<ong>African Drum Ensemble to celebrate music from Ghana
The Carleton College African Drum Ensemble will perform their annual spring concert on Tuesday, June 1 at 4 p.m. in the Sayles-Hill Great Space. The concert will feature religious ritual and festive music from the African nation of Ghana, performed under the direction of Carleton’s senior lecturer in percussion, Jay Johnson. Students from three of Carleton’s Afro-Cuban groups will also perform. This always-popular performance is free and open to the public.
The ensemble uses indigenous instruments and an African approach to musical training in order to learn and perform rhythms and songs from West Africa and students must audition in order to participate. Current ensemble members include Carleton seniors Will Adler, Elissa Brown, Jenny Holle, Cari Jones, Kaitlin Justin, Jen Knight, Ian Merkel, Kiva Oken, Alexis Perry and Nate Stewart; juniors Patty Dana, Sam Handler, Will Jacobson and Hunter Knight; sophomores Charlie Gullickson, Hannah Lucal and David Tullis; and freshmen Matthew Adams, Charu Kulkarni, Rhys Lindmark, Andrew Tiano and Caitlin Wood.
Johnson, a member of the Carleton staff since 1991, earned his BA and MA in percussion with an emphasis in ethnomusicology from the University of Minnesota. He is the 1999 recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship, and has had his original compositions produced by a number of theater companies across the country, including the Twin Cities’ own Guthrie Theater and Children’s Theater Company. He has performed dozens of world premieres at major festivals and concert halls throughout the United States and Europe, and can be heard locally in concert or on recordings with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Opera Company, Plymouth Music Series, Dale Warland Singers and others.
