in the relentless repetition of images from the 24-hour news cycle, Green’s paintings grapple with the tension between agitation and desensitization. This constant barrage of mediated visuals shapes her response: a search for emotional connection amidst the noise.

Rooted in large-scale oil paintings, Green’s recent series draws from found images of protests and crowds in India. As the daughter of Indian immigrants, Priya’s art has long been a way of tracing her ties to family and heritage. Yet, technology complicates these connections. Screens, paradoxically, bring us closer while magnifying a sense of distance. They serve as both portals and barriers, framing the world while distancing us from its immediacy.

During the pandemic, this dissonance became sharper, as life was filtered through glowing devices. Priya N. Green’s paintings are an exploration of this modern condition—our yearning for presence in an increasingly mediated reality.

Distant Bystander was curated by Peter Albano.

About the Artist

Priya N. Green (b. 1986 New Jersey) is an artist whose layered oil paintings explore ideas of reality and perception through the pervasive images found in the news. Green’s work forms a response to the phenomenological impact of abs orbing information and seeking truth through the screen. She uses the materiality of paint to address the veracity of the photographic images that have penetrated the twenty-first century psyche. As the granddaughter of a Bollywood screenwriter, Green believes her fascination with images is an inherited trait. By extracting and manipulating these images through paint, she forms an emotional connection to these events that are otherwise intangibly experienced through a screen.

Green received a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Green has shown her work nationally at many institutions including the Jersey City Museum, University Museum of Contemporary Art, Zimmerli Art Museum, and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. In 2023, Green had her first museum solo exhibition at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts at the Springfield Museums in Springfield, MA. She has been recognized with numerous awards including the international Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and a fellowship from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2023, Green’s work was featured in John Seed’s book More Disruption: Representation in Flux, a poignant survey of forty-three internationally acclaimed painters whose works address issues of realism within contemporary painting. Green’s work is collected both privately and in public institutions such as the Springfield Museums, University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst, Forbes Library, and Western New England University.

Green lives and works in Springfield, MA with her husband, artist Andrae Green, and their three children.

 

Thin Ice
Joseph Smolinski
Real Art Ways presents Thin Ice; a solo exhibition by Joseph Smolinski. 

Thin Ice, 2020

Digital animation, 6 min. 31 sec.

I was born in the 1970’s shortly after the Oil Embargo that brought our country to a halt. The period of 1975-1980 was a missed opportunity to learn from our unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels and embrace innovative new green technologies. In hindsight, this inaction has set us on a course of grave danger all while marketing campaigns from corporate entities steered popular culture away from the environmental movement of the time. I distinctly remember watching 80’s automotive commercials from Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet of rugged trucks ripping through the landscape and performing off-road feets in slow motion. Phrases like “Built Ford Tough” and “Like a Rock” were designed to perpetuate toxic masculinity with little regard to sustainability. These tropes come from a long line of colonial views of the environment in which a landscape must be tamed and conquered. Thin Ice is an animation project that draws from formulaic American truck commercials and my memories of growing up in Minnesota. Each Spring the nightly news would air reports of the latest automobile stranded and sinking through the thinning ice of area lakes. Fueled by automotive fetishism and masculine folly this moving image is a striking metaphor of the state of the environment.

-Joseph Smolinksi

Thin Ice was curated by David Borawski

About the Artist

Joseph Smolinski is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who lives and works in New Haven, CT. His practice questions the shifting roles of technology within communication networks, energy, and oil companies, and the industrial, agricultural infrastructure, which indelibly shape the so-called natural environment. Smolinski received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin (1999) and his MFA from the University of Connecticut, Storrs (2001). Group exhibition venues include Diverse Works, Houston, TX; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Solo exhibitions include Mixed Greens Gallery, NY; Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; and ArtSpace, New Haven, CT. His work has been discussed in Art in America, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and Art Papers. He is a recipient of the Connecticut Commission of the Arts 2012 Artist Fellowship, the 2014 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University, and a 2012 Artist Resource Trust Grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He has been an artist in residence at Wassaic Projects, 2021 and the Happy and Bob Doran Connecticut AIR Program at Yale University Art Gallery and Artspace, New Haven.

 

Real Wall
Bethani Blake
Real Art Ways presents artwork by Bethani Blake 

Blake translates a present day world which depicts personal nostalgia, recontextualizing appropriated and personal images. A first generation Black person in an immediate family of white Americans, she grew up surrounded by iconography and other paraphernalia specific to American culture and first-world consumption. Conflicting agency as a consequence of existing between contradictory circumstances, she chooses to acknowledge this connection which drives her to depict an experience in contemporary society with subject matter related to cultural movements specific to the turn of the twenty-first century and present day.

Her practice involves the systematic curation of information which is accessed through the Internet and interpersonal communication. From music to video games, fandom, and social issues, she creates visual work which investigates her relationship to the imagery. Blake is most interested in the collapsing of time, how information intersects conceptually, and the irony of her position in the work she is investigating.

