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MCRC Karen DeGregorio, Director 1785 Bishop White Drive Newtown Square, PA 19073 (484) 424-1585 mcrc@episcopalacademy.org |
The Multicultural Resource
Center is an independent school collaborative that works with member
schools in the Philadelphia area to develop programming that promotes and
enriches diversity in our schools.
The Center offers workshops for faculty and students that increase
awareness and knowledge of diverse perspectives within our culture.
Our workshops address such issues as racism, sexism, and economic and
social inequality. Here is a chronology of our previous events and workshops.
Founded in May 1990, the Center grew out of a vision shared by Randolph
Carter, Director of EastEd, the
Center's former director Kit Reath, and Blair Stambaugh, former head of The
Baldwin School.
The Center has a membership of area schools and
its board
of directors is made up of independent schoolteachers and
administrators from those schools. Each year the Resource
Center presents programs for teachers, administrators and students.
Please contact the Center if your
school is interested in joining us
Director Karen DeGregorio
Previews our 2009-2010 Programs
Do You Want to Offer a Teachers Teaching Teachers Workshop in February 2010?
Gas & Electric Theater Company Offers an Exciting Workshop in July
Spring Colloquium
Improv: From Jazz to Hip Hop
April 15, 2009
In collaboration with Art Sanctuary, the
MCRC's spring colloquium's theme was jazz and hip-hop improvisation,
presented to 200
students from six schools. MCRC schools were represented, along with
Philadelphia public schools and students from Chester's
TAP program.
To open the event, jazz trumpeter Hannibal
Lokumbe walked down the aisle of Irvine Auditorium at the University
of Pennsylvania, playing his instrument as he walked. He then played
pieces by Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, explaining the process
of improvisation. Lokumbe has been a leading
free jazz trumpet player
since the 1970s, with a fiery and intense style. He is also the composer
of extended works that cross boundaries between jazz, classical
composition and world music. He premiered his piece A
Shepherd Among Us at Art Sanctuary’s 10th
anniversary celebration in the fall.
Hip hop vocalist and activist Toni
Blackman joined Hannibal on stage for a series of exciting
improvised trumpet and voice duets. Blackman then invited several
students to improvise with her on the theme of courage. They didn’t miss
a beat as they passed
the microphone around.
Hannibal Lokumbe and Toni Blackman perform during the colloquium
Willie
Ruff, a jazz pianist and faculty member at the Yale School of Music,
spoke next on the theme of improvisation. He showed a video of a trip
he made to the Shanghai Conservatory in 1981 with his performing partner
Dwike Mitchell. A member of the audience
played a Chinese musical theme and he and Mitchell then embellished it and
gave it a jazz interpretation. The event is described in William Zinnser's
book Mitchell
& Ruff: An American Profile in Jazz.
Expanding his examples to include dance, Ruff then showed a video of
dancer Carmen de Lavallade from a performance led by Ruff last April at
Yale in honor of African-American composer James Weldon Johnson. The
performance was attended by 1000 students
from New Haven schools and the video showed their excited reactions to the
solo dance improvisation. The colloquium ended with a question and
answer session. Ruff spoke about his upcoming book Six Roads to Chicago,
a musical history of the Midwest, and Lokumbe and Blackman answered
questions about the process of improvisation.
This year's colloquium was fun and fast-paced, in the same spirit of
improvisation that was its starting point.
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