Imani Winds: Kevin Newton, Monica Ellis, Brandon Patrick George, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, and Mark Dover. (source: imaniwinds.com)

Imani Winds inspires with recital celebrating composers of color at KSU’s Bailey Performance Center

CONCERT REVIEW:
Imani Winds
September 29, 2023
Bailey Performance Center, Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, GA – USA
“Macl and Brown II: A Celebration of Composers of Color”
Brandon Patrick George, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mark Dover, clarinet; Kevin Newton, horn; Monica Ellis, bassoon.

Damian GETER: I Said What I Said
Carlos SIMON: Giants
Paquito D’RIVERA/trans. Valerie Coleman: Kites
Wayne SHORTER: Terra Incognita
Andy AKIHO: BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging
Billy TAYLOR/arr. Mark Dover: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free

Mark Gresham | 03 OCT 2023

Kennesaw State University’s Bailey Performance Center hosted a recital by the eminent wind quintet Imani Winds last Friday evening, featuring their ethnically diverse touring program of music for woodwind quintet, “Black and Brown II: A Celebration of Composers of Color,” all commissioned by or written for the group.

Celebrating over a quarter-century of music making, Imani Winds has been at the forefront of transforming and advancing the wind quintet repertoire with their unwavering dedication to broadening the genre’s musical canon through commissioning new works by emerging composers, drawing inspiration from historical contexts and the contemporary zeitgeist.


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Friday evening’s concert opened with Damian Geter’s I Said What I Said (2022), a work of frenzied, jazz-propelled rhythms inspired by a phrase coined by TV personality NeNe Leakes, who became the breakout star on Bravo’s reality television series The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Next on the program came the musical biopic Giants (2023) by DC-born and Atlanta-raised composer Carlos Simon, who drew inspiration from five influential Black Americans who have significantly impacted his identity as a composer: Bessie Smith, Maya Angelou, Ronald E. McNair, Cornel West, and Herbie Hancock. Each movement within the composition strived to encapsulate their respective work and personalities through music, paying homage to them.


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The original version of Kites (2005), by Cuban-American alto saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Paquito D’Rivera, was written for a septet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano. Imani Winds premiered and recorded it with D’Rivera as clarinetist and pianist Alex Brown. But in this concert, the group closed the program’s first half with a transcription for wind quintet only by American composer and flutist Valerie Coleman, who founded Imani Winds in 1997.

Legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who passed away in March of this year, crafted his debut chamber composition, Terra Incognita (2006), for the Imani Winds with the same audaciousness and eloquence that characterized his improvisational prowess. The 15-minute piece is suitably episodic: motifs ebb, flow, and reappear in innovative variations, blending playfulness and melancholy, edginess and lyricism, and a fusion of earthiness and urban sophistication that often coexist.


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For his BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging, composer Andy Akiho drew inspiration from the resonant sounds of protesting immigrant detainees in 2019 at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, and born from the idea of uniting detainees and facility staff through the positive shared experience of music. The piece is an emotionally fueled tribute to the protesters that sheds some light on the shared humanity of everyone involved, detained or detainer. Akiho workshopped the piece with a group of incarcerated young men at Rikers Island. Imani Winds, who commissioned it, premiered BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center in New York City on October 26, 2022.

The group closed their program with the 1960s Billy Taylor song, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” in an inventive, wide-ranging arrangement by Imani’s clarinetist, Mark Dover.

Imani Winds gave the enthusiastic, appreciative audience an engaging and insightful performance of these six works.  ■

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About the author:
Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. He began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.

Read more by Mark Gresham.
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