Timbalooloo

13 Front Street,Frenchtown NJ 08825

12 June, 2022

Description

Renowned jazz/world clarinetist Oran Etkin brings Timbalooloo for a joyous and educational Sunday morning family event at ArtYard ArtYard and the Frenchtown Bookshop are excited to announce that internationally acclaimed jazz/world clarinetist Oran Etkin will return to Frenchtown with Timbalooloo for an 11AM outdoor children’s performance on Sunday, June 12. What is a Timbalooloo? It is an interactive and educational musical party that introduces children to melodies, rhythms, and instruments used by musicians across the globe. Children will join the band, including singing, clapping, dancing, and drumming. In Timbalooloo, instruments come to life and speak through their music so that children learn to express themselves not by having to execute the notes on a page, but rather by making their instruments come alive and talk through their music, adding character, humor and emotion to the process. Through fun stories, games and songs, children develop a personal relationship with great culture from around the world - from Herbie Hancock to Tito Puente, Mozart to Willie Nelson. Drawing inspiration from the way children learn languages so intuitively and naturally at this age, Timbalooloo strives to empower children to become fluent and expressive in the language of music. Timbalooloo is the creation of Israeli clarinet/saxophone player Etkin, whose masterful music has been described as "ebullient" by the New York Times and who is called a "composer of eminent individuality" by jazz saxophone great Yusef Lateef. Etkin performed last fall in Frenchtown at ArtYard’s inaugural Aqualumina Festival alongside the dancers of Brian Sander’s JUNK in a site-specific outdoor dance performance illuminating refugee narratives and kindling light in a time of darkness and displacement. Etkin’s expressive clarinet led festival-goers on a journey along the Rail Trail as he played in the woods and banks of a creek. This Timbalooloo party will have two special guests. The first is master Malian kora player Yacouba Sissoko. The kora is a harp-like 21-stringed instrument often featured in West African music. Sissoko has performed with Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and Leni Stern, as well as a host of well-known African musicians. With his own band, he has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center to the Monterey Jazz Festival. The second is Etkin’s dear friend Clara Net (his clarinet) who is sleepy and comes to the concert in her bed! The concert will also feature some surprise friends from the percussion family and will involve a lot of interactive elements for the children to join in with Oran and his friends singing, dancing, and drumming! Masks are required for this event. About Timbalooloo Oran Etkin feels a strong responsibility to continue passing the rich musical traditions of this world on to the next generation. For nearly a decade, Etkin's Timbalooloo program has created a paradigm shift in music education, instilling the idea of music as communication and dialogue by making instruments come alive and talk with each other. This innovative approach has attracted the attention of thousands of parents, including Naomi Watts, Live Schreiber, Martha Stewart, Ken Burns, and Edie Falco, all of whom enrolled their children or grand-children in Etkin's Timbalooloo program. Harvey Keitel, who enrolled his son in Timbalooloo for three years remarked "our son was talking about Herbie Hancock, Mozart, Samba and African music - and he knew the difference!" In fact, Herbie Hancock recently heard about all the children learning his music through Timbalooloo and invited Etkin's Timbalooloo band to perform in Paris for UNESCO's International Jazz Day. Hancock makes a brief appearance in one of the Timbalooloo TV videos, which UNESCO premiered at schools and venues in its 195 partner countries. Through a creative approach to music education, as well as concert performances, recordings and video content, Timbalooloo endeavors to nurture a generation of children to speak the international language of music with the same fluency as they speak their mother tongue. Concerts at ArtYardThe concerts are part of the opening season of programming at the McDonnell Theater, the heart of ArtYard’s new building at 13 Front St., a welcoming communal resource and vessel channeling the power of art to unsettle, engage, bridge divides, and spark unexpected moments of arresting beauty. The 162-seat theater has state-of-the-art projection, lighting, and surround sound and will be the site of music, film screenings, dance, theatre, artist talks, and more. Music at ArtYard is curated by Scott Sheldon, co-owner of the Frenchtown Bookshop and the former presenter of The Sanctuary Concerts in Chatham. Over 15 years, Scott presented more than 300 concerts, including Judy Collins, Suzanne Vega, Marc Cohn, Rosanne Cash, Jimmy Webb, the Roches, Janis Ian, Josh Ritter, and Nick Lowe. For more information and tickets, please visit www.artyard.org.