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.
Paul McKinney who will perform June 10th.
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
Photo: Blueshift Ensemble
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
- 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.
- 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