Category: Jazz and Beyond – Non-Classical Music

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Community Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Talking about Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

Sharing the Tradition

June is African-American Music Appreciation Month and AMN celebrates that Black music is the foundational American music. The centuries-old tradition of singing spirituals has imbued our culture with its fundamental musical character, spreading into the blues and jazz of the early 20th century and beyond, to inspire folk songs, protest songs, and popular music of all kinds. African-American music also excited classical music composers like Dvořák and Debussy, not to mention our home-grown classical artists like Gershwin and Bernstein, inspiring them to incorporate the melodies and rhythmic ideas of Black music into the broad European tradition.

So should all Americans, and non-Americans, too, be able to learn this music and participate with joy in singing spirituals? It seems simple—and yet…

Some of us feel sensitive about these boundaries, and personally I don’t want to misstep. Does it appropriate someone else’s culture to love singing this music? Can those of us outside the tradition join with our fellow Americans in this fundamentally joyous experience without taking anything away from the personal histories of the enslaved people and their descendants who created this music? 

I stopped by the rehearsal for AMN’s Song Circle session featuring Cary Sheldon and Dr. Candace Y. Johnson, and I got to hear them running through the traditional spirituals that we’ll be singing on June 7, and also at AMN’s 3rd annual Juneteenth Choral Celebration on June 19.

We took a quick break to talk for a moment about spirituals, our deep connections to this music, and how we can honor this musical tradition with humility and respect, and with the joy and love that it naturally brings. 

Enjoy this engaging conversation that affirms our love for the music and for singing it together!

Soprano Candace Y. Johnson, DMA, has been on the voice faculty at the University of California-Berkeley since 2009, teaching applied voice classes and a musicology course she designed based on her research and performance of works by African-American composers.

Lolly Lewis is the founder of Amateur Music Network.

June 2023 events with Amateur Music Network

June 7: First Wednesdays Song Circle with Cary Sheldon

It's FREE! Learn more.

June 19: Juneteenth Choral Celebration with Candace Johnson and Kev Choice

In person or online! Learn more.
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Chamber Music Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

The magic of singing together

Anyone who has sung in a vocal group or a chorus knows the feeling: something is just special when we sing together. There’s a marvelous sense of reaching out, of connecting with other voices to make a sound that is more than just our single notes, a sound that merges and grows, with multiple melodies blending into a harmonious whole. Whether it’s a circle of friends singing folk music in our living room or professional singers in a concert ensemble, it’s that elemental joining of voices that, for me, brings emotion to the fore.

We’re so in luck to have Dashon Burton back with us on October 16 to lead a master class on ensemble singing. Dashon is an acclaimed soloist who is equally practiced in singing with others: He is part of Roomful of Teeth and Kaleidoscope, two of the top vocal groups working today!

I can’t wait to get Dashon’s perspective on the singing of two groups in our master class: the Drew School Singers who will sing the luminous 16th century madrigal O Occhi Manza Mia by Orlando di Lasso, and the women’s choir Conspiracy of Venus who will sing A Place Called Home by rock goddess PJ Harvey.

I caught up with Conspiracy of Venus founder and leader Joyce McBride to chat about the group and about her musical path writing and arranging choral music. Music is so much about connecting, about blending our minds and sounds into one. It’s what we aspire to in life as well as in music, don’t you think?

Enjoy the interview and then join us for Dashon Burton’s vocal chamber music master class workshop on October 16!

Register now!
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AMN mentors Chamber Music Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Workshops

Destiny Muhammad and the Jazz Conversation

“There’re still conversations in … music that are still alive. And so in this new millennium, what do I have to say as a participant in all those conversations?”

– Destiny Muhammad

AMN Founder Lolly Lewis sat down with Destiny over Zoom to discuss the possibilities of AMN’s new workshop format, about Destiny’s devotion to the jazz tradition, and much more.

Lolly Lewis: I’m so excited about our workshop. You know, it’s been a year since you did that wonderful online workshop for AMN talking about the roots of jazz harp. And how great that you’re coming back with your trio to kick off our new series. This is going to be an opportunity for people to play with a professional ensemble in the comfort of home: you will be playing live at the wonderful theater at Drew School, and our participants will be at home with their instruments playing along with you. It’s going to be a new and innovative workshop model that we’re very excited about.

Destiny Muhammad: As am I! It’s definitely very innovative. And, you know, it’s going to be exciting for all of the participants who will have that opportunity to play and to actually interact with us, with Q&A happening during that time as well.

LL: People are very inspired by your devotion to the jazz tradition and the fundamentals of this music. That you really have a passion to convey and to bring people along with the joy that you find in music. I think that’s just so infectious and people really respond to it.

DM: I keep going back to the fundamentals. I can’t speak for everyone else but for me, the fundamentals have always been my launchpad. And when I have those and I feel them, not just in my hands but circulating throughout my DNA, then I feel like I can go anywhere with the music. And so I love the fundamentals. I just keep coming back to those ABCs of jazz.

