The interesting mallet photo here is the logo from percussionist Bob Becker’s annual Ragtime Xylophone Institute. Last year, Stewart created a very nice piece about NEXUS founding member John Wyre and posted it to his blog. You can link over to Stewart’s website and read it there (scroll down; it is the post directly below… Read more »
In two weeks’ time, NEXUS will be performing in the extraordinarily beautiful Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Nishinomiya City near Osaka and Kobe in the Hyogo Prefecture. As mentioned in my earlier blog post, the Center was opened in 2005 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake which largely devastated Nishinomiya and… Read more »
The Canadian Brass back in February, NEXUS members were busy with the Canadian Brass, recording the stirring arrangements of Robin Engelman. Robin blogged about it here. You can check out the excellent reviews of the recording – as well as an interview with Robin and Chuck Daellenbach of the CBrass – here. Enjoy!
If you are a percussionist, you might do a double-take when you see the Kobe Port Tower in Kobe, Japan. It is designed to look like a tsuzumi, a traditional Japanese hand drum! And NEXUS will be seeing it soon. After a remarkable 3 months with sell-outs in Toronto, Minnesota and New York State, NEXUS… Read more »
In 1973 NEXUS was involved in a 2-week residency at York University, just outside of Toronto. Several of us (at least Bob and I) stayed at Robin’s farm house in King City. One afternoon (or evening?) we had some time to kill and as we sat around Robin’s desk we took turns creating doodles on… Read more »
It was with sadness and no small amount of nostalgia that I heard the news last night that Mitch Miller had passed away yesterday at the ripe age of 99. In the 1970s and 1980s Mitch was a frequent guest pops conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. He always seemed to enjoy returning to his… Read more »
Click on the link below to see a Press Release about the NEXUS concert on July 31, 2010, at 2010 Woodstock Beat concert in Woodstock, NY. Reich Wodstock Beat 2010
In 1988, Carolyn McMaster of the Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas interviewed Bob Becker. The article describes some of the most important roots of NEXUS. Here are some excerpts: “In 1984 NEXUS played a memorable concert in Amsterdam – six nonstop hours of pure improvisation. Bob Becker remembers the event as an improvisational high point. The… Read more »
On July 14, 2010 I facilitated a “Creative Music Making” workshop for 23 participating students as part of the week long Eastman Summer Percussion Institute directed by Michael Burritt. The 2-1/2-hour workshop focused on freeform improvisation, and was based on my book, “Creative Music Making” published by Routledge Books in 2005. Each of the participants… Read more »
NEXUS is featured in the July 2010 issue of “Percussive Notes”. The article by Daniel R. Smithiger. Click HERE to view a PDF file of that article.
You couldn’t ask for a better Day Trip opportunity than the NEXUS concert on July 31st in “the most famous small town in the world”, Woodstock, New York. Featuring NEXUS, Reich and at the Ojai Festival in California, the audience’s cheers forced three curtain calls and the reviewers used phrases like “one of the peak… Read more »
Every so often I read an article in one of the local or national newspapers that motivates me to respond with a letter to the newspaper’s editor. A number of these letters in the past have gone to local newspapers responding to articles about the Rochester Philharmonc Orchestra. In my capacity as a past member… Read more »
A BIG Thank You to those of you who came out for a rainy-day outdoor concert on June 26th! Fortunately, the stage was covered. Unfortunately, the audience area was not. A few hardy souls sat with umbrellas, and there were some covered areas to one side where others took refuge. NEXUS “carried on regardless”,… Read more »
Michael Craden was a founding member of NEXUS. In addition to his skills as a musician, Michael was a gifted sculptor and painter with showings in Los Angeles and Toronto.