 

About the Artist

Bethani Blake (b. 1999) is an artist, curator, and educator based in Hartford, CT. She received her B.F.A in Painting and Performing Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2021 and has exhibited work in Connecticut. Georgia, and Ohio. Blake is currently the Amistad Associate Curator for the African Diaspora at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art where she organizes exhibitions and heads an artist residency.

 

 

Seven Secrets to The Perfect Personal Essay: Book Talk
Join us Sunday, January 19, at 6 pm for an evening of readings and conversation with author Nancy Slonim Aronie to celebrate the launch of her new book, Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay: Crafting the Story Only You Can Write.

Nancy will be joined by fellow writers who will each share their own personal essays:

TONY SHALHOUB (UPDATE: Tony will not be able to attend the event on Sunday 1/19.)

GLENN BERGENFIELD

KATE FEIFFER

KATE TAYLOR

STEVE KEMPER

JULIA KIDD

SUZY TROTTA

BRAD HAMERMESH

TERRY MCGUIRE

LINDA PEARCE PRESTLEY

GERRY YUKEVICH

$35 General Admission (includes purchase of the book; books will be distributed the night of the event by our bookstore partner, River Bend Bookshop.)

If you’re planning to attend as a couple or household and do not want to purchase multiple copies of the book, we can offer you a $10 admission for the 2nd person.

Nancy Slonim Aronie is the author of Writing from the Heart; Finding the Power of your Inner Voice (Hyperion). She has been a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and was a Visiting Writer at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Aronie wrote a monthly column in McCall’s magazine and was the recipient of the Eye of The Beholder Artist in Residence Award at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Nancy was recognized for excellence in teaching for all three years she taught with Robert Coles at Harvard University.

She is the founder of The Chilmark Writing Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard and teaches Jumpstart your Memoir; Write it from the Heart at Esalen, Kripalu, Omega Institute, Open Center in NYC and Blue Spirit in Costa Rica.

Her column, From The Heart, appears biweekly in The Martha’s Vineyard Times. She is the author of WRITING FROM THE HEART, FINDING YOUR INNER VOICE, (HYPERION)  MEMOIR AS MEDICINE: The Healing Power of Writing Your Messy, Imperfect, Unruly (but gorgeously yours) Life Story, (New World Library) and THE PERFECT PERSONAL ESSAY: Crafting The Story Only YOU Can Write.

 

 

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
April 13 Performance:

Matt Mitchell on keyboard

Matt Mitchell-piano

Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer interested in the intersections of the various strains of acoustic, electric, and composed and improvised new music. He currently composes for and leads several ensembles featuring many of the current foremost musicians and improvisers, including Tim Berne, Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, and Dan Weiss.

 

Kim Cass-bass

Kim Cass is from an island off the coast of Maine, where he was introduced to bass playing at age 10. He quickly developed a unique style on the electric bass and began playing the upright bass at age 13. Developing this instrument in a jazz context became Kim’s passion, as did composing music featuring his upright playing.

When studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, Cass received personalized instruction from several virtuoso musicians, including George Garzone, Ran Blake, Joe Morris, and Joe Maneri. Cass currently resides in New York City. He has been featured in a wide variety of ensembles, executing music that is ever-challenging and beautifully mysterious.

Cass has performed with the likes of Matt Mitchell, Tyshawn Sorey, John Zorn, and Bill McHenry. The solo album KIM CASS, released on Table and Chairs, is a showcase of Kim’s upright bass playing and compositions.

Learn more about Kim here.

 

man strumming a guitar

Joe Morris-guitar

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Learn more about Joe here.

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
March 16 Performance:

Korean woman playing a gayageum

DoYeon Kim-gayageum

DoYeon Kim is a traditionally trained Korean artist who plays the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument, and has developed a uniquely broad approach to music, incorporating Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences. Notably, she introduced the gayageum into the improvisational music scene worldwide. Her recent collaborative projects have broadened to include dancers, actors, and visual artists.

During her traditional Korean training, she won numerous international competitions for her gayageum performances, including the Dong-A Ilbo Traditional Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2009), and the On-Nala Korean Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2011). DoYeon is also a graduate of the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was the first student ever admitted to the school playing any kind of Korean traditional instrument. She joined the faculty at her alma mater (2022). She also holds graduate degrees from Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute.

She has worked with numerous composers, performing several world premieres, and has been an invited guest lecturer for gayageum and Asian music at Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Universidad Nacional De Colombia, Dartmouth College, and many other universities. The Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra, a traditional music orchestra in Korea, has invited her as a music director (2021), and improvisation conductor (2023). DoYeon makes an effort to share a new and broader approach to music, drawing from Korean traditional music, improvisation, and development of original playing techniques.

