Department of Music

The Impulse Festival continues with a concert entitled "Meditations" on Saturday, January 27th, 2018 at noon in Old Cabell Hall.  This free concert features three guest artists: guitarist Ayman Fanous; violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch; and pianist Anthony Davis.

Solo improvisation is instrospective, emotional, demonstrative, with nothing but the sonic space responding to the player’s energy and ideas. Creativity and experience combine to meet the unexpected. This concert features three master solo improvisers, on piano, violin and guitar. They all draw on diverse musical styles from around the world. The audience has a unique window into these musicians’ personalities, and their relationships to their instruments.

“Improvising, we navigate our way through complex systems in the simple act of listening and responding. We learn that creativity is the property of everyone and not just of a chosen few – that ordinary, everyday mind is expressive. From this magical interaction the work is born.”

—Stephern Nachmanovitch, improvising violinist and author of Free Play

Ayman Fanous - guitar
“A master musician/composer pursuing the most imaginative alternatives to the status quo... who has honed distinctive and unconventional methods on both guitar and bouzouki, managing to synergize classical, amenco, and free jazz techniques” (Karl Ackerman, allaboutjazz.com).

Mr. Fanous’s signature sound has been described as a “stylistic amalgam of Derek Bailey and Paco de Lu- cia” (Jay Collins, Signal to Noise). In addition to the guitar, Fanous also reaches back into his Egyptian ancestry in improvisations on the bouzouki, informed by many years of absorbing in uences from the musical traditions of the Arab world, Turkey, India, North Africa, Persia, and the Balkans, leading duos, trios, and quartets with nu- merous world-renowned jazz and improvisational musicians,and is very active in the New York improvisational music scene. He’s released CDs with cellist Tomas Ulrich (Konnex, 2007) and violinist Jason Hwang (Innova, 2013). A duo CD with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti will be released in 2018.

Stephen Nachmanovitch - violin
Stephen Nachmanovitch performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist, and at the intersections of music, dance, theater, and multimedia arts. He is the author of Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art (Penguin, 1990). Mr. Nachmanovitch has recorded as a soloist (Impermanence, 2012) with violinist Tim Summers (Electric and Acoustic Improvisations, Vol. 1, )

“Nachmanovitch’s style draws on folk melody – quick turns ornamenting melancholic lines – with sparingly used atonal bursts. It’s a blend that is especially successful...”
–The Strad

Anthony Davis - piano
“Active in a variety of media, including operatic, symphonic, choral, chamber, dance, theater, and improvised musics, Davis has focused upon the integration of improvised and notated expressive resources. His work embodies an intercultural approach, drawing not only upon traditional and current African-American sources, but upon the Javanese gamelan, American Minimalism, and the European and Euro-American avant-garde.” (All About Jazz).

Mr. Davis is a member of Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quintet and a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.

For a complete schedule of mpulse Festival events and the Golden Quintet residency, please visit http://music.virginia.edu/impulse-festival. Tickets for the Wadada Leo Smith and the Golden Quintet concert are available from the UVA Box Office, All other listed events are free and open to the general public.

Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda (map). Parking is available in the Central Grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Road, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner.