ACTU presents ‘A Journey into Nature through Music’ Oct. 21
Post Published On:Arts for the Community at Thomas University (ACTU) presents a Friday at Noon concert “Aeolian Harp” A Journey into Nature through Music this Friday, Oct. 21, at First Missionary Baptist Church, 110 W. Calhoun St., Thomasville.
This concert will feature Dr. Haiqiong Deng, an award-winning Chinese zheng player, and David W. Cobb, a composer, musician, and ethnomusicologist in a program that will focus on nature, imagination, mood and the influence of world music on soundscapes and composition in our shared human experience.
Dr. Deng is a master player of the 21-string Chinese zheng and seven-string qin. She has performed and lectured extensively throughout North America and has received many awards, including the 2022 Innova Recordings Artist and 2017 Florida Cultural Heritage Award. She received her Bachelor of Music from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Ethnomusicology, and Ph.D. in Musicology from the Florida State University.
Dr. Deng has taught at Florida State University, University of South Florida and Tallahassee Community College. She also directed the FSU Chinese Music Ensemble for 17 years. Dr. Deng founded the Inner Space Music Academy (ISMA) in 2020 to provide a live and virtual platform to cultivate mindful listening, nurture cultural understanding, and contribute to human wellbeing to people from all over the world.
Cobb is a composer, musician, and ethnomusicologist living in south Florida. He studied composition and classical guitar at the University of South Carolina, and received his Master of Music Degree in Ethnomusicology from Florida State University, where he wrote his thesis on ecstatic performance experience in flamenco. Cobb is an adjunct professor of music and applied jazz bass at Palm Beach State College.
Nature and imagination have always been at the heart of Cobb’s compositional style, and his interest in and study of world music continues to influence his sound and approach to composition. His main goal as a composer is to evoke mood, for it is in mood that a new world is created for the listener and the performer; a world in which they can lose themselves to emotion, step out of their lives for those few moments. It is in those moments that we all connect to something else – our shared human experience.
This performance will begin at 12 p.m. Oct. 21. It can also be viewed online at www.facebookcom/actu31792/live. No Facebook account is required to view.
ACTU is supported in part by Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency, the National Endowment for the Arts. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information about this and other ACTU events, visit www.facebookcom/actu31792 or www.thomasu.edu/actu, call (229) 227-6964, or email actu@thomasu.edu.
