Yearly Archives: 2009

While NEXUS is in Windsor, Ontario rehearsing with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra for a performance on October  5, we’re also presenting workshops and masterclasses for students at the University of Windsor.

I first met Kazunori Meguro in Okinawa, Japan in October 1997.  He was performing with his Tokyo-based percussion ensemble at a drum festival, to which NEXUS had also been invited.  As a result of that meeting, I was invited in 1998 to guest teach for two weeks at the Showa Academy in Japan, where Kazunori… Read more »

Russell Hartenberger presents a hands-on West African Drumming Workshop in which participants play drum ensemble music from the Ewe, Akan and Dagomba people of Ghana. Polyrhythms, call and response, talking drums, all fascinate Russell and he enjoys sharing that fascination with workshop participants. Russell has explored these elements in his own composition The Invisible Proverb,… Read more »

In his clinic Performing Live with MIDI, Bill Cahn takes a close look at the possibilities for musical expression offered by MIDI and, in the process, simplifies what can appear to be a very complicated subject. The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) was introduced in 1982 and in the past 25 years has revolutionized music…. Read more »

I was saddened to hear that Erich Kunzel passed away at his home in Swan’s Island, Maine this past Tuesday, September 1.  He was 74.  Kunzel was known to symphony audiences throughout the U.S. and Canada for decades as a the Pops Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with which he made many recordings. He also… Read more »

This year (2009) the Bob Becker Ragtime Xylophone Institute was held from July 27 through August 1. It was our ninth year for this annual event held at the University of Delaware in Newark, DE. The participants, pictured in the photo (left to right) were: Bob, Warren Dewey, Valerie Vassar, Zachary Nandapurkar, Harvey Price, Doug… Read more »

Since the 1970s Ruth and I have occasionally vacationed in the Adirondack region of New York State.  The area is rich in the history of the eighteenth-century conflicts between the French and English for dominance in North America. Last summer (in August 2008) we spent a week with our kayaks at a cottage in Chazy,… Read more »

I’ve been reading “Touched by Sound” by John Wyre,  a founding member of NEXUS until his retirement in 2002 when he moved to St John’s, Newfoundland. I knew John for many years, as I worked with NEXUS in the 1980s and helped produce his tremendous World Drums festivals. And I had the great opportunity of… Read more »