This performance—a collaboration of powerful poetry/spoken word and the improvised music of Deszon X. Claiborne and special guests Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco’s eighth Poet Laureate, and internationally recognized bassist Gary Brown—commemorates “Black August,” which started in San Quentin State Prison to recognize Black political prisoners, Black freedom struggles, and highlight Black resistance against racial, colonial, and imperialist oppression. Through the intersection of music and poetry, the program honors Black Americans killed by hatred or the hands of police throughout history, including Emmett Till (1955), Michael Brown (2015), and Sonia Massey (2024), and rebellions and resistances in the United States and beyond.
Featured Artists:
Deszon X. Claiborne, percussion
Tongo Eisen-Martin, spoken word
Gary Brown, bass
Thursday, August 15 at 7pm
CMC Concert Hall
FREE – RSVP Here
About the Shenson Faculty Concert Series
The Shenson Faculty Concert Series returns this summer with free concerts spotlighting CMC’s talented faculty members. Each year, the Shenson Foundation sponsors free community concerts for musical projects to support CMC faculty as performing artists and ensure their work on stage is shared and celebrated in our community.
This year’s accomplished presenters will highlight a wide variety of musical styles, techniques, and creative inspirations—from jazz to classical to folk traditions, original compositions, and music as a tool for social justice and historical and cultural reflection.
Meet this summer’s talented faculty performers:
- June 20 – Scott O’Day, guitar
- July 25 – Clif Payne, voice
- August 8 – Ava Gehlen-Williams, violin
- August 15 – Deszon X. Claiborne, percussion
About the Performers:
A native of the Bay Area, Deszon Claiborne began his musical career at the early age of ten. Virtually self taught in the beginning, he went on to study with world-renowned drummers such as Richard Peterson, Rick Quintinel (Chuck Brown school of Drumming), James Levi, Billy Cobham and Kenneth Nash , an experience which provided him with a strong foundation in jazz, rhythm & blues and world music. He has had the pleasure to perform or record with the following artists: Peter Apfelbaum, Don Cherry, Charles brown, Angela Bofill, Les McCann, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Robin Ford, Boz Scaggs, Greg Howe, Henry Butler, Giovani Hildalgo, Kai Eckhardt, John Handy, Taj Mahal, Donald Harrison, Rodney Franklin, and may others.
In addition to his performing and recording credits, Deszon is also an educator. He has taught both private and group lessons to students of all ages and levels, youth to adult, and beginning to advanced. Deszon has also participated in music education programs in the Bay Area over the last 20 years, including Berkeley Jazz School, Jazz Camp West, Stanford Jazz Camp, Lafayette Summer Music camp, Moody’s Jazz Camp, Just Say Jazz, and Adventures in Music.
Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco and earned his MA at Columbia University. He is the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), nominated for a California Book Award; and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, a 2018 California Book Award, was named a 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin International Poetry Prize. In their citation, the judges for the Griffin Prize wrote that Eisen-Martin’s work “moves between trenchant political critique and dreamlike association, demonstrating how, in the right hands, one mode might energize the other—keeping alternative orders of meaning alive in the face of radical injustice … His poems are places where discourses and vernaculars collide and recombine into new configurations capable of expressing outrage and sorrow and love.”
Eisen-Martin is also an educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people, and human rights. He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. He lives in San Francisco.
Born into a family of musicians Gary Brown‘s inevitable musical career began at an early age. By his eleventh birthday Gary was already performing in jazz bands with his two brothers and his father, jazz trumpeter Wilbert Brown. Gary went on to form his own bands and develop a talent and reputation as a skilled and versatile bassist. While enrolled in San Jose State University’s Art/Design program Gary came to realize that music was his true calling and made the decision to make it his life and his career. After leaving school he continued to study privately with the renowned Skip Parnell, a teacher and lecturer from the esteemed Philadelphia Academy of Music.
In the past 20 years Gary has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Asia ,South America and the Middle East where he has recorded and shared the stage with Flora Purim & Airto, Pharaoh Sanders Jeff Beal, Steve Winwood, Narada Michael Walden, Dianne Reeves, Lou Rawls , Ernie Watts, John Lucien, Torninho Horta , Eddie Henderson , Joyce, Alex Acuna, Dori Caymmi, George Duke, Roy Ayres ,Oscar Castro Neves , Lyle Mays, Giovanni Hidalgo, Mike Shrieve, Paul McCandles, Alphonse Mouzon, Andy Narrell, Pete and Sheila (Sheile E.) Escovedo, Jose Neto Quartet. As a member of Terra Sul he composed and co-produced on their CD “Kindness of Strangers” (Motown jazz label MOJazz). In addition to the co-writing and arranging Gary also shares a producer credit with drummer Celso Alberti for recording artist Zaza’s ambitious CD “Book of Kings”.
Gary is one of the three members of Pray for Rain, a film and soundtrack production team whose credits include Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell, Trust Me, Zandalee (with Judge Reinhold and Nicholas Cage) and The Linguini Incident (starring David Bowie). Their projects include work with famed Parliament keyboardist Bernie Worell on the movie Car 54 Where Are You? and the theme and dramatic underscore for the Fox television series Key West. They continue to compose underscore for various projects for the major cable networks including HBO, Lifetime, Showtime and Cinemax, as well as for the major television networks ABC, NBC and CBS.
Currently dividing his time perfoming with Flora Purim & Airto, Anamandara Trio and the Rebeca Mauleon Group, Gary continues to compose, perform and produce with various artists and is writing music for his first solo project.