6660 Manasota Key Road
Englewood
Florida 34223
“Composition to Performance: Music Start to Finish”
with Hermitage Fellows Nkeiru Okoye and David ‘Doc’ Wallace
Friday, October 28 at 5:30pm
Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd. Englewood, FL 34223)
Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.
Like many art forms, music begins in the imagination of one creator, is documented on paper, and later interpreted by a completely different individual. But perhaps more than any other artform, musical creation, notation, and performance is simultaneously codified and constantly evolving. Hear from two exceptional practitioners on the process from start to finish. Nkeiru Okoye’s work is performed around the world, welcoming and affirming traditional and new audiences alike; David “Doc” Wallace is the chair of Berklee College of Music’s String Department whose performance style has been described by The York Times as “Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin.”
Hermitage Fellow Nkeiru Okoye is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. She was born in New York, NY and raised on Long Island. After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting, and Africana Studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers. An activist through the arts, Okoye creates a body of work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences. Her works have been commissioned, performed and presented by Detroit Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera North UK, Mt. Holyoke College, Juilliard School, Houston Grand Opera, the American Opera Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, Virginia Symphony, Tulsa Opera, Royal Opera House, Da Capo Chamber Players, Cellist Matt Haimovitz, Pianist Lara Downes, Soprano Louise Toppin and many others. Her works include Briar Patch, Inside is What Remains, Black Bottom, We’ve Got Our Eye on You, Voices Shouting Out, Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom, Charlotte Mecklenburg, Songs of Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, African Sketches, and The Creation. Among her honors are a Hermitage Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the inaugural International Florence Price Society award for composition, a Beneva Foundation award, composer grants from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, many awards from ASCAP, the Yvar Mishakoff Trust for New Music, and the National Endowment of the Arts. An educator, Dr. Okoye has taught Master Classes and Composition Classes in colleges and Universities throughout the US including University of Michigan, Oberlin Conservatory, University of Denver, Old Dominion University, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music, The New School, Spelman College. Dr. Okoye’s music has been recorded on Albany Records, MSR Classics, Le Chateau Earl Records, and Rising Sun Music. Her works are published by Theodore Presser Music and Carl Fischer Music. They are available throughout the world. For a full bio, visit: NkeiruOkoye.com
David “Doc” Wallace improvises like “Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin” (New York Times). Whether playing classical viola for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Texas fiddle with The Doc Wallace Trio, klezmer fusion with Yale Strom’s Broken Consort, new compositions with Hat Trick (his flute-viola-harp trio), or six-string electric viola at heavy metal shows, Wallace is at home in front of an audience. Around the globe, musicians have widely adopted the ground-breaking approaches of his book Engaging the Concert Audience: a Musician’s Guide to Interactive Performance (Berklee Press). Wallace’s broadcast credits include NPR, PBS, KTV (Korea), Tokyo MX, WQXR, CBS, and ABC. He has recorded for Bridge Records, BIS, Innova, Tzadik, Resonance Records, and Mulatta Records. An award-winning composer, Wallace’s commissions for original compositions and arrangements include the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, the Marian Anderson String Quartet, and violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Currently Chair of Berklee College of Music’s String Department, David previously enjoyed a fourteen-year tenure as a Juilliard professor and seventeen years as a New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist. Learn and hear more at DocWallaceMusic.com