Volker Goetze (born 1972 in Bergisch-Gladbach) is a German-born New York based composer, trumpeter and filmmaker. He toured West Africa, Europe and Asia. He is featured on numerous recordings, and recorded with international artists such as Nana Vasconcelos, Lenny Pickett and others. He has also performed with Steve Lacy, Brian Lynch, Peter Kowald, and Craig Handy.
Goetze graduated from the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop in 2007. He was a recipient of a full scholarship by the DAAD, and won 1st prize from the Dr. Konrad Kraemer Culture Award. In 2005 his composition, “Tree”, for large ensemble, was nominated for the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Award. "Tree" has been performed at the Merkin Hall in New York City. Volker Goetze studied with the famous trumpeter Markus Stockhausen at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and Michael Mossmann at the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York.
In 2007, he signed a record deal with ObliqSound, for a duo project with Ablaye Cissoko, a master Kora-player and singer from Senegal, which Goetze produced. The music was recorded in Africa, and the CD was released in October 2008. Part of the artist’s profit goes to TOSTAN, a human-rights organization in West Africa. In addition, Goetze's large ensemble CD and surround DVD, recorded at the Clive Davis Studio in New York City, will be released soon. Future projects include a multimedia event for a silent movie of Fritz Lang, which will comprise musicians from New York and Senegal, with performances in Dakar and New York. Besides music, Goetze is currently producing a documentary on Griots in Africa entitled The Griot.
Senegal's music is best known abroad due to the popularity of mbalax, a development of Serer conservative njuup music and sabar drumming popularized by Youssou N'Dour.
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
A griot, jali, or jeli is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, or musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a leader due to his or her position as an advisor to royal personages. As a result of the former of these two functions, they are sometimes called a bard.
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions. He has lived in France since 1987.
Erik Lindgren is an American composer and pianist. He runs Arf! Arf! Records, and has led or been a member of several ensembles such as The Space Negros and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.
Scott Healy is a Grammy nominated Los Angeles-based pianist, multi-keyboardist and composer best known as the keyboardist for the Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band on Conan on TBS. His long association with O'Brien dates back to the original Late Night with Conan O'Brien show in 1993, and the subsequent The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.
Mbalax is the national popular dance music of Senegal and the Gambia. Mbalax has its sacred origins in the Serer people's ultra-religious, ultra-conservative njuup music tradition—and their sacred ndut rite ceremonies. By the 1970s, it became a fusion with other popular music from the African diaspora, the West, and afropop such as jazz, soul, Latin, Congolese rumba, and rock blended with sabar, the traditional drumming and dance music of the Wolof of Senegal. The genre's name derived from accompanying rhythms used in sabar called mbalax.
Eighth Blackbird is an American contemporary music sextet that is based in Chicago, Illinois, United States and composed of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello. Their name derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member chamber orchestra that focuses on recordings and performances of contemporary classical music. Its performances have been described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by the Financial Times and as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times said that Alarm Will Sound is "one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene."
Vijay Iyer is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway." Iyer has received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. In 2014 he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he is jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Tunde Jegede is a composer and multi-instrumentalist in contemporary classical, African and pop music, who was born in England and as a child travelled to Africa to learn the art of the kora. He is a producer-songwriter and has worked across several genres both as a performer and producer. He is a master kora player, and specializes in the West African classical music tradition which dates from the period of Sundiata. His sister is Sona Jobarteh, who is the first female kora virtuoso to come from a griot family. His father is Nigerian artist Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede.
Chris Burnett is an American saxophone player, composer, veteran of US military jazz bands and band leader. Born in Olathe, Kansas, Burnett's family moved relatively frequently during his early childhood due to his father being a member of the active US military service. His sibling family lived at places such as: France, Michigan, and Colorado prior to settling permanently back home in the Kansas City metro area. His brother, Richie Pratt, who was also a musician, and the eldest sibling in his family continually served as a significant professional role model and mentor. Another notable relative is McKinley Burnett.
Jimmy Owens is a jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger, lecturer, and educator. He has played with Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Hank Crawford, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Herbie Mann, among many others. Since 1969, he has led his own group, Jimmy Owens Plus.
Franck Amsallem is a French-American jazz pianist, arranger, composer, singer and educator. He was born in 1961 in Oran, French Algeria, but grew up in Nice, France.
Timothy Wesley John Brady is a Canadian composer, electric guitarist, improvising musician, concert producer, record producer and cultural activist. Working in the field of contemporary classical music, experimental music, and musique actuelle, his compositions utilize a variety of styles from serialism to minimalism and often incorporate modern instruments such as electric guitars and other electroacoustic instruments. His music is marked by a synthesis of musical languages, having developed an ability to use elements of many musical styles while retaining a strong sense of personal expression. Some of his early recognized works are the 1982 orchestral pieces Variants and Visions, his Chamber Concerto (1985), the chamber trio ...in the Wake..., and his song cycle Revolutionary Songs (1994).
Tony Vacca is an American percussionist specializing in jazz and an early innovator in world music. He incorporates percussion instruments from a world of traditions that includes African, Caribbean, Asian and Middle-Eastern influences, to which he adds some of his spoken word and rhythm poetry. Tony has been active in the Jazz and World Music stage since the early 1970s.
Ablaye Cissoko is a Senegalese musician, singer and composer, who plays the kora.
Howard J. Buss is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Buss’ works include instrumental solos, chamber music, symphonic, choral, and band works. His music has received awards including the 2011 Lieksa (Finland) Brass Week Composition Competition, the 2015 American Trombone Workshop National Composition Competition, the National Flute Association’s Newly-Published Music Competition, the Erik Satie Mostly Tonal Award, State of Florida Fellowships, and ASCAP Plus Awards.
Josh Deutsch is an American trumpet player and composer. He leads the band Pannonia and the Josh Deutsch Quintet, and performs regularly in a duo with guitarist Nico Soffiato. Deutsch is a founding member of the Queens Jazz Overground. He has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Deutsch is also an educator, teaching privately and at various institutions, including the Queens College CPSM, the University of Oregon, and as a mentor in the Young Composers and Improvisors Workshop.
David Ross Garner is an American composer of opera and vocal, instrumental, and chamber music. He is also an educator, on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
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