Creative Conversations: Artists Discuss "The Freedom Principle" at ICA Philadelphia

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Steve Coleman, Cauleen Smith, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill and Greg Tate


March 2, 2017, 6:30-8:30pm
Presented in partnership with Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
RSVP here
Chicago’s avant-garde jazz and experimental music scene of the 1960s has had a continuing influence on 21st-century art and culture. It was a period of exploration that continues to inspire and challenge ideas around creative practice.  Four Creative Capital and Doris Duke Performing Artist awardees, included in and inspired by the exhibition, The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, discuss the historic importance and contemporary implications of their collaborative work.


We will LiveStream this event. Click the video above to watch the LiveStream when it airs.
Moderated by Greg Tate
With presentations by artists:
Muhal Richard Abrams
Steve Coleman
Cauleen Smith 
Henry Threadgill
Creative Capital’s ongoing discussion series, Creative Conversations, highlights cohorts of artists addressing different themes and social issues in their work. Can’t join us in person? PhillyCAM also will provide a livestream of the event which you can view here.
Muhal Richard Abrams has been at the forefront of the contemporary music scene for over 40 years. As co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he is an influential leader who has written for a variety of ensembles and whose pioneering compositional and improvisational work can be heard on over two dozen recordings. He most recently recorded Jack DeJohnette’s Made In Chicago (ECM, 2015), which features fellow Chicagoans Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, and Larry Gray.
Born in Chicago, Steve Coleman has produced music distinguished by its use of indefinite meter and overlapping cycles. In the 1980s, together with Greg Osby, Geri Allen, Cassandra Wilson, Graham Haynes, and others, he created the collective M-Base. A leader of several groups, his primary ensemble Steve Coleman and Five Elements was formed in 1981 and is still active today, heard most recently on Functional Arrhythmias (Pi, 2013).
Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of these disciplines while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants.
For over 50 years, Henry Threadgill has been “perpetually altering the meaning of jazz” (Chicago Tribune). His self-described “creative, improvised music” blends black American music from ragtime to gospel to free jazz with contemporary chamber music. He has led many bands, including Air, Sextett, Zooid, and Double-Up.

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