Awakening: A world premiere by Jamshied Sharifi

MIT Wind Ensemble

Frederick Harris, Jr., Music Director; Kenneth Amis, assistant conductor.

Jamshied Sharifi, MIT Visiting Artist and Composer-in-Residence

March 17, 2012 8PM Kresge Auditorium, MIT

Admission: Free in advance via eventbrite, $5 at the door. 

Tickets: http://mitwe-jamshied-sharifi.eventbrite.com or $5 at the door.

Program:

Bernard, Divertissement for Winds; Copland, Variations on a Shaker Melody; Schuman, When Jesus Wept; Bernstein, Profanation from Symphony no. 1; Sharifi, Awakening, world premiere.

Mr. Sharifi was commissioned by the MIT Wind Ensemble to create an extended composition that recognizes the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab World that began in December 2010. The piece uses Arabic maqam as source material. Mr. Sharifi will be composer-in-residence at MIT March 12-17, 2012. Sponsored by the MIT Visiting Artist Program and Music and Theater Arts.

Jamshied Sharifi is a New York-based composer, producer, and keyboardist. Born in Topeka, Kansas to an Iranian father and an American mother, Sharifi graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in humanities, and Summa Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music in Boston, with a degree in Jazz Composition and Arranging. At MIT and Berklee, he studied with the legendary Herb Pomeroy, who asked him at graduation to lead the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble. While in Boston, Sharifi studied piano with Charlie Banacos, and West African drumming with Godwin Agbeli and Abubakari Lunna.

Sharifi has composed the scores for the feature films Harriet The Spy, Down To Earth, Clockstoppers, The Thomas Crown Affair, Muppets From Space, Footsteps in Africa, 14 Women, and for many other films and television shows.  As a producer, he has made records for Mamak Khadem, Yungchen Lhamo, Susan McKeown, and Mirabai Ceiba.  As an arranger, he has written for Ray Charles, Paula Cole, Dream Theater, Cee Lo Green, Reba McEntire, Mis-teeq, Matthew Morrison, Sam Moore, Smokey Robinson, and Jordin Sparks.  His world-inspired debut CD, A Prayer For The Soul Of Layla, was named ‘Best World Album’ by New Age Voice magazine, and ‘Best Album of the Year’ by critic and radio host John Diliberto.  In 2009 he served as an arranger for the Inaugural Concert for President Obama at Lincoln Memorial.

Sharifi recently completed the score for the third season of On The Road In America, an unscripted documentary about four young Arabs traveling in the United States. The show is currently airing in many Arab markets.

Home page: http://www.jamshiedsharifi.com/Site/Home.html

NPR’s Day to Day: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90657533

PRI’s The World: http://www.pri.org/theworld/?q=node/18516

Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr.  is Director of Wind and Jazz Ensembles.  He holds a M.M., New England Conservatory and Ph.D., University of Minnesota. He has served as acting music director of the MIT Symphony Orchestra, assistant conductor of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Wind Ensemble, music director of the Summer Music Festival at the South Shore Conservatory, conductor of the Concerto Grosso Orchestra at the University of Minnesota, and he has guest conducted the New Hampshire Philharmonic and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, among others.

Dr. Harris’ first book, Conducting with Feeling, was published by Meredith Music in 2001. His new book, Seeking the Infinite: The Musical Life of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski,was published by CreateSpace in 2011. He is a strong advocate for the creation and performance of new music, having commissioned and/or premiered over 65 works for wind, jazz, and mixed ensembles. He recently organized an international consortium of nine orchestras and wind ensembles from the U.S., Germany, Austria, and Japan to commission Maestro Skrowaczewski to compose Music for Winds. He has lectured on music in Canada and at many New England universities, as well as for the Minnesota Orchestra and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken. Recordings by the MIT Wind Ensemble include Waking Winds (2004), published by INNOVA Recordings of the American Composers, and Solo Eclipse  (2008), published by Albany Records. Both CDs feature premiere recordings by composers such as Schuller, Child, Ziporyn, Klein, and Amis. Dr. Harris recently conducted Kenny Werner’s No Beginning, No End (2010), in New York City for Half Note Records. The work features Werner, Joe Lovano and Judi Silvano.

Dr. Harris’ ensembles at MIT have worked with artists such as Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, Michael Colgrass, Frank Battisti, Herb Pomeroy, Joe Lovano, Kenny Werner, Don Byron, Ran Blake, Guillermo Klein, Kenneth Amis, Magali Souriau Steve Turre, and Evan Ziporyn. His conducting teachers included Stephen Massey, Frank Battisti, Gunther Schuller, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Craig Kirchhoff. He studied percussion with Arthur Press, former principal percussionist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and jazz drums with Alan Dawson. He was awarded the 2010 Paul Smith Hall of Fame Award from the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association. The award is presented annually “to a Massachusetts music conductor who is a musical and personal inspiration to students, the community, and other professional conductors.” http://www.seekingtheinfinite.com/

About the MIT Wind Ensemble

Founded by Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr. in the fall of 1999, the MIT Wind Ensemble (course 21M.426) is comprised of outstanding MIT undergraduate & graduate students studying a wide variety of fields. The central mission of the MIT Wind Ensemble is the enhancement of the musical education and artistic sensitivity of its members through performance in large and small wind ensembles of music of diverse styles from the 16th century to the present day. A secondary mission is the creation and nurturing of new music for the wind ensemble medium. MITWE performs the finest traditional wind ensemble literature and the best of the new. Literature includes music for large wind ensemble, chamber winds, brass ensemble, percussion ensemble, and woodwind ensembles. Since 2001, the MIT Wind Ensemble has commissioned 20 original works for wind ensemble by MIT faculty, Boston, and internationally renowned composers. Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, and Michael Colgrass, all Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, among many others, have worked with MITWE.

In 2004, MITWE released its first international professional recording, Waking Winds, on the American Composers Forum, Innova label. The CD is comprised of all world premiere recordings. Gramophone Magazine called the recording, “An exhilarating range of approaches to the modern wind band.”  In 2008, MITWE released its second international professional recording, Solo Eclipse, on the prestigious classical music label, Albany Records. It represents the first time an MIT student ensemble has released a professional CD of all world premiere recordings of works commissioned expressly for them.