On Thursday, Apr. 23, 2009, The Performing and Creative Arts Department Spring Arts Festival will offer two back-to-back free concerts during the Thursday club hours, followed by a reception:
-OMNI Ensemble: featuring works by Rose, Crumb, and Shostakovich, in the Center for the Arts (Building 1P) Recital Hall from 1:25pm to 2:25pm.
CSI Music faculty members David Wechsler, Flute; David Keberle, Clarinet; and Olivier Fluchaire, Violin will team up with guest artists Masha Lankovsky, Violin; Christie Vaughan, Viola; Brian Snow, Cello; and Greg Tolwinski, Piano to perform three strikingly original contemporary works:
Four Pieces, Michael Rose
Vox Balanae, George Crumb
Piano Quintet, Dimitri Shostakovich
The OMNI Ensemble’s concert is made possible, in part, with funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Arts Development Fund of Brooklyn.
-Jean Rohe, singer/songwriter, and her five-piece ensemble: “The Portuguese Influence in America Popular Music” in the Center for the Arts (Building 1P) Concert Hall from 2:30pm to 3:30pm.
Singer/songwriter Jean Rohe will lead her five-piece ensemble in a performance/workshop entitled “The Portuguese Influence in American Popular Music.” This event, which will culminate Rohe’s week-long visiting artist residency at CSI.
Nate Chinen of The New York Times called Rohe “…A confident young singer whose compositions tend toward a literate and imploring tone.” She has won second place in the Shure Vocal Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in July 2006. The Audience Choice awardee in that competition as well, Rohe has sung in venues throughout New York City, including Birdland, Sweet Rhythm, Detour, Barbés, and the Cornelia Street Café, and in venues on the West Coast, in Canada, Cuba, and Brazil. In addition to her work as leader, Jean sings in David Moore’s Bing, and Ruth and Hector Morales’s Afrodita, as well as in the Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble Grupo Monte NY. Versed in the rhythmic calculus of Brazilian jazz, bossa nova, and samba, Rohe, sings in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, as well as in English. She graduated from the New School Jazz program and its undergrad liberal arts division, Eugene Lang College. She teaches and performs music for young children at public schools on the Lower East Side through the Third Street Music School Settlement and at sites throughout the city.
The Campus Activity Board has generously sponsored Jean Rohe’s residency at the College of Staten Island. In addition, several campus bodies, including the American Studies Program, the Music Program, the History Department, The Verrazano School, The Women’s Center, the Pluralism and Diversity Program, and the Center for the Arts, have worked together to make this event possible.
