Unlocking Your Inner Composer: Free Workshops with the PRISM Quartet, Susie Ibarra and Tyshawn Sorey at the Free Library of Philadelphia

April 28 – May 29, 2018

Unlocking Your Inner Composer is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with virtuoso musicians to bring your own musical story to life.

The PRISM Quartet, a world-renowned all-sax ensemble, is joining forces with two groundbreaking composer/percussionists— Susie Ibarra and Tyshawn Sorey— in a series of free workshops at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Compose your own music for PRISM, Ibarra, and Sorey, and explore the sonic possibilities of saxophones and percussion.

The workshops precede Color Theory 2.0, free concerts by PRISM, Ibarra and Sorey at the Free Library on June 2nd and 4th (and in NYC on June 3rd) featuring world premieres of new works by both guest artists (read about the concerts HERE).

Workshops are open to teens and adults at all levels, whether you have no musical training/compositional experience, or you’re a pro in search of new techniques and challenges. You don’t need to know how to read music to join in the fun. Workshops will culminate in performances of participants’ compositions by PRISM, Ibarra, and Sorey. Want to perform your music with the artists? Bring your own instrument or borrow one from the Parkway Central Library music department. (Click HERE to learn about borrowing an instrument.) Additional public concerts by PRISM, Ibarra, and Sorey at the Free Library on June 2 and 4 will also include select compositions by workshop participants.

Unlocking Your Inner Composer consists of four series of workshops (three workshops per series, see the schedule below): Two seriet with Ibarra and PRISM, and two with Sorey and PRISM. Workshops will be held at the Parkway Central Library in Center City and the Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library in Germantown.

Space is limited. In order to accommodate as many aspiring composers as possible, participants may sign up for a single series of three workshops. Participants are required to attend all three workshops within their series.

PRISM’s first Color Theory collaboration with So Percussion

Tyshawn Sorey: MacArthur Fellowship Spotlight

Susie Ibarra plays “Rhythm Cycles”

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS
Unlocking Your Inner Composer consists of:
1) Demonstrations: PRISM, Ibarra, and Sorey will perform a wide range of works, explain stylistic features of each, and discuss the unique properties of their instruments.
2) Fundamentals of Music: discussion and demonstrations of specific elements of composition: melody, harmony, rhythm, articulation, dynamics, extended techniques, improvisation, form, and how to organize and develop musical ideas;
3) Notation: discussion and hand-outs of graphic notation, a system for communicating musical ideas without standard notation, to enable participants’ compositions (participants who know how to read music may use standard notation);
4) Big Picture: Susie Ibarra, Tyshawn Sorey and PRISM Quartet members will discuss elements of successful collaborations and how to develop your own distinctive voice as a composer.
5) Performance: PRISM, Ibarra, and Sorey will play participants’ compositions on the  final workshop of each series.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
Sign up for one series only. Registration ends on April 11, 2018.  Participants are required to attend all three workshops within their series. Email info@prismquartet.com with any questions.

PRISM Quartet and Susie Ibarra
Unlocking Your Inner Composer, Series 1
SERIES 1 IS FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
YOU MAY EMAIL INFO@PRISMQUARTET.COM TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.
Click here to register for Series 1
Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library
68 W Chelten Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144
1. Saturday, April 28, 2018: noon – 1 PM workshop at Coleman Library “Pit”
2. Saturday, May 5, 2018: Noon – 1 PM workshop at Coleman Library “Pit”
3. Sunday, May 13, 2018: 1:00 – 2:15 PM performance of Series 1 participant works at Coleman Library  “Pit”

PRISM Quartet and Susie Ibarra
Unlocking Your Inner Composer, Series 2
SERIES 2 IS FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
YOU MAY EMAIL INFO@PRISMQUARTET.COM TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.
Click here to register for Series 2
Parkway Central Library
1901 Vine St, Philadelphia, PA 19103
1. Saturday, April 28, 2018: 3:30 – 4:30 PM workshop at Central Library, Montgomery Auditorium
2. Saturday, May 5, 2018: 3:30 – 4:30 PM workshop at Central Library, in Music Dept.
3. Sunday, May 13, 2018: 3:30 – 4:45 PM performance of Series 2 participant works at Central Library, Skyline Room

PRISM and Tyshawn Sorey
Unlocking Your Inner Composer, Series 3
SERIES 3 IS FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
YOU MAY EMAIL INFO@PRISMQUARTET.COM TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.
Click here to register for Series 3
Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library
68 W Chelten Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144
1. Saturday, May 19^, 2018: Noon – 1 PM workshop at Coleman Library  “Pit”
2. Wednesday, May 23, 2018: 5:30 – 6:30 PM workshop at Coleman Library  “Pit”
3. Tuesday, May 29, 2018: 5:30 – 6:30 PM performance of participant works at Coleman Library “Pit”

PRISM and Tyshawn Sorey
Unlocking Your Inner Composer, Series 4
SERIES 4 IS FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
YOU MAY EMAIL INFO@PRISMQUARTET.COM TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.
Click here to register for Series 4
Parkway Central Library
1901 Vine St, Philadelphia, PA 19103
1. Saturday, May 19, 2018: 3:30 – 4:30 PM workshop at Central Library, Montgomery Auditorium
2. Wednesday, May 23, 2018: 7:45 – 8:45 PM workshop at Central Library, Montgomery Auditorium
3. Tuesday, May 29, 2018: 7:45 – 8:45 PM performance of participant works at Central Library , Montgomery Auditorium

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Susie Ibarra is known for her innovative style and cultural dialogue as a composer, improviser, percussionist, and humanitarian. She is interested in the intersection of tradition and the avant-garde, and how this informs and inspires interdisciplinary art, education and public service. Ibarra creates live and immersive music that explores rhythm, Indigenous practices, and interaction with the natural world.

Tyshawn Sorey is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar working across an extensive range of musical idioms. A 2017 MacArthur Fellow and 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award recipient, Sorey performs percussion, trombone and piano nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and leading jazz/experimental artists. His compositions integrate African diasporic, Western classical, and avant-garde musical forms.

PRISM Quartet: “A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM has performed in Carnegie Hall on the Making Music Series, in Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia. PRISM has been presented to critical acclaim as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and has released 19 albums on Albany, ECM, innova, Koch, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, and its own label, XAS Records.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unlocking Your Inner composer is presented by PRISM Quartet, Inc. and the Free Library of Philadelphia with generous support from the William Penn Foundation.

PRISM Quartet, Inc. receives additional support for public programming from the Presser Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Conn-Selmer, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Amphion Foundation, New Music USA’s Cary New Music Performance Fund, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., and individual donors.