CAMA Event!
Saturday, February 13, 2010 – 7:30pm
Webster University Community Music School Concert Hall – map
Located behind the Loretto-Hilton at 535 Garden Ave, Webster Groves
Douglas R. Ewart, Flute, Sopranino Saxophone, Didjeridu, Voice and Percussion
Shirley LaFlore, Poet
Rashu Aten, Percussion
Jim Hegarty, Electronics
This concert is an homage to Zimbabwe Nkenya, composer, musician and community activist, who is currently recuperating from a stroke; the late grand poet, philosopher and activist Ajule Sonny Rutlin; and Haiti, the Pearl of the Antilles.
This is an opportune time to open our mind, heart, conduct, and pocket book, and to truly be our Sisters’ and Brothers’ keepers.
What this Haitian tragedy points out is that we need to assist each other before we have tragedies like we just experienced in Haiti. Haiti has been crying out for substantive support for hundreds of years. Haiti has been punished/isolated for being successful at fending off the slave promoting and maintaining countries of the world: France, England, America, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, etc. Haiti has been suffering ever since its successful slave rebellion 1790s and independence in 1804. Haiti is the only nation on the planet that has had a successful slave rebellion. Thus Haiti’s infrastructure was never fully developed after its revolution. Dictatorships, corruption, and reprehensible Haitian governments have been fostered, bolstered, and well-supported by many powerful governments outside of Haiti with selfish agendas.
–Douglas R. Ewart
Douglas R. Ewart is perhaps best known as a composer, improviser, sculptor, and maker of masks and instruments. Douglas R. Ewart is also an educator, lecturer, arts organization consultant, and all-around visionary. In projects done in diverse media throughout an award-winning and widely-acclaimed 40-year career, Mr. Ewart has woven his remarkably broad gifts into a single sensibility that encourages and celebrates–as an antidote to the divisions and compartmentalization afflicting modern life–the wholeness of individuals in culturally active communities.
Ewart became associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1967, studying with Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell. He served as that organization’s president from 1986 to 1979.
Ewart has performed or recorded with J. D. Parran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Robert Dick, Von Freeman, Joseph Jarman, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, James Newton, Rufus Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum, Henry Threadgill, Hamid Drake, Don Byron, Malachi Favors Maghostut, and George Lewis.
The outstanding acoustics of the Webster University Community Music School Concert Hall will be the ultimate space to hear the unique and vibrant sounds of Ewart’s unique flutes and other instruments.
More information about the artists:
Douglas R. Ewart
Shirley LaFlore
Rashu Aten
Jim Hegarty
