6660 Manasota Key Road
Englewood
FL 34223
“Music Elevating the Soul”
With Hermitage Fellows and Musicians Courtney Bryan (Piano) and Ashley Jackson (Harp)
Friday, July 30 @ 6:30pm ET
The Hermitage Artist Retreat
6660 Manasota Key Road
Englewood, FL 34223
Join two of the nation’s leading and most versatile musicians — celebrated pianist and composer Courtney Bryan and renowned harpist Ashley Jackson — as they share their original work and speak about their creative process. This is an evening of extraordinary music not to be missed!
Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans and a returning Hermitage Fellow, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (The New York Times). Her music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan’s compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University, and a Creative Partner with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, and is currently a recipient of a 2020-21 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship.
Praised for her rhythmic precision and dynamic range, harpist and Hermitage Fellow Dr. Ashley Jackson enjoys a multifaceted career as a highly sought-after musician and collaborator in New York and beyond. As a highly versatile artist, she has developed a unique “groove beyond gentility” on her instrument (I Care If You Listen). As an orchestral harpist, she performs with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolis Ensemble, the Qatar Philharmonic, and is the principal harpist of NOVUS NY, the contemporary music orchestra of Trinity Wall Street led by Grammy-nominated conductor Julian Wachner. She appears regularly with the Harlem Chamber Players, and has recently joined Ensemble Échappé, a flexible group of soloists dedicated to performing works from the 20th and 21st centuries. Dr. Jackson has appeared on stages in New York and around the world including Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Park Avenue Armory, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sala São Paulo, Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman, and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China. Dr. Jackson holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School, a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.
Ashley Jackson’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by The Ruby E. & Carole Crosby Family Foundation.