renée baker, live!

renée baker, live! this is a massive event! sunday, may 3, 7.30pm, mca, chicago. do it!

The spare, emotive Sunyata harks back to early Buddhist writings to push at the limits of today’s creative music. Forward-thinking violinist/composer Renée Baker finds inspiration in the earliest Buddhist writings to reach Tibet, Padma Sambhava’s Book of the Dead (The Bardo). Sambhava playfully hid his writings in unusual and remote locations, believing that people would recover them at a time when his spiritual messages would have the most beneficial impact. Baker engages his writings with the same belief.

For her first MCA commission, Baker entwines music, voice, and dance. The work, written while in residence in Vietnam, is a lush, energetic score for her own magnetic Chicago Modern Orchestra Project as well as seven deeply affecting vocalists: Dee Alexander, Ann Ward, Saalik Ziyad, and Taalib-din Ziyad, members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; as well as Yoseph Henry, Rae Myra Hilliard, and gospel superstar Dwayne Lee. As they stand, clothed in luminescent fabric, the singers serve as a visually potent bridge between Sambhava’s transcendent text and Baker’s musical score. Joining the production are world-class musicians from the Bridge, a transatlantic network for Creative Music, including Jean-Luc Cappozzo (trumpet, flugelhorn), Douglas R. Ewart (woodwinds), Joëlle Léandre (double bass), Bernard Santacruz (double bass), and Michael Zerang (drums, percussion).

Sunyata: Towards Absolute Emptiness is presented as part of MCA’s Creative Music Summit in recognition of creative musicians/composers, and in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), This year Creative Music Summit features Baker and Nicole Mitchell in two distinctive concerts which journey through the multiple dimensions of inner and outer spaces.

event info here.

interview with renée baker!

HOW DID YOUR ENSEMBLE, THE CHICAGO MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT COME TO BE?

CMOP is my creative vehicle for putting real-life sound to my compositions and that’s why I created it, as an afterbirth of Mantra Blue Free Orchestra which Fred Anderson helped me workshop at the Velvet Lounge for a couple of years. CMOP emerged when I received tacit approval from my AACM cohorts that I and this ensemble were ready to fly. We didn’t need their permission, per se, but they sanctioned and blessed the endeavor. CMOP is the most fully integrated new music ensemble in the country. Modeling inclusion not just racially, but breaking barriers regarding the marriage of classical and other creative forms. Too long have the genres been frightened by each other via unhealthy marketing ploys which keep audiences unaware of the beautiful hybrid possibilities in listening material.

read the whole thing here!

pan y rosas release home molasses by renée baker’s awakening!

awakening

renée baker’s chicago modern orchestra project is revamping the traditional concert going experience by programming an eclectic genre mix, crossing grooves and roads where least expected. they look to build bridges between audience members of different backgrounds. part of their organizational mission is to adjust and transcend global viewpoints through ethnic human experimentation. to this end they seek out unusual and completely innovative scores from every genre of music – focusing on living composers.

home molasses consists of two comprovisations by renée baker that were performed and interpreted by awakening – a small ensemble offshoot of the chicago modern orchestra project. the pieces were presented as part of the fifth articular facet series in october of 2013. the sound is: joy.

get it here!

pan y rosas releases nappy hair’s best friend by renée baker’s chicago modern orchestra project!

cmopcover

renée baker’s chicago modern orchestra project is revamping the traditional concert going experience by programming an eclectic genre mix, crossing grooves and roads where least expected. they look to build bridges between audience members of different backgrounds. part of their organizational mission is to adjust and transcend global viewpoints through ethnic human experimentation. to this end they seek out unusual and completely innovative scores from every genre of music – focusing on living composers.

nappy hair’s best friend, their first album for pan y rosas, is a document of a performance in lakeside, michigan in september of 2012. the album captures the performances of two pieces of conduction/comprovisations by renée baker.

get the album here!