Sat

10/22/2011

10:30am

Edgefest

Composers’ Forum Breakfast

Fringe 10:30 am

This is a free event.

• Joel Harrison, composer
• Vinny Golia, composer

Event Details

Join us here at the house for breakfast with Joel Harrison and Vinny Golia as they discuss their compositions to be featured Saturday. Kick off the final day of Edgefest with this lively discussion - coffee and bagels provided!

This event is free! To attend the rest of the day's shows,  a Saturday daypass is available for only $50, and will get you in FREE to the 5 ticketed shows that day.

Tickets to other Edgefest events are $10 - $30 for individual ticketed events, with a limited number of student tickets available for most performances. An Edgepass ($135) is available, which allows for admission to all events, as well as a special dinner with our Edgefest artists. A Saturday daypass is available for $50.

Edgefest is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Joel Harrison

Joel Harrison’s musical journey has few parallels in modern music. Guitarist, composer, arranger, vocalist, songwriter, bandleader – Harrison deftly juggles all of these roles, melding influences from jazz, classical, country, rock, and world music. His expansive sound fits equally well in jazz clubs and concert halls – and the occasional dive bar across town.

Harrison’s success can be seen in the accolades he has received: he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2010, is a two-time winner of the Jazz Composer’s Alliance Composition Competition, has received grants from Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, the Flagler Cary Trust, NYSCA, and the Jerome Foundation.

Throughout his career disparate genres have met in surprising ways. His groundbreaking Free Country ensemble reimagines country and Appalachian folk music, while his Fojoto Trio with banjo player Tony Trischka and West African kora player Foday Musa Suso ties American roots music to traditional African songs. A new project Skin and Steel, with the young sarod master Anupam Shobhakar explores Indian music, jazz, and American roots.

Harrison’s most important mentors have encouraged his inclusive approach. He has studied western classical music with Joan Tower, Hindustani classical music with Ali Akbar Khan, jazz with Charlie Banacos, and the fusion of approaches with W.A. Mathieu and Ran Blake.

Perhaps the most vivid examples of his own take on such experiments can be found on Range of Motion (Koch Jazz, 1997) and The Wheel (Intuition 2008), which bridge Harrison’s interests in classical and jazz. The former was written for an octet with woodwinds; the latter also integrates the composer’s country and world music influences, replacing the winds with a string quartet. His classical compositions include Life Force, a collection of duos for cello and violin recorded on Philip Glass’ Orange Mountain Music label and a 2007 solo for marimba which won first prize in the Percussive Arts Society’s worldwide competition. The boundaries are further blurred in Harrison’s latest project, Singularity, which utilizes techniques of contemporary classical composers in compositions for a septet of modern jazz’s finest instrumentalists. http://joelharrison.com/

Vinny Golia

As a composer, Vinny Golia fuses the rich heritage of jazz, contemporary classical and world music into his own unique compositions. Also a bandleader, Golia has presented his music to concert audiences in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States in ensembles varying dramatically in size and instrumentation. Mr. Golia has won numerous awards as a composer, including grants from The National Endowment of the Arts, The Lila Wallace Commissioning Program, The California Arts Council, Meet the Composer, Clausen Foundation of the Arts, Funds for U.S. Artists and the American Composers Forum. In 1982 he created the on-going 50 piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions for chamber orchestra and jazz ensembles.

A multi-woodwind performer, Vinny's recordings have been consistently picked by critics and readers of music journals for their yearly "ten best" lists. In 1990 he was the winner of the Jazz Times TDWR award for Bass Saxophone. In 1998 he ranked 1st in the Cadence Magazine Writers & Readers Poll and has continually placed in the Downbeat Critic's Poll for Baritone & Soprano Saxophone. In 1999 Vinny won the LA Weekly’s Award for "Best Jazz Musician". Jazziz Magazine has also named him as one of the 100 people who have influenced the course of Jazz in our Century. In 2006 The Jazz Journalists Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. www.vinnygolia.com