DoYeon has performed throughout the world leading the Kim Do Yeon Band, and alongside many improvisers, including Tyshawn Sorey, Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Tony Malaby and Anthony Coleman. Her first album, GaPi (2017), intimately combined traditional Korean music and jazz, and was nominated for a 2018 Korean Grammy Award in the crossover album category. The same year, DoYeon released the free improvisation album Macrocosm with Joe Morris, and performed on Jim Snidero’s Korean themed jazz album Project-K (2020), alongside Dave Douglas, Orrin Evans, Linda Oh and Rudy Royston. DoYeon Kim was recognized by Grammy.com as one of 7 Musicians Pushing Ancient Asian Instruments Into The Future (2021), and is performing projects at Roulette as a Van Lier Fellow (2023).

Learn more about DoYeon here.

 

man playing instrument

Dan O’Brien-saxophone, clarinet, flute

Dan O’Brien is a woodwind player (alto sax, flute, clarinet) who was quite active in the early Contemporary period prior to the pandemic. He performed with Leap of Faith, The Leap of Faith Orchestra & Sub-Units project at Third Life Studios in Somerville, 3 of the 6 Graphic Scores for the full Leap of Faith Orchestra, Mekaniks, and Turbulence. He came to our scene along with Zach Bartolomei, also a reed player, and they performed together on most of the sets.

Learn more about Dan here.

 

man playing upright bass

Brad Barret-bass

“A true virtuoso of the double bass with unlimited abilities. The possibilities of Free Music afford him the challenge to operate on the frontier of music, while his great technique grounds him with precision and musicality.” – Joe Morris

Brad Barrett is a bassist, improviser, and educator. His practice engages the tools of improvisation and southern musical traditions to interrogate the complex interplay between freedom and structure. The Jazz Times has described Barrett’s style as “diced bits of Derek Bailey skronk” infused with “Delta blues twang,” and the Free Music Collective has lauded his playing as “singularly rhythmically genius.” In 2019, his first album, Cowboy Transfiguration—featuring Joe Morris on guitar and MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey on percussion—garnered critical acclaim for its distinctive sonic landscapes and virtuosity. Unlike conventional approaches to composition that place decision-making authority in the hands of a single composer, the compositional frameworks in Cowboy Transfiguration challenge players to maximize their creative freedom while adhering to rules for shared leadership. Over the past decade, Barrett has worked as an in-demand freelance musician; has performed with jazz luminaries such as Jason Moran, Sheila Jordan, Julian Lage, Evan Parker, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Taylor Ho Bynum and Rakalam Bob Moses; and has appeared on several noteworthy albums. In addition, Barrett is an award-winning educator whose innovative teaching practice has been consistently supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Barrett holds a DMA in Contemporary Improvisation and a MM in Jazz Performance from the New England Conservatory.

Learn more about Brad here.

 

Man standing in front of drum set

Joe Morris-percussion, electronics

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Learn more about Joe here.

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
February 16 Performance:

 

William Parker-bass, flutes, n’goni

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City. He has recorded over 150 albums, published six books, and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.

He has been called “one of the most inventive bassists/leaders since [Charles] Mingus,” and “the creative heir to Jimmy Garrison and Paul Chambers…directly influenced by ‘60s avant-gardists like Sirone, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva.” The Village Voice called him, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” Time Out New York named him one of the “50 Greatest New York Musicians of All Time.”

Parker’s current active bands include the large-band Little Huey Creative Orchestra, the Raining on the Moon Sextet, the In Order to Survive Quartet, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, the Cosmic Mountain Quintet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore, as well as a deep and ongoing solo bass study. His recordings have long been documented by the AUM Fidelity record label and on his own Centering Records, among others. He also has a duo project “Hope Cries For Justice” with Patricia Nicholson Parker, which combines music, storytelling, poetry, and dance

Over the decades, Parker has developed a reputation as a connector and hub of information concerning the history of creative music, recently culminating in two hefty volumes of interviews with over 60 avant-garde and creative musicians, Conversations I & II.  He is also the subject of an exhaustive 468-page “sessionography” that documents thousands of performances and recording sessions, a remarkable chronicle of his prolificness as an active artist.

He has been a key figure in the New York and European creative music scenes since the 1970s and has worked all over the world.  He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Peter Brotzmann, Milford Graves, Peter Kowald, and David S. Ware, among many others.

William Parker works all over the world, but he always returns to New York’s Lower East Side, where he has lived since 1975.

Learn more about William here.

 

Taylor Ho Bynum-cornet, flugelhorn

Taylor Ho Bynum is a musician, teacher, and writer, with a background including work in composition, performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, production, organizing, and advocacy.

His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and over a hundred as a sideperson. Bynum enjoys playing with friends in collective ensembles like his duo with Tomas Fujiwara, Illegal Crowns (with Fujiwara, Benoit Delbecq, and Mary Halvorson), and Geometry (with Kyoko Kitamura, Tomeka Reid, and Joe Morris), and as a sideperson in Fujiwara’s Triple Double and Shizuko, Reid’s Stringtet and Septet, Jim Hobbs & the Fully Celebrated Orchestra, and Bill Lowe’s Signifyin’ Natives.

