The Shenson Faculty Concert Series 2019 will be lighting up the stage with four free concerts featuring CMC’s talented faculty and their collaborators! The concerts will span genres and instrumentation, encompassing classical, jazz, gospel, neo-classical, and avant-garde genres.
Each year, The Shenson Foundation sponsors four free community concerts for CMC faculty music projects. The faculty members and their ensembles are selected by a committee of musicians from CMC’s Board of Directors. It’s truly a difficult decision for the committee with wonderful proposals from talented CMC faculty.
The following faculty were selected for the 2019 Shenson Faculty Concert Series. The dates for the concerts are also noted, so mark your calendar!
Ben Snellings: Sunday, March 31, 2019 – 4:00 pm
Cello faculty Ben Snellings will be presenting a concert of string solos and duos from the Baroque, Classical, Neo-classical, and Hungarian genres. Selections will include Haydn, Bach, Prokofiev, and Kodaly.
Jon Jang: Saturday, April 27, 2019 – 8:00 pm
Piano faculty Jon Jang presents “Come Sunday: The Music of Duke Ellington in Celebration of his 120th Birthday Anniversary” featuring the works of Duke Ellington. Because the name “Come Sunday” refers to a recording by Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson celebrating black people’s struggle to have their own church, there also will be songs performed in the concert that Mahalia Jackson sang in the context of the black church.
Jono Kornfeld: Saturday, May 4, 2019 – 8:00 pm
Piano, guitar, and theory faculty Jono Kornfeld performs with the band Hop Sauce. The group performs mainly original compositions in a funk/jazz style, with a strong emphasis on improvisation and spontaneous in-the-moment composing.
David Steinberg: May 10, 2019 – 7:00 pm
Woodwinds faculty David Steinberg presents works that feature a combination of live instrumental performances paired with electronic and sampled elements and will feature works that are inspired by jazz, R&B, gospel, musique concrete, and avant garde. The program is an exploration of the concept of “lifestyle” and puts forth the hypothesis that the popularity of lifestyle journalism and content is due to the need to fill the void that traditional and now largely-unattainable sources of meaning such as owning a home, raising a large family, or working in a field that provides both a strong sense of purpose and a living wage, have left behind. By attempting to imbue consumerist habits with the pretense of social activism or spiritual enrichment, lifestyle journalism and content foster a soothing but ultimately artificial sense of purpose.