Sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser JayVe Montgomery will lead a multi-day, Black-centered/led creative residency, along with improvising musician Ben LaMar Gay and two members of chatterbird, Maya Stone and Joshua Dent. The residency will use innovative techniques to capture sound vibrations of plant life at historically significant locations, including sites of racial trauma across Tennessee. Stay tuned to this space for more details on how to follow and support this project.

JayVe is a multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, and composer of the Chicago school of Free, Creative, and Improvised musics, Sonic Healing Ministries sector. His work reveals his adherence to improvisation and chance as a way to explore evolutionary learning, dreams, and unintended subjective meaning through randomized being. 2019 blessed JayVe Montgomery with performances at Big Ears (Knoxville) and High Zero (Baltimore) music festivals. His solo work of woodwinds, percussion, and electronics as Abstract Black, “In Circles With Self” (Banana Tapes), received Nashville Scene acclaim and highlights Montgomery’s dedication to a public musical practice in Nashville parks. 

Montgomery’s collaborator, Ben Lamar Gay, is a composer and cornetist who moves sound, color, and space through folkloric filters to produce electro-acoustic collages. His unification of various styles is always in service of the narrative and never solely a display of technique. Gay has a 15 year year relationship with Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and is also a touring member of The Bridge, a trans-atlantic pairing of Chicago and French improvisers. 

Chatterbird's Maya Stone and Joshua Dent will form the other half of the creative quartet. As a bassoonist, Maya has commissioned and premiered several works by American composers and is a member of the Rushes Ensemble, which premiered and recorded Michael Gordon’s concert-length work for 7 bassoons. Joshua Dent plays cello across genres, with experience in classical and improvisation. Their career is always changing; currently, it ranges from chamber music, vaudeville, rock, and jazz ensembles, to recording for studio sessions and teaching improvisation workshops around the country.

This project is supported in part by an Arts Build Communities grant through the Tennessee Arts Commission and an Artistic Development Project Assistance grant through Alternate Roots.

chatterbird will present a concert with the acclaimed Greek lauoto performer Vasilis Kostas on April 29, 2022 in the Parthenon’s beautiful Naos Room. The performance will include the regional premiere of Kalesma, for lauoto and chamber orchestra, along with other selections.

Kostas is a member of 'Global Messengers', the group launched by Grammy Award-winning pianist and UNESCO Artist for Peace, Danilo Perez. Vasilis has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Panama Jazz Festival and WOMEX. He has shared the stage with renowned artists such Simon Shaheen, Tigran Hamasyan, Antonio Serrano and Christos Zotos, to name a few.

His innovative approach on the laouto is a based on adapting Petroloukas Halkias’s clarinet lines and instrumental philosophy, as well as finding ways to combine jazz improvisation tools with the traditional elements of his musical roots.

This concert is offered on a sliding scale, with a suggestion to "Pay Your Wage" – at the door or online, pay an hour's worth of your wage. Cash and cards will be accepted at the door. Tickets are available via Eventbrite.

To learn more about accessibility at the Parthenon, visit: https://www.nashvilleparthenon.com/accessibility

This concert is made possible by the Danielle Rose Paikin Foundation.

Chatterbird will join Leyla McCalla for a presentation of Vari-Colored Songs at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Saturday, March 26, 2022. To learn more about the Big Ears Festival, see the schedule, and purchase tickets, click here.

On March 23, 2022, chatterbird will partner with singer-songwriter and cellist Leyla McCalla to present a concert at the National Museum of African-American Music that creatively reimagines her album, Vari-Colored Songs, a tribute to the poetry of Langston Hughes. Recently re-released on Smithsonian Folkways, the album is a celebration of the complexity of Black culture and identity, and a tribute to the legacy of poet and thinker Langston Hughes.

As a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, McCalla sets Hughes’ poems to her own spare yet profound compositions. She juxtaposes these with arrangements of folk songs from Haiti, the first independent Black nation and the homeland of her parents, tapping into the nuances of Black experience. McCalla’s music elegantly weaves Haitian influences together with American folk music, just as Hughes incorporated Black vernacular into his remarkable poetry, and the way the Haitian Kreyòl is a beacon for the survival of African identity through the brutal legacy of colonialism. This is music of reclamation, imbued with a quiet power that grapples with the immense weight of history.

This concert is offered on a sliding scale, with a suggestion to "Pay Your Wage" – at the door or online, pay an hour's worth of your wage. Cash and cards will be accepted at the door. Tickets are available via Eventbrite.

To learn more about NMAAM’s Roots Theater, visit: https://nmaam.org/roots-theater/

PARKING OPTIONS:

Most Affordable Option: Free self-parking is available from 6 p.m. until 1:00 a.m. in the state lots behind the Supreme Court Building (off Dr. Martin L. King Blvd., between 7th & 8th Avenues). Enter “State Employee Parking Lot 17A, Nashville 37219” into Google maps for exact directions. NMAAM is a 10-minute walk southeast along Rep. John Lewis Way.

Closest Option: The 5th & Broadway Parking Garage costs $12.00 up to 2 hours; $17.00 up to 3 hours; and $20.00 up to 5 hrs.

For a full list of parking options downtown, consider visiting www.nashvilledowntown.com/get-around/nashville-parking

Chatterbird will partner with Trinity Community Commons to offer a sound meditation experience as part of their self-guided space for community grieving. Join us between 9 and 11 AM for this free event.

From TCC: “We’ve all lost something in the recent past: a loved one, a job, a home, a pet, a changing neighborhood, a sense of security and normalcy - the list goes on. This is an opportunity to acknowledge our losses individually and communally. We will open our historic sanctuary to offer self-guided activities in stations which we invite the community to experience at their own pace. These include a grief walk, candle lighting, creative expression table, water/libation offering, and more. Children are welcome and encouraged to participate. We will also offer a breakfast reception with refreshments that is open to all. Masks are required in the sanctuary and encouraged in the reception area except when consuming refreshments.”

This Thursday, September 9, at 7:30 PM EDT/6:30 CDT, Butler University Jordan College of the Arts presents JCA Signature Series: Hello, Gold Mountain: A requiem for lost possibilities of the Jewish community.

"The work, an original composition by Wu Fei, will feature chatterbird along with Wu Fei, guzheng, and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz, oud (Silk Road Ensemble).

The piece is inspired by stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe during World War II. From 1933 until the end of the war, Shanghai was often the only port at which Jewish refugees fleeing Europe could disembark without a visa. In the early 1940s, more than 20,000 Jews lived in Shanghai and contributed to its cultural and civic life.

But the Jews could not stay. As China’s bloody civil war came to a close in 1949, most fled. Many emigrated to the US, often arriving at the port of San Francisco, or Old Gold Mountain."

More information on the performers and instructions on how to reserve free tickets or watch the livestream can be found at the link below.

https://events.butler.edu/.../jca-signature-series-hello.../