Verna Gillis

Last updated

Verna Gillis (born 1942) is an American freelance record producer, who has gained recognition for her work promoting and producing music from various cultural backgrounds. Gillis holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. She was an assistant professor at Brooklyn College from 1974 to 1980 and at Carnegie Mellon University from 1988 to 1990.

Contents

Gillis has been the subject of a number of press articles, with The New York Times describing her as "the closest thing world music has to a doyenne". [1]

Life and career

From 1972 to 1978, Gillis recorded traditional music in Afghanistan, Iran, Kashmir, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Surinam, and Ghana. In 1979, she opened Soundscape, the first multi-cultural performance space in New York City, on west 52nd Street which she directed for the next five years. Gillis, Soundscape and the music played there is the subject of a web based project by WKCR Radio 89.9 NY. [2]

From 1984, Gillis worked on career development with international musicians including Youssou N'dour from Senegal ( The Guide (Wommat) ), Yomo Toro from Puerto Rico; Salif Keita form Mali, and Carlinhos Brown from Brazil.

In 1996, she was hired as a consultant by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to accompany musicians on a trip to Angola, Liberia, Kenya and South African, to witness first hand the results of ethnic cleansing. Gillis worked with the ICRC to produce a CD.

Twenty-five of Gillis' recordings have been released by Smithsonian Folkways and Lyrichord. As well, there have been nine releases on DIW of Live from Soundscape tapes, made during the years that the performance space which was located at 500 West 52nd Street was open.

In 2000, she was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Producer category for the Archie Shepp/Roswell Rudd Quartet Live in New York , and again in 2001 for Roswell Rudd's MALIcool .

She has performed "sit down comedy" – and has a One Older Woman show Tales from Geriassic Park - On the Verge of Extinction' which won Best Comedic Script in 2014 at the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC> She has published three books, I Just Want to be Invited - I Promise Not to Come,I'll Never Know If I Would Have Gotten The Same Results if I'd Been Nice. and "The I of the Storm."

She lived and collaborated with trombonist/composer Roswell Rudd from 1999 - 2017 when he died. They formed a group they call The Olders. Their video AWEMSONE & GRUESOME can be seen on Youtube.

Discography

Related Research Articles

Steve Lacy (saxophonist) American jazz musician (1934–2004)

Steve Lacy was an American jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a progressive dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and to a lesser extent in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer, with compositions often built out of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times.

Guy Carawan American musician and musicologist

Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. was an American folk musician and musicologist. He served as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

Ella Jenkins is an American folk singer and actress. Dubbed "The First Lady of the Children's Folk Song" by the Wisconsin State Journal, she has been a leading performer of children's music for over fifty years. Her album, Multicultural Children's Songs (1995), has long been the most popular Smithsonian Folkways release. She has appeared on numerous children's television programs and in 2004, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Barry Altschul American drummer

Barry Altschul is a free jazz and hard bop drummer who first came to notice in the late 1960s for performing with pianists Paul Bley and Chick Corea.

William Godvin "Beaver" Harris was an American jazz drummer who worked extensively with Archie Shepp.

Mike Seeger American folk musician and folklorist

Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.

Milly Quezada Dominican merengue singer

Milagros Quezada Borbón is a Dominican singer specializing in Merengue. She is a four-time Latin Grammy Award winner and has been referred to as the "Queen of Merengue" because of her impact on the world of merengue music.

Roswell Rudd Musical artist

Roswell Hopkins Rudd Jr. was an American jazz trombonist and composer.

WKCR-FM Radio station at Columbia University in New York City

WKCR-FM is a radio station licensed to New York, New York, United States. The station is owned by Columbia University and serves the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1941, the station traces its history back to 1908 with the first operations of the Columbia University Radio Club (CURC). In 1956, it became one of the first college radio stations to adopt FM broadcasting, which had been invented two decades earlier by Professor Edwin Howard Armstrong. The station was preceded by student involvement in W2XMN, an experimental FM station founded by Armstrong, for which the CURC provided programming. Originally an education-focused station, since the Columbia University protests of 1968, WKCR-FM has shifted its focus towards alternative musical programming, with an emphasis on jazz, classical, and hip hop.

Soundscape Presents or simply Soundscape is a recording label in jazz and world music, a contributor to music festivals, and a promoter of creative arts education.

Frank Hamilton (musician) American folk musician

Frank Hamilton is an American folk musician, collector of folk songs, and educator. He co-founded the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Illinois. As a performer, he has recorded for several labels, including Folkways Records. He was a member of the folk group The Weavers in the early 1960s, and appeared at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959. He was the house musician – playing guitar and other folk instruments – for Chicago's Gate of Horn, the nation's first folk music nightclub. After many years of teaching, playing, and singing in California he married a third time, and with his wife relocated to Atlanta, where he performs on banjo, guitar, ukulele, voice, and other instruments and co-founded the Frank Hamilton School in 2015.

Edith Fowke, (néeMargaret Fulton; 30 April 1913 Lumsden, Saskatchewan – 28 Mar 1996 Toronto) was a Canadian folklorist. Fowke was educated at the University of Saskatchewan. She hosted the CBC Radio program Folk Song Time from 1950 to 1963. She wrote numerous books in collaboration with folklorist and composer Richard Johnston, including Folk Songs of Canada, Folk Songs of Quebec, Chansons canadiennes françaises, and More Folk Songs of Canada. She is particularly noted for recording the songs of traditional singers O. J. Abbott, LaRena Clark, and Tom Brandon. Edith Fowke died in Toronto in 1996.

Sue Evans is an American jazz, pop, classical, and studio percussionist and drummer.

Barton McLean Musical artist

Barton McLean is an American composer, performer, music reviewer, and writer.

Leyla McCalla American classical and folk musician (born 1985)

Leyla Sarah McCalla is an American classical and folk musician. She was a cellist with the Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops but left to focus on her solo career.

Xiomara Fortuna Dominican singer and composer

Xiomara Fortuna is a Dominican singer and composer. She is known for her deep voice and her work in the genres of world music, música raíz, jazz and contemporary music.

Vaccine (instrument)

Vaccine are rudimentary single-note trumpets found in Haiti and, to a lesser extent, the Dominican Republic as well as Jamaica. They consist of a simple tube, usually bamboo, with a mouthpiece at one end.

<i>Keep Your Heart Right</i> 2008 studio album by Roswell Rudd Quartet

Keep Your Heart Right is an album by trombonist Roswell Rudd which was recorded and released on the Sunnyside label in 2008.

<i>Blown Bone</i> 1979 studio album by Roswell Rudd

Blown Bone is an album by trombonist Roswell Rudd. It was recorded in March 1976 at Blue Rock Studios in New York City, and was released on LP by Philips Japan in 1979. On the album, Rudd is joined by clarinetist Kenny Davern, saxophonists Steve Lacy and Tyrone Washington, trumpeter Enrico Rava, vocalist Sheila Jordan, pianist Patti Bown, guitarist and vocalist Louisiana Red, bassist Wilbur Little, and drummers Jordan Steckel and Paul Motian. The album was reissued on CD by Emanem Records in 2006 with a different track sequence, and with an additional track recorded in 1967 featuring another ensemble.

References

  1. Freedman, Samuel G. (8 April 1990). "WHAT REALLY MAKES NEW YORK WORK: SECRET POWERS; VERNA GILLIS: THE MUSE OF THE MELTING POT (Published 1990)". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  2. "The Project | WKCR 89.9FM NY". Archived from the original on 2017-02-17. Retrieved 2017-02-17.