Improvisation Practices and Explorations

Saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Mike McGinnis is a musical explorer unbound by stylistic barriers; unwaveringly individual, curious, and open-minded. He has released six critically acclaimed albums as a leader during his twenty-three years on the NYC jazz scene. As musical director of the Davalois Fearon Dance Company, he has performed his compositions at the Joyce Theater, Metropolitan Museum, Harlem Stage, Rubin Museum. For ten consecutive years, he has been listed in the Clarinet "Rising Star" category by the DownBeat Magazine International Critics Poll. McGinnis' penchant for exploration has led him to work with a dizzying array of artists - from jazz innovators Anthony Braxton, Alice and Ravi Coltrane, Hank Roberts, Ben Goldberg, Peter Apfelbaum, Bernie Worrell, Gerald Cleaver, Steve Coleman, and Lonnie Plaxico to indie rock mainstays Yo La Tengo and Afro-Baroque Stew & the Negro Problem. He has performed on Broadway in the Tony-winning show Fela! and on film in Academy Award Winning director's Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. He currently teaches inter-disciplinary improvisation at The New School and jazz improvisation at the Brooklyn Conservatory where he is the director of the jazz department.

This talk is free and open to the public.