LL: I think a lot of people who aspire to learn to improvise might feel like oh, I just have to jump off this cliff and do something that’s out of my comfort zone. But what you’ve just said has really sort of turned the light on for me, because if we get into [the fundamentals] we’re not jumping off anything; we’re going from a place of simplicity. And then it can grow and develop and that’s where the skill comes from.

DM: That’s why, even after 30 years of being a musician, I keep going back to the listening. I still need to listen, and then apply it to my instrument. I really encourage folks to really listen.

And I remember being a shorty in the music and hearing the word conversation said to me over and over again, and I didn’t really get it. And then it started to click… I liken it to European classical music where you’ve got chamber music, and you’ve got a cellist and maybe a violist and a violinist and everybody has to be strong in their understanding of the music. And then they come together and they’ve all been studying a particular song or suite of music. But everybody’s strong enough where they’re playing and listening, and their portion of the conversation is shared. And so [in the trio], we’ve all been independently what they call shedding. And then we come together with our own understanding of the music so we can bring that conversation. What is it that I have to say, in [Miles Davis’s] All Blues on my instrument? I’m feeling like I have something to contribute. What do I have to say as a participant in those conversations?

And so that’s what I see when I’m listening to each player. Each one is bringing all of their life experience. This is the thing that I want to share with the participants: bring all your life experience, whatever that is. Here’s the music. Miles wrote it, but what do you have to say?

LL: And that conversation is going to be so fun for people, not only to learn from you, but to really feel like they’re part of the ensemble and that they’re welcomed into that music experience.

DM: It would be wonderful to see you there in the virtual house!!P

Listen to the whole interview and join us on September 18th!

Learn more and register
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Community Composers Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Vocal and Choral Music Workshops

Juneteeth Choral Celebration

Don’t miss our second annual JUNETEENTH choral celebration, led once again by the wonderful Candace Y. Johnson. If you attended her Spirituals workshop last year, you’ll remember what a joyous occasion it was to sing Moses Hogan’s arrangement of Deep River on the first Juneteenth federal holiday. This June 19, Candace will lead us in singing a new work by Roland Carter, the esteemed choral composer and conductor whose arrangement of Lift Every Voice and Sing has become the iconic version of the Black national anthem.

Carter’s new work Make Some Noise, Get in Trouble honors the great civil rights leader John Lewis who admonished us to get in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” The piece draws its text from Congressman Lewis’s speeches.

It’s a first for AMN: we’re very excited to be part of a commissioning project to perform a new work. And in this case, it’s a project that’s totally aligned with AMN’s values of community participation, amateur music-making, and honoring our diverse American musical heritage. This exciting project was coordinated by the national choral advocacy organization Chorus America.

In a recent conversation over Zoom, Candace and Roland met with AMN founder Lolly Lewis to discuss the piece and the upcoming workshop. Candace noted that she heard a particularly fluid, almost river-like character in one of the sections of the music. Roland noted that yes, in fact he referenced the Spiritual Wade in the Water in that section. “I always like to quote a Spiritual if I can. One that has meaning, not just any Spiritual, but it has to reflect the text and it becomes an important part of what I do,” he explained. “Doing art songs – and I call my solo Spirituals art songs because I like the play of the piano with the voice – is all about the interpretation of the words.”

Listen to Candace and Roland’s discussion about the music and how to interpret the details of this new piece that incorporates traditional choral singing with elements of gospel and even hip-hop! And then join us on June 19 to lift our voices in a Juneteenth celebration of America.

Make Some Noise, Get in Trouble!

Register now
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AMN mentors Composers Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Workshops

Meet Producer Jef Stott

Blog post by Jef Stott.

Hello everyone!

Jef Stott here and I’m a music producer and educator here in the Bay Area and I’m really excited to present my class on music production in Logic Pro for Amateur Music Network. Producing music has been the focus and passion for most of my life and I can’t wait to share my knowledge and insights with you.

This is going to be a great series of classes for composers/ producers and musicians interested in digital music production. All students are welcome, these classes are definitely geared towards the entry level.

You’re going to learn how to mix your tracks, produce your own songs, and write your own beats and bass lines. We will also learn to edit vocal and instrumental tracks. We’re going to cover a wide range of genres, from electronic and urban to traditional recordings of live instruments.

It’s not going to be purely technical! We’re going to talk about the aesthetic choices that people are making as they are producing music. We will definitely go under the hood into the mechanics of music production.

We’ll discuss recordings we’ve listened to and learn about the role of the producer:

  • How did they do that?
  • How do they make that drum sound so big?
  • How do they make those vocals sound so powerful?

We’re going to answer a lot of those questions in this class.

We’ll focus on Logic Pro, the music software, but the concepts I’m going to be teaching in the class are going to be universal, and you can apply them to Pro Tools, Ableton or any other music software. We’ll review important basic concepts such as audio editing, MIDI production, microphones, mixing, and more.

It is going to be a fantastic series of workshops and a true intensive with three sessions in one week. I really hope that you can join me.  It is my honor to teach all that I have learned and I can’t wait to share everything with you.

Jef breaks down the power of Logic Pro software for you.