We Free Strings

7p June 7 2024 @ The Lovinger Theater. Multicultural Music Group Orchestra (MMGO) retrospective of commissioned works, 1996 - 2008. I'm here to lift a light to the MMGO, and invite you to hear it for yourself.

While most of the U.S. orchestral community continues the ad nauseum practice of inequitable representation in repertoire and on the stage, Group has spent the past 28 years, in the South Bronx, commissioning/premiering arts/humanities-based works by BIPOC composers for its mostly BIPOC orchestra, the MMGO -- a people's orchestra.

MMGO's commissioned repertoire exists to open our eyes to under-represented aspects of people's histories in our voices. Our ability to preserve, transmit and revive facts and truths about Afro-Indigenous culture, history in own voices is a necessary act of resistance and survival.

Art is a powerful in systems marked by pathological attempts to distort representations of peoples' histories, cultures and character -- deliberate systems bent on removing even the palest safeguards that would give BIPOC and other oppressed communities the agency to reach greater safety and socio-cultural sovereignty.

Support living musicians.

It's Bandcamp Friday, my friends! So much gorgeousness to be heard by living artists! Go get some! https://wefreestringsesp.bandcamp.com/album/love-in-the-form-of-sacred-outrage

The Nkisi edits video for her Studio Rivbea Revisited date, Jan 2023

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ct0CnVqvwtg/?igshid=MTI1ZDU5ODQ3Yw==

I’m very excited to share that I’m part of the M³ Fall Equinox 2023 Cohort, in the company of:

Sibongile Buda - bass (Mamelodi Township, South Africa)

Andrea Demarcus - upright bass, voice (Athens, Georgia)

Melanie Dyer - viola (Harlem, NYC)

Natalie Greffel - voice, bass (Berlin, Germany)

Maia aka Sonjia Hubert Harper - voice, flute, piccolo, harp, vibraphone, percussion (Los Angeles, California)

Naomi McCarroll-Butler - saxophone, clarinet, instrument maker (Montréal, Canada)

Shoko Nagai - piano, accordion, electronics (Japan / NYC)

Francesca Naibo - guitar, voice (Milan, Italy)

Martha Redbone - voice (NYC)

Nath Rodrigues - voice, violin, berimbau, mandolin, percussion (Belo Horizonte, Brasil)

Marta Sanchez - piano (Spain / NYC)

Sharon Udoh/Counterfeit Madison - piano, voice (Chicago, Illinois)

Karen E. w her eyebrow, dimples n smile. My raison d'etre. Happy Mother's Day to the village!