CMC Sessions: Traditions Moving Forward

Make musical discoveries with faculty from Community Music Center as they explore their methods, approaches, and creative practices in adapting musical traditions to inspire and guide the musicians of tomorrow. CMC Sessions: Traditions Moving Forward showcases the talents of faculty from the CMC Cultural Traditions and Piano Departments who represent diverse classical and non-classical traditions in workshops and presentations. The online workshops will use video, audio, and lecture-demonstrations to illustrate the faculty members' influences and the musical education that shaped them, highlighting how their traditions impact their teaching and performing at CMC. Their personal stories illustrate the breadth of talent and creativity in CMC's faculty.

Meet these talented and inspiring faculty:

• January 13 Jennifer Peringer A CMC Teacher’s Musical Journey of Multicultural Explorations, Creative Expression, and Community Engagement
• January 27 Larry Dunn How Jump Swing Influenced My Music Making
• February 10 Tregar Otton Classical Foundations, Popular and Traditional Performance and Pedagogy
• February 24 Omar Ledezma Jr. The Music of Pacific Mambo Orchestra: A Percussionist’s Perspective
• March 10 Jon Jang One Day American, One Day Alien: Black & Brown Artists Who Made the National Anthem Their Own
• March 24 Evelyn Davis Beginning Improvisation
• June 9 Joshua Saulle Vocal Traditions and Choral Innovations
• June 16 Michaela Overall Teaching and Supporting the Neurodiverse Piano Student
• June 23 Lilia Zheltova Traditions of the Russian Piano School and Their Implementation in Today’s American Teaching
• June 30 Martha Rodríguez-Salazar Bridging Cultures and Creating Communities: How My Binational Experience Shaped My Musical Perspectives.

Evelyn Davis, Beginning Improvisation

March 24, 2022 at 7pm (PT)

How can we as teachers help students play, compose, and explore freely and musically while they are still developing reading skills and motor control? Improvisation games! Improvisation is a playful and effective way to introduce young students to composition and deeper listening. With our young students and beginning improvisers in mind, Evelyn Davis will present brief introductions to graphic composition, "conduction" in the tradition of Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, and a few simple improvisation games.

This event will be conducted online via video conferencing. RSVP to receive the link to join, emailed prior to the start of the discussion.

People who are interested in this workshop can dive deeper by exploring private lessons and group classes and ensembles.

Bio:

Evelyn is the granddaughter of Detroit jazz pianist Will Davis, and became fascinated with the instrument during countless hours as a toddler listening to him play while ensconced under the piano eating stolen cheese slices. She spent the first fifteen years of life studying classical piano and voice, adding jazz voice and piano in highschool. After graduating at seventeen, she studied jazz arranging, piano, and voice at Southwestern Community College. Evelyn consequently toured with various bands for around ten years, then returning to school to study formal composition piano, and pipe organ at Indiana University. Growing obsessions with spectralism, found sounds, and the thin veil between free improvisation and atonal music led her to continue on to complete a master’s in improvisation at Mills College. Today, Evelyn regularly performs improvisation, complicated amplified music, chamber music, and song, and enjoys collaborative accompaniment.