Renowned saxophonist, composer, author and educator Dave Liebman will present 2 sessions focusing on developing the essential tools of creativity and navigating the realities of a career in music. Through exploration of the fundamentals that encourage creativity and allow musicians to gain artistic control, Dave will help musicians identify the tools which can be used to unlock fresh and creative approaches to their art.
14th November, 4-5.30pm – The Essential Tools of Creativity
15th November, 4–5.30pm – Creativity and Your Career
Tickets: €25 for 2 sessions; places are limited and are offered on a first come first served basis.
Distinguished soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan will deliver two sessions addressing the process of authentic music-making and the art of balancing a multi-disciplinary musical career. Delving into such topics as interpretation, programming, establishing satisfying collaborations, discipline in work (and rest!) and the importance of cultivating a strong work ethic, Barbara will help musicians develop key techniques to deal with crucial aspects of a career in music.
21st November, 4-5.30pm – Authentic Music-Making
22nd November, 4-5.30pm – Balancing Your Musical Career
Tickets: €25 for 2 sessions; places are limited and are offered on a first come first served basis.
Banjoist Béla Fleck – winner of 15 Grammy Awards and nominated in more categories than any other artist in Grammy history – is one of the world’s most consummate and innovative exponents of his instrument. In two comprehensive sessions, Béla will discuss his own approaches to creativity and collaboration, shedding light on how to develop your musical ideas, maintain creativity throughout your career and find creativity on stage.
28th November, 4-5.30pm – Developing Your Musical Ideas – Shake Up Your Creative Process
29th November, 4–5.30pm – Uniqueness, Re-invention and Successful Collaboration
Tickets: €25 for 2 sessions; places are limited and are offered on a first come first served basis.
David Liebman
NEA Jazz Master (2011) David Liebman’s career has spanned nearly five decades, beginning in the early 1970s as the saxophone/flautist in both the Elvin Jones and Miles Davis Groups, continuing as a bandleader since. He has played on over five hundred recordings with nearly two hundred under his leadership and co-leadership. In jazz education he is a renowned lecturer and author of several milestone books: Self Portrait Of A Jazz Artist, A Chromatic Approach To Jazz Harmony And Melody, Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound (translated into multiple languages), in addition to teaching DVDs, journalistic contributions to periodicals and published chamber music.
Lieb‘s autobiography What It Is-The Life Of A Jazz Artist (Scarecrow Press) is a fascinating look into Lieb’s career. His bands over the years have included noted musicians such as John Scofield, Richie Beirach, Bob Moses, Billy Hart and others. The current group Expansions features some of the best of the younger generation. Lieb is the Founder and Artistic Director of the International Association of Schools of Jazz (IASJ) existing since 1989, which is a worldwide network of schools from nearly 40 countries.
Liebman’s awards, besides the NEA honor include the Jazz Educators Network (JEN) Legends of Jazz (2013); the Order of Arts and Letters (France 2009); Jazz Journalist’s award for Soprano Saxophone (2007); Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Solo (1998); Honorary Doctorate from the Sibelius Academy (Finland-1997). He is currently teaching at the Manhattan School of Music and a guest lecturer at Berklee College of Music. Dave has consistently placed in the top positions for Soprano Saxophone in the Downbeat, Jazz Times and JazzEd polls since 1973.
Barbara Hannigan
Embodying music with an unparalleled dramatic sensibility, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an artist at the forefront of creation. Her artistic colleagues include Simon Rattle, Sasha Waltz, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowski, John Zorn, Andreas Kriegenburg, Andris Nelsons, Esa Pekka Salonen, Christoph Marthaler, Antonio Pappano, Katie Mitchell, Kirill Petrenko, and Krszysztof Warlikowski. The late conductor and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw has been an extraordinary influence and inspiration on her development as a musician.
The Canadian musician has shown a profound commitment to the music of our time and has given the world première performances of over 85 new creations. Hannigan has collaborated extensively with composers including Boulez, Zorn, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Sciarrino, Barry, Dusapin, Dean, Benjamin and Abrahamsen.
The 20/21 season presented both challenges and opportunities, and true to form, Barbara continued at her own speed of light, premiering a new live video production ofLa Voix Humainein which she both sings and conducts, created in collaboration with video artist Denis Guéguin as part of her residency with l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. She performed across Europe with colleaguesincluding Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, festivals in Ludwigsburg and Aix en Provence, and celebrated her 50thbirthday at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, conducting the Ludwig Orchestra in works of Haydn, Copland, Barry and two Kurt Weill songs arranged for Barbara by Bill Elliott.
The 21/22 season brings her return to La Monnaie as Lulu in the much-awaited remount of her first Lulu production with Warlikowski from 2012. Her La Voix Humaine production will take her to London Symphony Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic, and she happily returns to Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra as well as to her younger colleagues of The Juilliard School. She will sing the world premiere of a new work by Zosha di Castri with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and present several concerts with vocal works by John Zorn in Antwerp, Hamburg and Modena.
Hannigan’s album as both singer and conductor, Crazy Girl Crazy (2017), won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal album and numerous other awards including an Edison and a Juno. Other recent albums include Vienna: fin de siècle, and Satie’s Socrate, both with pianist Reinbert de Leeuw. In spring 2020 she released her latest album on Alpha Classics, La Passione with works of Nono, Haydn and Grisey. Three new cd recordings for the Alpha label are on the way to release.
Barbara’s commitment to the younger generation of musicians led her to create the mentoring initiative Equilibrium Young Artists in 2017, and in 2020, Barbara created Momentum: our Future Now, an initiative which encourage other leading artists and organizations to support and mentor younger professional musicians. In spring 2020 Barbara was awarded the Dresdener Musikfestspiele Glashütte Award, and May 2021 saw her awarded Denmark’s prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize. The financial component of both awards was donated to young artists initiatives.
Originally from Nova Scotia, Barbara resides in Finistère, on the northwest coast of France.
Béla Fleck
Just in case you aren’t familiar with Béla Fleck, there are many who say he’s the premiere banjo player in the world. Others claim that Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Fleck, you know that he just loves to play the banjo, and put it into unique settings.
A sixteen-time Grammy Award-winner, Fleck has the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots. His most recent release and 2022 Grammy Award-winning album, My Bluegrass Heart, was Fleck’s return to bluegrass and spotlighted a multi-generational gamut of the best of bluegrass players. His collaborations range from his ground-breaking standard-setting ensemble Béla Fleck and the Flecktones to a staggeringly broad array of musical experiments. From writing concertos for full symphony orchestra, exploring the banjo’s African roots, and collaborating with Indian musical royalty Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Churasia with Edgar Meyer, to performing as a folk duo with wife Abigail Washburn, and jazz duos with Chick Corea, many tout that Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player. As Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times, “That’s a lot of territory for five strings.”