This is a past event
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Do you think about music? Are you interested in music but haven’t played an instrument or taken a music course? Are you an experienced performer or composer? This is the music workshop series for you! Thinking about music takes many forms. It could mean performing and composing, or developing historical and cultural research into specific forms of music or using software to make or analyze music. Sponsored by the Department of Music, this series is open to all and offers the campus community different models for thinking about and doing music. Paired with the Music Department Tea Time (which takes place at 4:30 p.m. and immediately follows the workshop), the workshop series is an exciting, low-pressure way of expanding your understanding of music.

Improvisation: This installment of the workshop features cellist Wayne Smith and focuses on musical improvisation. A creative and expressive approach central to so many forms of cultural production, improvisation is a music making strategy that relies on real-time decision making and interactivities. All are welcome, and if you play an instrument (including voice), please consider bringing your instrument.

Cellist Wayne Smith gave his recital debut at the Kennedy Center in 1996, and has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Italy, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Poland and China. He is the principal cellist of the Manhattan Symphonie and a frequent performer at BargeMusic in New York City. He also performs with the Harlem Chamber Players and the Portland Piano Trio. In the Pioneer Valley, he is a member of the Wistaria String Quartet and a founding member of 1200 Horsehairs, a band of cellos. He is also the co-creator of Arctic Moth, an improvising electronica duo. He has played with the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the National Chamber Orchestra, the Harlem Chamber Players, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonic of New Jersey, the Princeton Chamber Symphony and the Heidelberg Castle Festival Orchestra in Heidelberg, Germany, among other groups, and was a featured soloist on the PBS Series “Musical Encounters.” He has recorded and performed with such artists as Joe, Richard Smallwood, the Spin Doctors’ Anthony Krizan, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and the Moody Blues. He has also enjoyed an active teaching career and has taught lessons and master classes at Amherst College, Salisbury State University in Maryland and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He did his undergraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music with Steven Doane and his graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with Astrid Schween.

Contact Info

Jason Robinson
(413) 542-8208
Please call the college operator at 413-542-2000 or e-mail info@amherst.edu if you require contact info @amherst.edu