Summer of Music Kicks Off at Crosstown Arts

Mark your calendars, Crosstown Arts presents a summer music series schedule loaded with talent starting June 8th!

Crosstown Arts is a contemporary arts organization dedicated to furthering the creative community within Memphis. This fall they will be be moving into their new space in the Crosstown Concourse and will be running a full-time music department centered around a performance space called the “Listening Room.” But they aren’t waiting to launch their music programming.

This summer Crosstown Arts will host a diverse lineup of events beginning with a new Jazz series starting June 8th. Following the Jazz series, Crosstown Arts will host a two-week long series with Iceberg New Music, a New York City-based composer collective, that will feature free concerts, workshops, and lectures. On June 30th, Chinese zither virtuoso Wu Fei will perform a show. In August there will be a Continuum festival, a three-day music festival organized by Memphis-based music group, the Blueshift Ensemble.

Jazz Series:

• Saturday, June 10th @ 7pm – The Music of Miles Davis: From Bebop to Hip-Hop 
  • $10 @ Crosstown Arts Gallery (422 N. Cleveland St.)
  • Cash bar available
  • Get tickets here
• Thursday, July 8th @ 6pm – Thelonious Monk: The Music of Monk featuring Stephen Lee
  • $10 @ Crosstown Arts Gallery (422 N. Cleveland St.)
  • Cash bar available
  • Get tickets here

Iceberg New Music Collective

Concerts:

• Thursday, June 15th @ 7pm – Concert Series 1
• Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium
• Cost: Free (donations accepted)
  • Alyssa Weinberg – Parallels for string quartet
  • Max Grafe – An Effulgence Fills the Southern Boughs for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion
  • Victor Baez – A Doe Leaps into the Rising Sun for solo cello
  • Will Healy – Mixed Feelings for clarinet, violin, and piano
  • Derek Cooper – Guernica for string quartet
• Tuesday, June 20th @ 7pm – Concert Series 2
• Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium
• Cost: Free (donations accepted)
  • Alex Burtzos – OMAHA (all the things you could be you are you were) for string quartet
  • Drake Andersen – Photons for flute and clarinet
  • Yu-Chun Chien – Co-Composition for a cellist
  • Jonathan Russ – Eat Your Vegetables for solo clarinet
  • Harry Stafylakis – Unrelent for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion

Lectures:

• Tuesday, June 13th @ 6pm – Hidden Mechanisms of Composition – Free
  • Talk by Derek Cooper
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.
• Wednesday, June 14th @ 6pm – Because Your Brain Wants It: A Psychological Case for the Need for Contemporary Music – Free
  • Talk by Victor Baez
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.
• Monday, June 19th @ 6pm – The Crossroads of a Century: Popular & Classical Music in 1960s America – Free
  • Talk by Alex Burtzos
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.
• Wednesday, June 21st @ 4:30pm – Improvised and Indeterminate Music – Free
  • Talk by Drake Anderson
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.
• Saturday, June 24th @ 4:30pm – Beauty Starts Where Habit Ends – Free
  • Talk by Yu-Chun Chien
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.
• Saturday, June 24th @ 1pm – Contemporary Classical Indie Rock: Beyond the Quotation Marks – Free
  • Talk by Jonathan Russ
  • 438 N. Cleveland St.

Music Workshops:

• Saturday, June 24th @ 11am – Mindful Listening Workshop – Free
  • Crosstown Concourse Central Atrium
  • Register for the event here
• Saturday, June 24th @ 2:30pm – Sound Scavenger Hunt – Free
  • Crosstown Concourse Central Atrium
  • Register for the event here

Additional Performances:

• Friday, June 30th @ 8pm – An Evening with Wu Fei – $15
  • An interactive performance with Wu Fei, a genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso, and vocalist from Nashville — by way of Beijing. Wu Fei blends her Western and Chinese traditional sensibilities with a contemporary, idiosyncratic, experimental dialect as she performs original compositions on the guzheng, an ancient 21-string Chinese zither.
    • Crosstown Arts Gallery (422 N. Cleveland St.)
    • Get tickets here
• Thursday-Saturday, August 3-5 – Continuum Music Festival
  • Presented by Blueshift Ensemble in collaboration with Crosstown Arts.
  • Collaborative music festival juxtaposing performances by contemporary chamber music ensembles such as Nief Norf and Chatterbird, with blues, rock, and hip-hop artists, like Don Lifted and Rob Junklas. More details to come.
    • Location/Times TBA
    • $25 per day or $60 for weekend pass

Learn more about Crosstown Arts at their website or Facebook.

See all upcoming events at Crosstown Arts here.