Dance Division Musicians Concert

Name: Dance Division Musicians Concert
Start: 2024-02-17T20:00:00-05:00
End: 2024-02-17

This event has passed.
Please see the events listing for upcoming events.

Saturday / February 17, 2024 / 8:00 p.m.

Studio 401

31 Hemenway Street, Floor 4—Studio 401

Boston

02215

United States

(View Map)

Watch

What makes us move, imagine, smile, cry, laugh, and remember? Music takes the stage when the extraordinary Dance Division musicians and composers perform a program of original and improvised works. Known for their collaborations with dancers, these amazing artists create music that is the language we all understand and enjoy. Come celebrate and dance!

Program Information

Repertoire

DAVID HERO: Amoeba

David Hero, saxophone, vocals, and electronics, with ensemble

WEN-TING ONG: Seasonal Love

Wen-Ting Ong, piano

GIUSEPPE PARADISO: Tuntkah (The Nomad King)

Giuseppe Paradiso, drums, with ensemble

ROB FLAX: Back Porch

Rob Flax, electric violin and vocals

BEN CUBA: The Lightning Reader

Ben Cuba, electronics, bass, and piano

MICHIO MIYAGI (宮城道雄): Matsuri no Taiko (祭りの太鼓)

Hidemi Akaiwa, piano and microtonal synthesizer
Giuseppe Paradiso, drums
David Fiuczynski, microtonal guitar

AARON JENSEN: When Things Are Right

Aaron Jensen, piano and vocals with ensemble

AKILI JAMAL HAYNES: The Black Swan

Akili Jamal Haynes, Senegalese sabar drums, guitar, trumpet, and vocals, with ensemble

About the Artists

Hidemi Akaiwa is a Japanese pianist and composer. At the age of 30, she shifted from a successful corporate career to focusing on jazz music. She received a full scholarship to Berklee, where she participates in the college’s Global Jazz Institute, Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Planet MicroJam Institute, and Interdisciplinary Arts Institute. These experiences have allowed her to study with world-class musicians including Danilo Pérez, Kenny Werner, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Billy Childs, David Fiuczynski, and many others. Her passion is to create a new art form infusing the tenets of Japanese zen with the sounds of jazz and microtonal contemporary classical music.

Benjamin Cuba is a multi-instrumentalist, accompanist, and composer based in the Boston area. He works as a dance class accompanist at Boston Conservatory, Emerson College, and Greater Boston School of Dance. He plays bass for the band Midnight Motion. His recordings, compositions, and work can be found at bencuba.com or @ben_cuba on Instagram.

Rob Flax describes his music in a concise way: “I play things with strings, I hit stuff, and I sing.” Behind this simple tag line lies a rich depth of genre bending, from classical and jazz violin to bluegrass fiddle, to blues and rock influences, and beyond. Flax has shared the stage with B.B. King, Tower of Power, the Trans Siberian Orchestra, and Jacob Collier, among many others. He is the inventor of the Chessboard Drum Machine, a member of art-rock band Billy Wylder, and leader of Rob Flax’s Boom Chick Trio, among other projects. Flax has collaborated with dancers and choreographers for over 15 years, and has worked as an accompanist at Denison University, Boston Conservatory, and the Bates Dance Festival. He has also written music for film, including work on projects for James Franco and Anthony Bourdain.

Akili Jamal Haynes is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who began his career at age 15 as a trombonist under the mentorship of Wynton Marsalis. Haynes currently performs with several ensembles and has participated on several recordings as a trombonist, composer, trumpeter, keyboardist, vocalist, tenor saxophonist, alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and acoustic bassist. He has served as research assistant and arranger to Kimati Dinizulu, for music performed for Alvin Ailey Dance Theater under the direction of Judith Jamison. Haynes served as director of woodwinds and brass in New England Conservatory’s Preparatory and Continuing Education School, and taught there for more than 14 years. He is also an accompanist at Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, Boston University, and Curry College Dance Departments, as well as with Prometheus Dance Company (before they closed in 2019). Haynes serves as the chair of the Percussion and Popular Music Department at the Community Music Center of Boston. He also creates and performs in his own multi-media work, Becoming Chibuzo and Chibuzo Dunun.

David Hero was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and started his professional career as a chemist before pursuing his true passion of music. Hero’s fascination with world music styles has taken him to Ghana, Senegal, Cuba, Brazil, and Peru for the study of drumming and folkloric music traditions. In 1997 he joined La Caravana Arcoiris, a Mexican traveling musical circus theater group, and toured with them as musical accompanist for a year and a half in Colombia and Venezuela. Since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2003 with a degree in woodwind performance, Hero has expanded his focus on electronic music. He has performed with the JAG Drum and Dance Ensemble, Rojo Ilegal Latin Rock Band, and In the Mood jazz band, and is currently a member of JP Honk and Koliba Afropop Band (which won the 2010 Boston Music Conference Award in the Reggae/Afropop category).

Aaron Jensen is a pianist who oversees accompanist needs for the Boston Conservatory’s Dance Division. He merges his classical training, improvisation skills, diverse genre interests, and appreciation for the symbiosis between music and dance to expertly accompany ballet and modern dance technique classes, including the codified techniques Horton and Graham. Jensen has accompanied company classes for Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Group, and master classes taught by dancers of New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor, Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham, Boston Ballet, Jose Limón, The Royal Ballet, Lar Lubovitch, Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis, Paris Opera Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Twyla Tharp, Ballet Hispánico, Bill T. Jones, San Francisco Ballet, and Alvin Ailey, among others. Beyond dance, Jensen was pianist for the Nanette Perrotte Combo, has collaborated with choral ensembles like the deVaronistas and National Children’s Chorus, and has engaged with instrumentalists and vocalists across genres. He occasionally composes and sings.

Wen-Ting Ong was formerly a company rehearsal and class-technique pianist at Boston Ballet/School. During her time there, she rehearsed works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda Variations, Balanchine’s Four Temperaments, Divertimento No. 15, Balanchine’s Jewels, Jorma Elo’s Ruth’s Dance, and others. Her Boston debut as a composer began with a project in collaboration with Denise Pons and Julianna Utz’s Turning Key Dance Company, in creating a modern sound-world based on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. They performed together for its 150th anniversary in Concord, Massachusetts. In 2021, Ting was invited as a guest rehearsal pianist to Vail Dance Festival in Vail, Colorado. She worked on Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes with James Whiteside, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with Tiler Peck, Roman Meija, and others. Ting hopes to form an arts collective, to dance and perform her original works and musical reimaginings. Her compositional and improvisation style is a synthesis of minimalism, quartal and quintal harmonies, and hyper-rhythmic energy inspired by her Taiwanese aboriginal roots.

Ensemble

Hidemi Akaiwa
Benjamin Cuba
Rob Flax
Akili Jamal Haynes
David Hero
Aaron Jensen
Wen-Ting Ong
Giuseppe Paradiso

Concert Services Staff

Senior Manager of Concert Services – Luis Herrera
Coordinator, Concert Services – Matthew Carey
Concert Production Manager – Kendall Floyd
Performance Technology Technicians – Sara Pagiaro, Goran Daskalov

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Rob Flax for organizing a varied group of musicians into one cohesive show. And thanks to all of the musicians who share beauty, incredible music, and life with us, in the studio on a daily basis. Thanks to Dean of DanceTommy Neblett, for giving us the green light, and of course thanks to Concert Services for helping to make this performance a reality.

Boston Conservatory thanks audience members for viewing this program information online. This paperless program saved 200 sheets of paper, 21 gallons of water, and 18 pounds of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.