Jazz quintet Canada Day will kick off Sonic Frontiers, a new avant-garde jazz concert series on campus, giving music lovers in Tuscaloosa a great opportunity to experience innovative music by world-class performers.
The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Ferguson Center Theater and is free and open to the public.
“The driving force behind the Sonic Frontiers concert series is to bring world-class performers of adventurous music to Tuscaloosa, so both the UA and broader Tuscaloosa community can have the opportunity to check out new music that will stretch their ears in new directions,” said Andrew Dewar, an assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts and creator of the series.
Dewar, an experimental musician himself, said he could have devoted himself to only promoting his own music in cities like New York and Los Angeles. However, he created this concert series as a way to further his colleagues’ work and to reach a broader audience in the community where he lives.
“I feel that it is important to be a proactive force for the arts wherever you live,” Dewar said. “So, I’ve decided to devote an enormous amount of time and energy into presenting concerts of other artists in addition to my own work, many of whom would likely otherwise pass Alabama by on their way to New Orleans, Atlanta and Nashville.”
This series is a first step toward a greater goal Dewar has.
“We have an incredible opportunity to make Tuscaloosa one of the important centers for adventurous music in the southeast, turning it into a ‘must-do’ tour stop for adventurous bands on the road,” Dewar said.
Charlie Bice, a Creative Campus intern who did graphic design for the promotional items, said he is looking forward to seeing Canada Day perform in what he said should be an interesting first performance.
“Canada Day is very well repeated,” he said. “Jazz has always been a cool, mellow way to enjoy music, so it will be interesting to see how these musicians push the envelope with that.”
Canada Day, led by Harris Eisenstadt, will open the concert series.
Eisenstadt and Canada Day’s first album, released in 2009, received four stars in Downbeat magazine and made its way into several end-of-the-year top 10 lists. The band itself debuted in 2007 and has received high praise from critics since its inception.
“Professor Dewar is a friend of ours,” Eisenstadt said. “We knew him when he was in graduate school and from projects in New York City. He wanted to start having creative concerts, and we are happy to be a part of that.”
Dewar was limited to choosing artists that were already on tour or had their travel funded by other venues because of his limited budget, he said.
Ideally, Dewar said he will put together a larger budget for the next series that would allow him to bring a wider range of artists who are exploring exciting and unique ways of making music, but this is dependent on the amount of interest shown by the public.
“It is important to me to keep the events economically accessible to the community, ideally by continuing to present the concerts for free, but that will only be possible if we have a great turnout for the series, with lots of student and community interest,” he said.
Therefore, the series will ultimately only be a sustainable venture if music lovers in Tuscaloosa come out to the events and demonstrate their support by showing up and bringing their energy.
Since all of the events are free and centrally located at the Ferguson Center Theater, Dewar said he is hoping that will encourage people to take a chance on music they might not otherwise come out for if it were a $20 to $30 ticketed event.
But Dewar has plans to expand this project and make the whole venture what he calls “a hands-on learning laboratory” for students interested in arts production by having them do all the work and possibly even starting a student-run nonprofit record label that releases limited edition albums of the concert recordings packaged in artwork produced by student or local artists.
“Am I daydreaming? Absolutely,” Dewar said. “But does that mean it can’t happen? This concert series started as a daydream.”
UA’s New College, Capstone International, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, the UA School of Music, the Ferguson Center, the Department of Race & Gender Studies and Creative Campus sponsor the concerts. For more information on the series, call 205-348-7884 or visit www.creativecampus.ua.edu.