Learn more about Taylor here.

 

man drumming on stage

Jerome Deupree-drums, percussion

Jerome Dupree is an American musician, based in Massachusetts. He is best known as the original drummer in the alternative rock band Morphine.

Jerome started playing drums at the age of six, with the help of his two older brothers. In the early 1970s, he formed a band with his brother Jesse. After high school, he moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he got to record for the first time. After a few years he again relocated to Santa Cruz, California, where he played with Humans, who toured with Squeeze and opened for Patti Smith and Iggy Pop.

In 1981 he moved to Boston, and has lived there since. His early Boston projects included stints in Sex Execs and Either/Orchestra.

Learn more about Jerome here.

 

man strumming a guitar

Joe Morris-guitar, banjouke

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Learn more about Joe here.

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
January 19 Performance:

Jacqueline Kerrod-harp

Described as ‘exceptionally virtuosic and sensitive,’ South African harpist Jacqueline Kerrod is perfectly at home across multiple genres and performs throughout the United States and Europe.

Most recently, she has been touring internationally with composer and multi-reedist Anthony Braxton, both in duo and as part of his ZIM music ensemble. She was a founding member and co-songwriter of the pop duo Addi & Jacq, who were winners of NYC’s Battle of the Boroughs in 2015, and recently toured her show, ‘Harps Uncovered’ featuring vocalist Hannah Sumner through 12 states of the US. Currently, she is working on a solo project further exploring her love of improvisation, songwriting, and the use of electronics to augment and manipulate sound.

As a champion of contemporary music, Jacqueline has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Wet InkAlarm Will Sound, and Metropolis Chamber Ensemble. As a native South African, she is passionate about commissioning and performing music written by South African composers and has performed over a dozen works written for her. She has also performed with elite chamber groups such as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.

Described as an ‘eclectic harpist’ by Lucid Culture, her discography includes a recently released duo with Anthony Braxton on the ‘dischi di angelica’ label. Recorded live on May 27th, 2018 at the AngelicA, Festival Internazionale di Musica at the Centro di Ricerca Musicale / Teatro San Leonardo, Bologna, Italy. Available on Bandcamp.Contemporary music, 3 self produced albums with Addi & Jacq, Greg Spears’ Requiem (New Amsterdam Records), Robert Paterson’s Star Crossing and Book of Goddesses (American Modern Recordings), and MAYA – In The Spirit(Perspectives Recordings). Other notable recordings that feature Jacqueline include Tristan Murail’s Winter Fragments (AEON), Anthony Braxton’s Trillium J, and the single Crazy in Love by Antony and the Johnsons (Secretly Canadian/Rough Trade Records). Her recording, “Candlelight Carols” with Grammy®-nominated vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire debuted at #11 on the Classical Billboard charts.

She has performed with Kayne West, Antony & the Johnsons, Jane Birkin, Rufus Wainwright, Santigold, Jónsi & Alex, to name a few.

Learn more about Jacqueline here.

 

Joe Morris-guitar

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Learn more about Joe here.

 

2024 Annual Holiday Jazz & Latin Jazz Parranda: Papo Vázquez and the Mighty Pirates Troubadours
Poster for 2024 Holiday Parranda
Saturday, December 7, at 7 pm – Real Art Ways welcomes trombonist, composer and arranger Papo Vázquez for our annual concert and holiday parranda. Bring an instrument and get in free! Otherwise, general admission is $10.
Parranda de aguinaldo (Christmas folk music), is an Afro-Indigenous musical form played during the holidays in various Caribbean and Latin American countries including Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad, and the coastal area of the states Aragua and Carabobo in Venezuela.

Papo Vázquez is a trombonist, composer, and arranger with over 40 years of a career spanning Jazz, Latin, and Afro-Caribbean music. Papo is a National Endowment for the Arts Master Artist and Grammy Nominee and was featured in the 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll.

“En fin, Vázquez junto a sus Mighty Pirates Troubadours e invitados exponen un proyecto exquisito y cadencioso que se transforma en un banquete para los amantes del género.” – El Vocero, 2020
(In short, Vázquez along with his Mighty Pirates Troubadours and guests present an exquisite and lilting project that becomes a banquet for lovers of the genre.)

•Musical Director for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Orchestra, (NYC/WABC) 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
•Commissioned by Wynton Marsalis to compose music for Jazz and Art series, conducted and performed with J@LC orchestra, CD release August 2019
•New York Pops Education, Board of Education certified, 2018 and 2019
•Commissioned new music for Afro Latin Jazz Alliance for “Nueva Musica” concert series
•Grammy nominated for Papo Vázquez’ Mighty Pirates, Marooned/Aíslado, 2008

Papo was deeply moved by jazz at a young age. His appreciation and knowledge of the indigenous music of the Caribbean provides him with a unique ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean rhythms with freer melodic and harmonic elements of progressive jazz.

