Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary
March 7, 2019
2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Keller Hall, Center for the Arts
Talk Description: This lecture is in two parts: the first draws from my research on the 1960s jazz avant-garde and musicians’ interests in heterophonic musical textures. I show how heterophony, technique and texture, satisfied a joint aesthetic and social/political goal for musicians and audiences. The parallels between textural and ethnic/racial difference in improvisatory experimentalism, are where aesthetics and social relations become intertwined.
For the second part, I perform original music that utilizes heterophony and “noise” in a solo electronic and improvised format. This performance segment is my own creative response to the historical precedents that I outline in the previous segment.
Biography: Kwami Coleman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of musicology at the Gallatin School on individualized Study at New York University. His work is focused on improvised music, aesthetics, historiography, identity, and political economy. Kwami is also a pianist and composer, and released a recording called Local Music in 2017 of original music for trio plus field recordings captured in his home neighborhood, Harlem. His current book project is titled Change: The “New Thing” and Modern Jazz.
Dr. Kristina Jacobsen releases a new album of co-writes with UNM Music Alumni Meredith Wilder
Dr. Kristina Jacobsen releases a new album of co-writes with UNM Music Alunmi, Meredith Wilder. They will be performing two shows for the CD release of “Elemental.”
Congratulations, Susan Kempter and Laurie Lopez!
Susan Kempter and Laurie Lopez were recognized by the New Mexico chapter of the American String Teachers Association earlier this year.
Hearing Heat: An Anthropocene Acoustemology
Bruno Latour argues that even if poisoned, the anthropocene is a deep gift to human research, inciting new approaches to environmental responsibility. Taking up Latour’s challenge through acoustemology, the study of sound as a way of knowing, this talk engages histories of hearing heat that affectively entangle cicadas and humans in Papua New Guinea, Japan, and Greece.