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Portraits of Spirituals is a free workshop-performance led by Steph Davis that explores the music/culture of African American spirituals as arranged for marimba. Centered around principles of dignity, connectivity, and liberation, participants will have the opportunity to engage with traditional music, the Hush Arbor tradition, and African American quilt making.

Participants will learn, listen, and participate in a hands-on quilt decorating session. Recommended for ages 7+

This workshop was developed in collaboration with Castle of our Skins.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Steph Davis is a marimbist, composer, Africana studies scholar, and cultural activist. Their music engages traditions, epistemologies, and aesthetics from the African diaspora as means for uncovering truthful historiographies, finding creative self-actualization, and reaching for collective liberation. 

Hailed by The Washington Post as a "captivating" performer who brings “bright humanity and expressive depth” to contemporary music, Steph is marimba soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator. Integrating African American, West African, and Western classical musical traditions, their performances explore the historiography of African American culture and freedom movements from an Africana womanist, Afrofuturist, and decolonial perspective. Through their arrangements and commissions, Steph has contributed over 20 works by Black composers to the marimba's repertoire. Steph is a Marimba One Premier Artist. 

Steph has been awarded residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Boston Center for the Arts and artist fellowships with the Antenna Cloud Farm Experimental Institute and Music for Food. They were semifinalist in the Southern California Marimba International Artist Competition and a finalist in the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition. 

In addition to their performance career, Steph is a teaching artist with Castle of our Skins, a Black arts institution, and instructor of music theory at the Boston Conservatory. They are a co-founder of Modern Marimba and chair of the board of directors at Castle of our Skins. 

Steph received their Master of Music in marimba performance and Bachelor of Music in percussion performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where they studied with Nancy Zeltsman. 

Steph resides on unceded land of the Neponset band of the Massachusett tribe, bordertown Boston, MA.

"Portraits of Spirituals" w/ Steph Davis

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