Learn more about Papo by visiting his website.

Real Art Ways le da la bienvenida de regreso al trombonista, compositor y arreglista Papo Vázquez a nuestro concierto anual y parranda navideña.

Parranda de aguinaldo (música folclórica navideña), es una forma musical afro-indígena que se toca en temporada de vacaciones en varios países del Caribe y América Latina, incluidos Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad y la zona costera de los estados de Aragua y Carabobo en Venezuela.

Band of Pirates:

Papo Vázquez – Trombone, Leader

Jose Mangual Jr. – Vocals

Ivan Renta – Sax

Rick Germanson – Piano

Carlos Mena – Bass

Willie Martinez – Drums

Carlos Maldonado – Percussion, Vocals

Reinaldo Dejesus – Percussion, Vocals

 

 

Shadows Taller Than Our Souls
Christa Whitten
Real Art Ways presents a solo exhibition by Christa Whitten. 

Cairns have long served as way-finding constructions in terrain where the trail may become unclear. These carefully stacked rock piles act as navigational aids and are trusted to guide the way in critical conditions, such as when dense fog or storms obscure the path. They provide direction in uncertain times. These cairns are offered as places to pause and reflect, reminding us to focus on the waypoints in the storm and move with them. When we act in line with a purpose, the resulting shadows are long and contain a multitude of ripples.

Shadows Taller Than Our Souls is curated by David Borawski. 

About the Artist

Christa Whitten is a visual artist known for vibrantly colorful, evocative work, often utilizing paper in two-dimensional and sculptural applications. Her work’s intention is to provide an opportunity to access the intangible inner landscapes we carry within and explore their relationships to wider contexts. She has exhibited throughout New England, including the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Silvermine Art Center (where she is a guild member), ArtWalk Hartford, and the Anchor House of Artists in Northampton, MA. In addition, she enjoys collaborating with other artists to produce work for publication, such as ‘snffbx press’ artist books and illustrations for a children’s book entitled “Reach for the Stars.” She lives and works in northern Connecticut. 

 

 

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
December 15 Performance:

Darius Jones-saxophone

“Today, there isn’t a saxophonist with a purer and more astonishing tone, one of authority and humanity.” – PopMatters

Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music. Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence and Commission, Western Front Residency and Commission, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation Award, and Fromm Music Foundation Commission from Harvard University. Jones has received acclaim for his studio albums featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism and his commissioned work as a composer throughout the United States and Canada.

Learn more about Darius here.

 

Nasheet Waits-drums

NASHEET WAITS, drummer/music educator, is a New York native. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Frederick Waits. Over the course of his career, Freddie Waits played with such legendary artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, and countless others.

Nasheet’s college education began at Morehouse in Atlanta, GA, where he majored in Psychology and History. Deciding that music would be his main focus, he continued his college studies in New York at Long Island University, where he graduated with honours, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Music. While attending Long Island University, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist, Michael Carvin. Carvin’s tutelage provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach. It was Max that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM. One highlight of Nasheet’s tenure with M’BOOM was the live concert performance of M’BOOM with special guests Tony Williams and Ginger Baker.

Learn more about Nasheet here.

 

Adam Lane-bassist

By combining a disparate set of influences into a unique improvisational voice, Adam Lane has become recognized as one of the most original creative voices in contemporary jazz. His 2006 recording New Magical Kingdom, was recently featured in the Penguin Jazz Guide 1001 Best Records Ever Made, and his most recent recording, Ashcan Ranting received a myriad of critical praise including four stars in Downbeat.

His current projects include his Full Throttle Orchestra, a nine piece ensemble formed to realize his extended jazz orchestral compositions, The Adam Lane Trio, featuring legendary reedist Vinny Golia, Four Corners, a co-lead ensemble with reedist Ken Vandermark, and an ongoing solo project that combines unique processed double bass improvisations with Lane’s original story telling. As a sideman he has performed with an eclectic mix of musicians, from tenor great John Tchicai, to alto iconoclast Richard Tabnik, to rock legend Tom Waits. Lane’s compositions have been praised for their audacity and originality.

Learn more about Adam here.

 

Joe Morris-guitar

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Learn more about Joe here.

 

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
November 17 Performance:

 

Jeb Bishop-trombone

 

Nate McBride-bass

 

Kelly Bray-trumpet

 

 

Joe Morris-drums

Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
October 20 Performance:

Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense, and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center’s artistic director Jason Moran and a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by the New Yorker and the New York Times nominated her composition Vogelfrei as ‘one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018’.

She worked with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richards Abrams, Dave Douglas, Kenny Wheeler, Jason Moran, Tim Berne, William Parker, Tom Rainey, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Andy Milne, Luc Ex, Django Bates’ Human Chain, The Continuum Ensemble, Wet Ink and many others.

