Urban Gateways Artists Wired

[Kevin] Greeley Percussion Club 2009-2010

Here's a little video I finally threw together showing the students of the "Percussion Club" that John Knecht and I taught this past school year at Uptown's wonderful Horace Greeley Elementary School. The footage focuses on one of their first drumset lessons with me, as well as my final session with them, a rehearsal for their final performance that includes a rendition of Green Day's "21 Guns" -- Enjoy!

[Kevin] Be the Groove - Breath

This is a video that a few of the more established company members of Be the Groove (including UG's own Steph Paul) shot back in March with a longtime friend/collaborator named Dan Truog, who currently works as a video director and editor in San Francisco. Of course he arrived in Chicago on the one weekend in March when the weather was awful! But we pulled through and got some great footage, and this piece "Breath" came together nicely... In fact, we just learned that this video was accepted as a nominee for a video contest hosted by the Chicago Human Rhythm Project! If you like the video, please vote for it to be screened at a CHRP show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in August by going here. Thanks for watching!

(For best viewing, bump the resolution up to at least 480p)

[Kevin] Musings from artist Jason Jägel

"Music and listening to records is unique for me, an experience I can have and be directly inspired by while simultaneously making work. Lyric fragments or biographical information are recorded within paintings. Rhythms and time signatures create an atmosphere that facilitates how marks and images flow through me. Enter a rhythm while working and something new and unexpected will follow...

The music I like most enduringly is often music that I didn't like so much when I first heard it. For me, pop music is disposable after a possible initial attraction but the most unique artists sustain my interest. What I take from that is my need to learn an artist's unique language in order to properly understand what's happening. The work opens up over time and, with levels of discovery, becomes richer. The best artists are experts—connoisseurs in an idiosyncratic field, in touch with a host of ideas and history whose combination is unique to them. I may not know if I'm aligned with their taste until I take the time to absorb the spectrum. I'd go as far as to say that art is meant to be a testimony to the indelible singularity of each individual. By that notion art is inherently political, offering testimony to a foreign worldview possibly intimidating or threatening."

– Jason Jägel, excerpted from an interview conducted by Gabe Scott (Juxtapoz magazine, Issue no.108)

 

[Kevin] Across the Map

Last week, I spent four consecutive days teaching at different schools across a wide geographic spread of the Chicagoland area.

 

On Monday I began with some workshops at a charter school in West Gary, Indiana, where I had performed the previous week with my company, Be the Groove. We had also performed earlier in the year for the 5th and 6th graders, but this was a follow-up performance for the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th graders, coupled with workshops for every age group.  Over the past year, we have become adept at making slight adjustments to the content of our performance to keep it engaging for every grade level. One of the most exciting additions we’ve made is inviting the older students up to show off their own talents. Any given school yields a handful of drummers, breakdancers, and beatboxers who are itching to strut their stuff during our performance – I remember my 8th grade self well enough to know I would have been! The kids at this particular school are incredibly talented and refreshingly fearless , and I’ve included a photo of the volunteers who joined us during the performance (below you can also watch a post-show video of a couple of them showing their moves).

[Kevin] Notation Frustration

"What are we gonna do for the holiday concert? Boom-Cha-BoomDahBoom-Cha??" asked one of my more eager students at Greeley's after school Percussion Club this past Monday. This was the first I had heard about any 'holiday concert' yet I had an immediate answer for him: probably! This bouncy little groove has been part of the class's repertoire since before I arrived. And it's the type of musical passage that every student, regardless of age or background, can perform with relative ease, as it is a basic derivative of every swung hip-hop beat played on the radio since these kids were born. It can be repeated ad nauseum as needed, split into multiple parts (a la drumset), and used as a base for a song structure that includes an intro, outro, and solo features in between. Why wouldn't we use it in the holiday concert?? The only thing that could complicate this otherwise likable and functional rhythm would be... putting it in writing and handing it out as sheet music!

Oh, dreaded musical notation. How you interfere with such harmless fun. How you make even the most natural grooves seem cumbersome. How you demand counts and sticking and rests to be considered in the middle of our jam! How are we supposed to kick a phat beat while staring at you at thinking about all this stuff?

Nine classes into my residency at Greeley, I am realizing that one of the biggest challenges facing my students--and, indeed, me as a teacher--is musical notation.

About Kevin

Name: Kevin Brown

Nickname: Chops

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Education: Northwestern University, Bachelor of Arts, School of Communication

Medium: Rhythm (body percussion, drums, rhythmic choreography)

Projects: I am a company member of Be the Groove, a rhythmic dance ensemble that performs at theaters, schools, and community events throughout Chicago and provides educational workshops and masterclasses to students of all ages. I also play drums for various theater companies and musical projects. When not performing, I work in the Performance Programs Department at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Teaching: Prior to becoming Teaching Artist for Urban Gateways in Fall 2008, I tutored students of various ages with companies such as Princeton Review and Revolution Prep. In addition to the workshops and masterclasses offered through Be the Groove and the residencies I have developed with Urban Gateways for schools throughout Chicago, I now teach a weekly percussion class (along with John Knecht) at Horace Greeley Elementary School.

http://www.bethegroove.com/content/cast/kevin-brown

http://www.urbangateways.org/artists/music/kevin-brown.php

"Everything has rhythm. Everything dances." ~ Maya Angelou.