![Improvising & Experimental Music of Ottawa and Outwards. [2010 to 2023]](https://www.improvisedmoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMOOLogoHighQuality-e1662557657744.png)
Performing at Glebe-St. James United Church, Sunday June 9th 9:30pm
Perhaps best known as a composer, improviser, sculptor and maker of masks and instruments, Douglas R. Ewart is also an educator, lecturer, arts organization consultant and all around visionary. In projects done in diverse media throughout an award-winning and widely-acclaimed 40-year career, Mr. Ewart has woven his remarkably broad gifts into a single sensibility that encourages and celebrates–as an antidote to the divisions and compartmentalization afflicting modern life-the wholeness of individuals in culturally active communities.
Always seeking new ways to be an agent of transformation, and convinced that compositions should change, just as their performers do, Ewart has created new or revised musical forms, such has his suite “Music from the Bamboo Forest,” which is in a state of constant evolution (its score currently comprises six movements employing a cornucopia of flutes, reeds, percussion instruments–many of them handmade — and significant audience participation). Each performance or production by Ewart reflects time-tested structures, but each also incorporates his most immediate experiences of America and the world, and taps his many creative engagements with collaborators such the master musicians as Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Myers, Beah Richards, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, Joseph Jarman, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, Ajule Sonny Rutlin, Rita Warford, Dee Alexander, Robert Dick, George E. Lewis, James Newton, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum and Henry Threadgill.
Jesse Stewart is a Juno award-winning percussionist, composer, improviser, artist, instrument builder, educator, and writer. A dynamic and inventive performer, Stewart has a remarkable ability to coax music from virtually any resonating object or material. He has performed and/or recorded with many internationally acclaimed musicians including George Lewis, Hamid Drake, Roswell Rudd, Bill Dixon, William Parker, Evan Parker, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. In a 2002 review, Frank Rubolino described him as “one of the finest young drummers and percussionists on the scene today” (One Final Note Summer/Fall 2002). He is a professor of music at Carleton University in Ottawa.