Awards included the BBC Jazz Award for Innovation in 2004, a Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation in 2006, the 2009 SWR German Radio Jazz Prize, the 2014 German Record Critics Quarterly Award, Downbeat Annual Critics Poll Rising Star Soprano Saxophone (2015), Rising Star-Tenor Saxophone (2018) and Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Composition 2019.

Ingrid Laubrock has received composition commissions from The Fromm Music Foundation, BBC Glasgow Symphony Orchestra, Bang on The Can, Grossman Ensemble, The Shifting Foundation, The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, Wet Ink, John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series, and the EOS Orchestra.

She is a recipient of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and the 2021 Berklee Institute of Gender Justice Women Composers Collection Grant.

Ingrid Laubrock is a part-time faculty member at The New School and Columbia University. Other teaching experiences include improvisation workshops at Towson University, CalArts, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Baruch College, University of Michigan, University of Newcastle, and many others. Laubrock was Improviser in Residence 2012 in the German city of Moers. The post is created to introduce creative music into the city throughout the year. As part of this, she led a regular improvisation ensemble and taught sound workshops in elementary schools.

Born in Newark, NJ, Steve Swell has been an active member of the NYC music community since 1975.  His breadth of versatility has allowed him to tour and record with mainstream artists like Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich in the past, as well as more contemporary artists like Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and William Parker.  He has over 50 CDs as a leader or co-leader and is a featured artist on more than 125 other releases.  He runs workshops worldwide and is a teaching artist in the NYC public school system, focusing on special needs children.

Swell has worked on music transcriptions of the Bosavi tribe of New Guinea for MacArthur fellow Steve Feld in 2000. His CD, “Suite For Players, Listeners and Other Dreamers” (CIMP), ranked number 2 in the 2004 Cadence Readers Poll. He has also received grants from USArtists International in 2006 and MCAF (LMCC) awards in 2008 and 2013. He has been commissioned three times for the Interpretations Series at Merkin Hall in 2006 and at Roulette in 2012 and 2017.

Steve was nominated for Trombonist of the Year 2008, 2011 & 2020 by the Jazz Journalists Association, was selected Trombonist of the Year 2008-2010, 2012,  2014-2021, and 2023 by the online journal El Intruso of Argentina, and received the 2008 Jubilation Foundation Fellowship Award of the Tides Foundation.  Steve has also been selected by the Downbeat Critics Poll in the Trombone category each year from 2010-2018 & 2020-2024. The New York City Jazz Record chose his recording “Soul Travelers” with Jemeel Moondoc, Dave Burrell, William Parker, and Gerald Cleaver as Album of the Year in 2016. His performance of “Kende Dreams” with Connie Crothers, Rob Brown, Larry Roland, and Chad Taylor at the 2016 Vision Festival was cited as one of the year’s best performances by the same journal. This was also one of Connie’s last performances. We miss her dearly.

Steve is a teaching artist through the American Composers Orchestra, Healing Arts Initiative, Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center (Bronx), the Jazz Foundation of America, Leman Manhattan Preparatory School, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

Steve was also awarded the 2014 Creative Curricula grant (LMCC) for the project: “Metamorphoses: Modern Mythology in Sound and Words,” which was taught in a month-long residency at Baruch College Campus High School in Manhattan.

Steve’s CD Music for Six Musicians: Hommage à Olivier Messiaen was listed in NPR’s top 50 albums for 2018.

Steve is an inaugural recipient of a Jazz Road Tours grant (SouthArts.org) begun in 2019 and received a 2020 Creative Engagement grant (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) for performances to take place in Manhattan.

In 2021, Steve received the City Artists Corps Grant (NYC).

Hidemi Akaiwa is a Japanese pianist and composer. At 30, she shifted from a successful corporate career to focusing on jazz music. She received a full scholarship to  Berklee, where she participates in the college’s Global Jazz Institute, Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Planet MicroJam Institute, and Interdisciplinary Arts Institute. These experiences have allowed her to study with world-class musicians, including Danilo Pérez, Kenny Werner, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Billy Childs, David Fiuczynski, and many others. Her passion is to create a new art form infusing the tenets of Japanese Zen with the sounds of jazz and microtonal contemporary classical music.

 

