HartBeat to Co-Sponsor Performance of Tony Vacca & The World Ensemble as Part of Hartt's "Music for a Change"

HartBeat, in conjunction with the Hartt School of Music, is thrilled to Co-Sponsor Tony Vacca and the World Rhythms Ensemble in the Music for a Change series. On November 20th at 7:30 in the Wilde Auditorium, World Rhythms will play their innovative percussive music at Hartt's Wilde Auditorium. Proceeds from this performance will go to HartBeat Ensemble, who represent the "change" in Music for a Change. Tickets cost $19.

Tony Vacca's website demonstrates just how exciting this event will be: "World Rhythms is an organization founded in 1993 that reflects the global nature of music featuring local, regional, and internationally known performers. . . . The music of Tony Vacca and the World Rhythm Ensemble is a hard-hitting earthy fusion of Jazz, World Music, and Spoken Word. Combining elements of traditional African and Afro-Cuban rhythms with the American-born tradition of innovation,they create a sound that is simultaneously elegant and slamming. It's the hypnotic and powerful sound of giant West-African balafons; the urban bite of a jazz saxophone; the dreamy lyricism of electric violin; the funk and magic of electric bass like you've never heard.All mixed well with a world of rhythm and some blow-your-mind spectacular percussion. Oh, and did we mention dance?"

Tony Vacca is an innovative American percussionist with Jazz and World Music roots going back to 1972. He has pushed the already adventurous conventions of World Music into new territory, both as a soloist and as the leader of his World Rhythms Ensemble. His fourteen trips to West Africa have contributed to his unique approach to playing the balafon, and to his depth of knowledge regarding African and American musical traditions. He has recorded and/or performed with pop icon Sting, Senegalese Afro-pop star Baaba Maal, Jazz trumpeter and World Music legend Don Cherry, poet Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets, Senegalese Hip-Hop stars Gokh-bi System, and Massamba Diop, Senegalese master of the tama or talking drum.

This is the second year that HartBeat Ensemble has collaborated with the Hartt School of Music for Music for a Change series. Last year, HartBeat co-sponsored Buskin & Batteau.

The mission of HartBeat Ensemble is to create original, professional theater based on stories from the people of our community. Through Mainstage plays, Open-Air performances, and Education programs, HartBeat Ensemble makes theater accessible beyond the barriers of class, race, and gender.

The Music for a Change benefit concert series, launched in the spring of 2000, has raised thousands of dollars for Greater Hartford charities and nonprofit organizations working to improve the lives of our neighbors. The University of Hartford, in cooperation with WWUH radio (91.3 FM), has created a way to use music to help our Hartford-area neighbors. Performers who have appeared as headliners in the Music for a Change series include Wynton Marsalis, Art Garfunkel, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Shawn Colvin, Richie Havens, JoNathan Edwards, and Aztec Two-Step.

For more information please visit www.hartbeatensemble.org or call (860) 548-9144.

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