Avreeayl Ra. Photo by Michael Jackson. Courtesy of the artist.
Performance
Nov 04, 2021 - 5:30
Lower Level, Auditorium (KAM 62)

Join us for the first Sudden Sound Concert of the 2021-2022 academic year, featuring Avreeayl Ra and Improvisers Exchange.

Sudden Sound Concert Series is organized by Jason Finkelman, Coordinator of the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music in the School of Music and leader of Improvisers Exchange.

Avreeayl Ra (b. 1947) is a  master drummer from Chicago and long term member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) who has performed and recorded with a dynamic range of leading artists in progressive and avant-garde jazz including Sun Ra, Fred Anderson, Lester Bowie, Oscar Brown, Jr., Ari Brown, Nicole Mitchell and Dave Rempis, among many others.

Chicago Tribune music critic Howard Reich wrote, “An indispensable Chicago innovator, Avreeayl Ra shapes the music-making swirling around him with remarkable precision and poise... extraordinarily sensitive percussion.”

Featured over the years in several Sudden Sound concerts with Henry Grimes, Elliott Levin, and Larry Gray, to name a few, the series is pleased to introduce Ra to Improvisers Exchange, an omni-idiomatic ensemble of the School of Music broadly exploring music improvisation with Jason Finkelman.