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He has performed or recorded with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, David S. Ware, Sunny Murray, Marshall Allen, Dewey Redman, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Andrew CyrilleJoe Maneri, Barry Guy, Tyshawn Sorey, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Han Bennink, Barre Phillips, Tomeka Reid, Paul Rutherford, Agustí Fernández, Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Gerald Cleaver, Rob Brown, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, DKV Trio, Aaly Trio, Daniel Carter, Rashid Bakr, Wilbur Morris,, Kidd Jordan, Alvin Fielder, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Tim Berne, Fred Anderson, Ivo Perelman, Andrea Parkins, Hamid Drake, Thurman Barker, Fred Hopkins, Bern Nix, Joe McPhee, Billy Bang, Lowell Davidson, Peter Kowald, Simon Fell, Roy Campbell Jr., Raphé Malik, Whit Dickey, Sabir Mateen, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Warren Smith, Karen Borca, Malcolm Goldstein, Paul Lytton, Tim Berne, Suzie Ibarra, Mat Maneri, Sylvia Courvosier, Thurston Moore, Alex Ward, Jamie Saft and many others. He has also performed as a member of William Parker’s Organic Ensemble, Pipeline 2000, Jim Hobbs Ghost Band, Alan Silva’s Celestial Communications Orchestra, Simon Fell Orchestra, Agustí Fernández Celebration Ensemble, and in a large ensemble led by Leroy Jenkins. He currently leads various groups including Abstract Forest, a 20+ piece improvising ensemble, Go Go Mambo, Joe Morris Quartet, Mess Hall, Shock Axis, Plymouth, as well as performing solo, in duos and as a freelance guitarist and double bassist. In 2019 he began his INSTANTIATION music, recording and performing the first four parts of the multi-part work that uses the properties of free music in new ways with various ensembles.

He is featured as leader, co-leader and sideman on 150 recordings to date. Many of his recordings as a leader have been named among Writer’s Choice (best of the year) in the Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, Wire, Coda, and Jazziz, and on Free Jazz.org and All About Jazz.com.. He has recorded for the labels AUM Fidelity, SoulNote, Thirsty Ear, Ayler, Knitting Factory, Okka Disc, OmniTone, Avant, Incus, Hat Hut, ECM, Leo, Homestead, NoMore, About Time, Clean Feed, Skycap, Rogue Art, Rare Noise, ESPdisk, Bug Incision, Relative Pitch, and Cuneiform. In 2014 he founded Glacial Erratic records.

In 2019 he was nominated for a St Botolph Distinguished Artist Award. He received the 2017 Killam Visiting Scholar Award from the University of Calgary Alberta Canada. He was the recipient of a Meet the Composer grant in 2004. He was nominated for a 2001 Calarts Alpert Award. He was nominated as New York Jazz Awards Guitarist of the Year in 1998 and 2002.

In 2012 he published the book Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti, 2012). His article Encryption was included in Arcane vol 7 (Tzadik 2014). His article Perpetual Frontier appears on www.pointofdeparture.org (Pod39) May 2012. He has written numerous liner note articles on his music and for other artists for recordings on the labels Sony, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, RogueArt and others. His monthly column Intentional Evolution begins publication in the German magazine Jazz Podium in January 2020. He has presented workshops and master classes in a wide variety of settings throughout North America and Europe, including at Harvard University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, University of the Arts, Berklee College of Music, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, University of Alberta, and Mannes School of Music. He has taught improvisation and/or guitar on the faculty at Tufts University Experimental College, Southern Connecticut State University and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. He is a lesson faculty member at New School Jazz and Contemporary Music. He has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory of Music since 2000.

He began his work as an organizer and performance producer/curator in 1976 in Boston and continued there and in New York until 2001 when he left Boston for New Haven CT. Upon moving to Connecticut in 2001 he created the Just Play series in New Haven (2003/2004), curated the premier season at Firehouse 12 (2005), was artistic director for Hartford Jazz Society Jazz in the Park series (2008), co-founded and curated the Improvisations series at Real Art Ways in Hartford (2011–2016), and founded and co-curated the Multiplex series at State House in New Haven (2019). He was in residence at The Stone NYC for two weeks in January 2013, and for one week in June 2014, August 2016, June 2017 and May 2018. In September 2015 through June 2016, he produced the series Arcade which presented him in performance with new emerging musicians with ten performances presented in New Haven, Hartford, Cambridge, Mass., and Brooklyn, N.Y. His one-day festival Spectacle was presented at Real Art Ways in Hartford CT annually from 2013-2018. It featured emerging musicians performing in ad-hoc groupings with well-known professionals.

 

Memories Misused
Peter Brown
Real Art Ways presents a solo exhibition by photographer Peter Brown.

 

 The images in Memories Misused represent recollections from a personal trauma the artist Peter Brown experienced as a victim of an armed home invasion in 2013. The themes of innocence, violence, dismay, anger, violation, vengeance, resilience, and justice throughout these works convey the multi-layered dispositions associated with persons suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.     

The work is produced from digital captures, color negative film, lensless cameras, Pinhole photography, scanography, and digital manipulations.  Layering these processes onto still life, an otherwise mundane subject matter, creates a kaleidoscopic dreamscape of confusion, nostalgia, and optical violation. The use of personal objects, home goods, and items related to this violent experience further confronts the notion of assumed comfort.

Brown draws inspiration from contemporary photographers David Levinthal, Sandy Skogland, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons who frequently model and manipulate nostalgic, cultural paraphernalia in order to achieve new narratives. 

