“Jazz virtuoso Esperanza Spalding and renowned flutist Claire Chase have been appointed professors of practice in the Music Department,” writes Jill Radsken on Wednesday (7/26) in Harvard University’s Gazette. “Beginning in the 2017–18 academic year, the two artists will teach courses that cross musical styles and genres.… After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in 2005, Spalding was hired as one of the school’s youngest-ever instructors at age 20…. Spalding’s voice has carried beyond music. She made a video in 2013 called ‘We Are America’ about Guantanamo Bay and prison.” This July, Spalding performed in Philadelphia and New York with musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute’s National Youth Orchestra 2, comprising teenaged musicians from underserved communities. “Chase has performed more than 100 world premieres for the flute throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia…. Co-founder of the entrepreneurial and educational International Contemporary Ensemble, she has been a critical voice for musical innovation across genres. Winner of this year’s Avery Fisher Prize, Chase has twice been honored with the Chamber Music America ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. Among her current performance projects is … a long-term commission for new flute music over the next two decades.” Watch Chase’s performance and keynote address at the League’s 2014 Conference here. Read Spalding’s first-person essay about working with orchestras in Symphony magazine here.
Posted July 27, 2017
