Sarah Weaver will begin the Deep Listening Apprenticeship in Fall 2007, pending completion of her Certificate this summer. Weaver is a composer/improviser/performer based in New York. She is Artistic Director of multidisciplinary performance group Weave and Executive Director of the International Society for Improvised Music. Weaver plays trombone, didjeridu, and conch shell, and has performed at major venues throughout the United States. She has played with legendary performers Pauline Oliveros, Marilyn Crispell, Karl Berger, David Liebman, Walter Thompson, and Francois Jeanneau, among others. Weaver also teaches and advocates creative music education programs, making conference presentations and teaching programs on authentic creativity through listening.
"In African music," Randy Weston observed in a 1998 interview, "there aren't the categories of the past, the present and the future. Music is a timeless thing." He proves it every time he touches a piano or puts pencil to composition paper. Weston descends from a long line of seers who build on what the ancestors left us to create music of startling originality-music of the future. This is why Ancient Future (a title lovingly borrowed from Dr. Wayne Chandler's new book Ancient Future: The Teachings and Prophetic Wisdom of the Seven Hermetic Laws of Ancient Egypt) so perfectly defines Weston's approach to music and life. Like Dr. Chandler's book, Weston's music reveals the wisdom of the ancient world, where art, science, and spirituality were one, where music was not entertainment-for-sale but a life-force at the core of civilization itself. Weston demolishes distinctions between traditional and modern, composition and improvisation, enveloping us with what really counts: the music's spiritual essence. And what better way to capture the spiritual dimensions of this great music than Weston, in his solitude, singing, praying, meditating, shouting, through the medium of Bosendorfer piano which he transforms into a giant talking drum or a 97-stringed kora?
Julia White is a visual artist who is passionate about the power of creativity to heal and transform us, both personally and globally. Her most recent work, for example, Threads of Peace was initiated out of a need to reconnect with her own inner peace. Julia spends each day with her children, ages 1 and 2; a rich and wonderful experience! However, when friends would ask how she was coping, she would often reply, "I am holding a thread." Listening to herself, she realized- this thread was peace. So, with thread in hand, Julia embarked upon a new creative journey, where art is ritual and peace...she discovered, is within.
(b. 1960) is a composer working primarily in the medium of music for instruments and tape. Her more recent works include: Resonant landscape (1990), an ineractive computer-music installation which was presented for two weeks in 1990 at the Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow; Trees (1991) for six instruments and tape, a commission by the Groupe de musique experimentale de Bourges; and Winter Aconites (1993) for six instruments and tape, a commission by the ASCAP Foundation in memory of John Cage. Ms. White lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband, writer James Prichett, their two cats, and an ever-expanding collection of species and hybrid orchids.
Brian Willson has traveled from rock and roll to jazz to club dates to oldies bands to Broadway shows to contemporary music. He is an accomplished performer in both the jazz and classical worlds, and an ardent improviser. After touring the world as percussionist and musical director with several Broadway shows he has dedicated his musical pursuits to jazz drumming, improvisation, conducting contemporary music, and performing and touring as Assistant Conductor with the Brooklyn College Percussion Ensemble. He recently recorded a series of duets with Pauline Oliveros, AS IT IS and a DVD of improvised music called JUST PLAYIN', to be broadcast on CUNY TV. He is co-leader of a straight ahead jazz quartet, The Salim Washington-Brian Willson Quartet. Mr. Willson began improvising circa 1977 after hearing Sun Ra and his Arkestra in Chicago.
Soprano, Danielle Woerner, a performer, recording artist and voice teacher, Danielle commands an impressively broad repertoire of music, from classical and operatic to jazz, popular, folk, world music and musical theater, spanning the middle ages to the present day. She consistently delights audiences with her beautiful voice, artful singing and powerful stage presence.
For the last twenty five years, the Phoenix Spring Ensemble and Betty Anne Siu Junn Wong have traveled the Silk Road in spirit, bringing together musicians ( local DJ Avotcja describes them as the "heavy hitters" in the San Francisco Bay Area's music world) from the east and from the west.
The Phoenix Spring Ensemble, directed by Betty Anne Siu Junn Wong, is proud to present music influenced by folk music of the Turko-Muslim peoples of Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang Province in Northwest China), the Middle East, As well as original music inspired by the ensemble's contact with these cultures.
The ensemble acknowledges the lasting treasures of the "Silk Road," the historic exchange of cultural ideas and artistic styles across this entire region. Travel with them, as they have for the last twenty-five years, this "Silk Road of the Mind."
Some responses to the ensemble's work:
"Your work is an important musical and anthropological statement." - Nancy Pelosi, Minority Whip, U.S. House of Representatives
"Congratulations! The music is wonderful!" - Yo-Yo Ma