The Dartmouth World Music Percussion Ensemble, led by Hafiz Shabazz, will perform tonight in Spaulding Auditorium.
The ensemble will be joined by a number of guest artists. One, Srinivas Krishnan, directs the Global Rhythms World Music Ensemble at Miami University in Ohio. Srinivas has experience both as a master player, having performed with such artists as renowned sitar player Ravi Shankar, and as a composer, having penned music for the Kronos String Quartet.
Srinivas is an associate professor at the University of Miami in Ohio, but he also teaches at the University of North Texas. Additionally, he travels to India frequently to enrich his knowledge of South Asian music.
Because of this well informed perspective, Global Rhythms is a combination of traditional and nontraditional Indian ensemble technique. The group utilizes an eclectic blend of Middle Eastern, Caribbean, Indian and Western instrumentation to produce its own unique sound.
Also featured this evening is Min Xiao Fen, an artist from China who plays a traditional Chinese instrument called the pipa. The pipa is a wooden, pear-shaped instrument with four strings, similar to a lute. Min Xiao has won numerous pipa competitions in China, and she was a soloist with the famous Nanjing National Music Orchestra.
She came to the United States in 1992, and since then has worked with the New York City Opera, the BBC Symphony, The San Francisco Opera Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, among others. Min Xiao will play "Dance of the Yi People," a traditional piece, and the more contemporary "Run," a composition that exploits a particular right-hand fingering technique to create a tremolo effect.
Ariel Cahn, a flutist who is completing her Masters in music at the University of Massachusetts, and Eric Lyon, a composer, violinist and professor in Dartmouth's Electro-Acoustic Music Department.
The program includes a song by Babatunde Olatunji, "Odunde," and more traditional music, such as "Wolosodoun," which is described as "warriors' music."
The World Music Percussion Ensemble is comprised of Thomas Nichols '02, Derek Hansen '02, Hannah Elka Meyers '03, Berwin Song '02, Bayard Russell '01, Steve Mordan '00, Madea Allen '02 and Arvindh Kanagasundram '01 on clarinet; Vijayendra Rao '03, Joel Wickre '03 and Jennifer Lippman '01 on violin; Jennifer Hoh '02, Nathaniel Morgan '01 and Andrew Pease '01 on steel pan; Dipesh Bhise on tabla; Ben James '02, Linda Nuebelt, Betsey Kamel, Grace Schust and Lindsey Schust.
