Paul Steinbeck: Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM
Saturday, September 24
TIME: 1:30 -2:30 PM
VENUE: Logan Center Screening Room (Artist Talks)
Paul Steinbeck will be joined by musician, Arts Leader anD AACM MEMBER, Adam Zanolini, and spoken word musician and educator Khari B.
Man wearing glasses and a black shirt (Paul Steinbeck) standing in front of a painting.
PAUL STEINBECK
PAUL STEINBECK is an associate professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written extensively about the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Fred Anderson. Steinbeck’s book Sound Experiments, a study of ten influential pieces by AACM composers, is published by the University of Chicago Press (2022). His previous book Message to Our Folks, a history of the Art Ensemble, is available in English from the University of Chicago Press (2017), in Italian from Edizioni Quodlibet (2018), and in French from the Presses Universitaires du Midi (2021). With Fred Anderson, Steinbeck is co-author of Exercises for the Creative Musician (2002/2010), a method book for improvisers.
Steinbeck is also a bassist, composer, and improviser. He studied bass with Harrison Bankhead and composition with Ari Brown. His compositions and improvisations are documented on nineteen recordings. He performs with a number of ensembles, including Low End Theory, co-led with former AACM president Mwata Bowden.
Man (Adam Zanolini) wearing a blue shirt and sun glasses, playing the flute.
Adam Zanolini
Adam Zanolini is a multi-instrumentalist, ethnomusicologist, writer, and arts organizer based in Chicago. He is the Executive Director of Elastic Arts Foundation in Chicago and former Associate Director of Arts for Art, presenter of the annual Vision Festival of avant-jazz in New York City. He is also co-founder of the Participatory Music Coalition and active member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Adam serves on the Board of the Live the Spirit Residency, producer of the annual Englewood Jazz Festival, and also on the Board of the Milwaukee Avenue Alliance. Adam plays flute, double bass, saxophone and other instruments, performing regularly with PMC, the AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble, Sura Dupart's Sidepocket Experience, with Angel Bat Dawid and the Brothahood, in addition to his own projects. He received his PhD in music with a certificate in Africana Studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2016. Adam’s highest ambition is to be a community musician: to cultivate and share knowledge through music in order to help heal, strengthen, and empower the Black community.
Khari B
Discopoet Khari B. is a spoken word musician and educator working internationally as both a performer and instructor in the literary arts. With a solid reputation for delivering powerful performances with intense instrumental accompaniment, Khari B.’s energetic nature is tied to growing up in Chicago’s House music culture and being the son of two educators, one being acclaimed woodwindist, Mwata Bowden. His inspirational and mentally rousing work has been recognized, hailed, and requested worldwide, staking out a place in the hearts of audiences and appealing to a diverse legion of fans, spanning multiple ages and ethnicities. He’s co-produced three albums under the Discopoetry brand (WordSound: THIS AIN’T NO PUNK-ASSED POETRY, I’M A BAD MUTHA: The Rockstar Poetry Project, The Revolution Has Been Compromised: Honoring the words and works of Gil Scott-Heron) and appeared on several others. Published in a number of anthologies, Khari has released one book, “Haiku 4 Justice: Poetry In the Age of Social Media” with another, “Karen Must Be Stopped,” in physical, audio and video formats, pending. He’s coproduced an award-winning documentary on his annual arts & music production, “Thee Debauchery Ball,” established 2005, while developing educational content around the correlation between the expressions of Black sexuality and liberation that the event embodies. Khari B. has been an Artist-InResidence at the prestigious Purdue University since 2006, continuing to create, educate, produce and perform wherever he is called under his philosophy “Make it happen.”
