UTSC Music & Culture Speaker Series
The Music & Culture Performance Speaker series at University of Toronto Scarborough showcases the breadth and depth of a variety of professional relationships to music. Invited speakers are asked to both speak to and perform their relationship to music-making, composition, and/or performance. The Fall 2022 speaker series has been curated by Dr. Pablo D. Herrera Veitia, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Afrosonic Innovation Lab. For this series we focus on Afro-Cuban & Afro-Diasporic rhythms, their social meaning and constructions of identity, nationhood, and futurity.
UPCOMING
PAST
Yosvany Terry | September 27, 2022, 7pm-9pm
Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba. Yosvany went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Yosvany worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, and Frank Emilio and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez. From his earliest days in New York, Yosvany has been welcomed by a broad range of artists in the jazz and contemporary music community; playing with, Steve Coleman, Rufus Reid, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Roy Hargrove, Vijay Iyer, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Avishai Cohen, Baptiste Trotignon, Eddie Palmieri, and Gerald Clayton. Yosvany has continued his music education in New York, he studied composition, orchestration and counterpoint with Leo Edward, Rudolph Palmer. Yosvany has received a number of commissions as well as grants to support both his performance and composition work. He is a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award of the class 2015. His ‘New Throned King’ album received a Grammy Award Nomination for “Best Latin Jazz Album”. A key aspect of his work is educating the next generation of musicians both here, and in Cuba. He has taught at prestigious institutions across the United States and Canada. He regularly visits his alma maters in Cuba to give workshops and master classes. In 2015, Yosvany joined the full time faculty at Harvard University as Senior Lecture and Director of Jazz Ensembles in the Department of Music.
Magdelys Savigne | October 25, 2022, 5pm-7pm
Hailing from Santiago de Cuba, Savigne graduated with honours in orchestral percussion from Havana’s University of the Arts. She received a Grammy nomination for her contributions to Jane Bunnett and Maqueque, of which she is a former member. As the other half of the Afro-Cuban women duo Okan, Savigne has recently worked with Bomba Estereo, Lido Pimienta and Bianca Gismonti. For Okan’s 2019 debut album Sombras, she received a Juno nomination and an Independent Music Award, along with Elizabeth Rodriguez, Okan’s other half. In 2021, Okan’s sophomore effort Espiral won a JUNO Award for Best World Music Album of the Year.
Welmo Romero-Joseph | November 23, 2022, 7pm-9pm
Welmo Romero-Joseph is an Afro-Puerto Rican poet, rap artist, and beat-boxer who uses his compositions for anti-racist purposes in the Caribbean Island. His work also intersects academic and community-based projects related to negritude and racialization in Puerto Rico. Further biographical information can be provided on request. Using an Afro-Boricua perspective Romero-Joseph will discuss the culture that gave rise to rap and reggaeton music in Puerto Rico.