With saturated colors, heightened textures, and obscured familiar objects, Brown evokes a sense of disorientation and discomfort, inviting viewers to confront the fragility of security within the confines of the familiar. These whimsical yet haunting images serve as a metaphorical exploration of the home invasion’s aftermath by blurring the boundaries between safety and danger, the real and surreal, and cause and effect.  

As gun violence becomes increasingly documented in America, we are inundated with stories of what happens when the firearm goes off. However, the mere threat of a firearm can erode our psyche to a lateral place of trauma.  Memories Misused does not intend to take a position in the ongoing firearm debate, but begs the question, “Is being targeted a universal feeling?”   Peter Brown uses personal experience to draw focus to subjects that are on the other side of the barrel, and the long journey to safety endeavored thereafter. 

 

About the Artist

Peter Brown currently resides in Pine Meadow, CT, and received a BFA in 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional design from the Hartford Art School. After graduating, he took his sculptural skills towards jobs in construction, then changed course and applied his love of photography towards the commercial advertising photography field. 

In 1985, he co-founded Woodruff/Brown Architectural Photography, later transitioning to Peter Brown Photography. 

Peter’s most recent explorations have been with pinhole and scanography alternative photographic processes.  Brown has exhibited works at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Boston Society for Architecture, and received an Excellence award from the Connecticut Art Directors Club in 2024.  

In 2024, Brown completed photography for Preservation in Action, a book publication that tells the compelling story of Old Wethersfield, Connecticut’s largest and oldest historic district in its oldest town, published by Wesleyan University Press. 

 

 

(top)

Red Revolver 0274

Digital Flatbed Scanner Photograph

38” x 28.14”, Archival Giclee 100% Cotton Print

(bottom)

Caution 2732_41713

Digital Flatbed Scanner Photograph

60” x 44”, Archival Giclee 100% Cotton Print

(thumbnail)

Disguise_TeddySmilesColt38Special

Pinhole Photograph, 4×5 Color Negative Film

60” x 69.5”, Archival Giclee 100% Cotton Print

 

 

Improvisations Now

Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!

September 22 Performance:

 

Nicole Mitchell

Nicole M. Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator. She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2022). Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s. She started with Maia and Shanta Nurullah in Samana (the AACM’s first all-woman ensemble) and as a member of the David Boykin EXPANSE. Her music celebrates contemporary African American culture. She is the founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections, and Ice Crystal, and she composes contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size while incorporating improvisation and a broad aesthetic expression. The former first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Mitchell, celebrates endless possibility by “creating visionary worlds through music that bridge the familiar with the unknown.” Some of her newest work with Black Earth Ensemble explores intercultural collaborations: Bamako*Chicago, featuring Malian kora master, Ballake Sissoko and Mandorla Awakening with Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi) and Tatsu Aoki (taiko, bass, shamisen).  As a composer, Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Stone, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America (New Works), the Chicago Jazz Festival, ICE, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mitchell has performed with creative music luminaries, including Craig Taborn, Roscoe Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Anthony Braxton, Geri Allen, George Lewis, Mark Dresser, Steve Coleman, Anthony Davis, Myra Melford, Bill Dixon, Muhal Richard Abrams, Ed Wilkerson, Rob Mazurek, and Billy Childs, and Hamid Drake. She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011), the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012) and the United States Artist Award (2020).  Mitchell is a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia and previously taught at the University of California Irvine and the University of Pittsburgh.

Website

Joe Morris

“The preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” – Downbeat Magazine

“One of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.” – WIRE Magazine

“The guitar revolutionary to pay attention to.” – The Boston Phoenix

Joe Morris was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14, first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation. He released his first record, Wraparound (riti), in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Joe Morris and Real Art Ways have a longstanding creative relationship. Joe has performed multiple times since the 1980s and has organized concert series of improvisational music for years.

Facebook

Website

“No Guns, All Play” Public Art Project and Celebration
UPDATE: This event is happening weather-permitting.
Real Art Ways presents a new community art project “No Guns, All Play” on Saturday, August 10, at 11:30 am at George Day Park (across from 56 Arbor Street).

The public is invited to this community event; refreshments will be served. (

“No Guns, All Play” is a sidewalk tattoo, commissioned by Real Art Ways and designed and created by artist Steed Taylor. Walkways in the neighborhood park will be painted with brightly colored designs and will include the participation of neighborhood children.

Steed Taylor has created 50 similar works in cities including Beijing, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago and West Palm Beach. (see images below)

Taylor’s street tattoos repurpose public space for art and bring socially engaging art to where people live.

This collaboration with Taylor stems from Real Art Ways’ commitment to its immediate neighborhood, including Park Art, a program for neighborhood youth that Real Art Ways has offered since 1990.

Youth in Park Art will observe and participate in the creation of “No Guns, All Play” beginning Wednesday, August 7, when Taylor arrives to begin the work.

This project is made possible by Love Your Block, a program of the City of Hartford, with additional support from the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

To learn more about Steed Taylor, you can check out his work here.