• Performance School of Music

    Davis has significantly contributed to curriculum development at Berklee College and frequently performs with groups like Love Salad, Vardan Ovsepian, and the Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra. As an educator, he excels in coaching diverse ensembles, offering innovative ideas that inspire long-term growth. Dr. Davis is also a sought-after guest director at prestigious institutions like NEC and USC.

    Mon, Oct 28 / 12:00 PM

    CalArts Campus

2023

Joel Frahm

Oct 2, 2023
Joel Frahm, a seasoned performer, recording artist, and educator, boasts a musical career spanning over 30 years, primarily based in New York City. Now residing in Nashville, he continues to share his passion for music. Renowned for his daring and innovative tenor sound, Frahm has garnered a global following. His collaborations include luminaries like Betty Carter, Kenny Barron, and Kurt Elling, among others. With over 100 recordings to his credit, Frahm has graced prestigious jazz festivals worldwide, from the United States and Europe to Israel, Canada, and South America. Beyond performing, he has imparted his expertise through teaching at numerous esteemed institutions, leaving an indelible mark on jazz education. Hailing from Racine, Wisconsin, Frahm’s formative years in West Hartford, Connecticut, ignited his fervor for jazz, laying the foundation for a remarkable career. In 1992, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Terminal Moraine
Oct 2, 2023
Terminal Moraine is an experimental noise duo founded by Abigail Johnson and Andrew Dyet in 2020. They perform improvisations guided by graphic scores, time constraints, or predetermined restrictions. They have been featured as an Ensemble in Residence for the Re:Sound Festival 2023 in Cleveland, OH and as artists-in-residence for the 2022 Chateau Orquevaux Artist Residency in Orquevaux, France.

Baseck
Oct 2, 2023
Someone who is the definition of living the scene. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat. Baseck has been involved in raves his whole life and started DJ’ing at 12, throwing raves shortly following. His first paid DJ gig was at age 16, playing hardcore acid and gabber for Gregg Ginn of Black Flag. He started out as a turntablist with hip hop before advancing that style to rave music, a segway to knobs, sliders and an obsession with music making hardware.

Nicole V. Gagné
Oct 6, 2023
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ is the co-author (with Tracy Caras) of Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers (Scarecrow Press, 1982) and the author of Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music (de Falco Books, 1990), Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers (Scarecrow Press, 1993) and Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music (Rowman & Littlefield, Second Edition, 2019). A contributor to The New Grove II, she has written about music for BMI Music World, Op, Option, and newmusicbox.org. Her essay “The Beaten Path” (2004), a history of percussion in American music, won ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award in 2004. The librettist and co-composer (with David Avidor) of the opera Agamemnon (1992), she also wrote and hosted the SFCR radio show “A 21st-Century Guide to 20th-Century Music” from 2012 to 2018.

Matt Sargent
Oct 10, 2023
Matt Sargent (b. 1984) is a composer, guitarist, recording engineer, and music technologist based in upstate New York, where he is an assistant professor of music at Bard College.. His music grows from interests in resonance, the making/breaking of patterns, and computer models of musical thought. Over the last decade, his work has focused extensively on musical algorithms and real-time notation systems, which can be heard in his compositions and technical collaborations with other artists.

Josh Johnson
Oct 16, 2023
Josh Johnson is a Los Angeles based saxophonist, keyboardist, and composer. His debut solo album, “Freedom Exercise,” earned critical acclaim, featuring in Rolling Stone and Bandcamp’s Best Music of 2020 lists. He’s a key member of Jeff Parker’s quartet, contributing saxophone and effects to the acclaimed 2022 release, “Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy.” From 2018 to 2022, Johnson served as Musical Director for soul sensation Leon Bridges, showcasing his talents worldwide, from the Hollywood Bowl to Glastonbury, Sydney Opera House, and London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His contributions span a diverse range of artists, including Harry Styles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Miley Cyrus.

Weston Olencki
Oct 16, 2023
Weston Olencki a composer, musician, and audio engineer; originally from South Carolina, and working now in Berlin. Their currently making work focused around questions of instrumental music and its contexts/constructs, various mediated practices of listening and improvisation, and is rooted in the technological, material, and cultural histories of vernacular art-making. Their recent music deals with the non-linear relationships and unexpected resonances between experimental sound, geography, historicity, and (mostly American) musical traditions.