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Guest Curator Series

North Carolina artist Shirlette Ammons serves as the center’s first independent guest performing arts curator. Ammons brings a new perspective to the center’s lineup, creating a focus on artists who effortlessly cross genres.

2023-2024 Season

  • Article Item
    Drummer Deantoni Parks, a Black man with short naturla hair, wears a sleeveless black leather vest and jeans and leans on a drum kit. He poses outside in front of a white exterior wall.
    Deantoni Parks , article

    THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 7 and 9 PM: Using the creative moniker “Technoself,” experimental composer and percussionist Deantoni Parks blends technology, hip-hop, sampling, and electronica to create fascinating sonic experiences covering a variety of progressive styles.

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    Vietnamese and Italian American singer and songwriter Julian Saporiti, right, stands on a beach on the western U.S. coast in the sun, his hands in the pockets of his brown ankle pants. He wears a blue and white striped button-down short sleeved shirt. At left is his wife and collaborator, Emilia Halvorsen-Saporiti, a young Asian woman with shoulder length dark brown hair. She wears a red sweater and light blue skinny jeans, arms crossed against the wind.
    No-No Boy , article

    THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 7:30 PM: Vietnamese and Italian American singer, songwriter, and scholar Julian Saporiti details the Asian American experience in an evening of heartfelt and poignant musical storytelling set to projected archival images, part of his multi-media project, No-No Boy.

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    Musician Meshell Ndegeocello, a Black woman with shortly cropped natural hair and a star tatttooed near her right eye, stands outside near railroad tracks in the late fall or winter, wrapped in a camel-colored coat or large scarf. She looks towards the right of the frame, and some of the wooden tithes are covered in melting snow behind her.
    Meshell Ndegeocello , article

    FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 7:30 PM: Traversing soul, R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and rock, Grammy winner Meshell Ndegeocello’s work is bound by the search for love, justice, respect, and resolution.

Ticket Information

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2022-2023 Season
Up 86

Guest Curator Shirlette Ammons reflects on her curation process and travels along Highway 86.

"This trio of performances connects neighbors separated by winding roads.

"The artists conjured over that three and a half hour drive extend vastly beyond this performance trilogy. But, in various ways, they are represented in the works of Sonny Miles, Rissi Palmer, and yours truly. Sonny, Rissi, and I are part of a regional music community with limbs that reach back and forth, across genre- and borderlines; down into the murk of Black Southernness; across time to invite new interpretations of old sounds and experiences; and out into a world where next door neighbors are divided by fields, and fences, and party lines.

"In the planning stages of this series, I traveled to Virginia Tech twice, navigating remote stretches between Durham and Blacksburg, each trip made identical by shallow morning dew and provoking terrain. The landscape reminded me of the small eastern North Carolina plot that raised me, the rural swaths connecting beatdown bungalows, open pastures,  and single-wides. I thought about the music that might waft through each kitchen, past walls of  family portraits, and out flimsy screen doors. I  began making a mental playlist of the songs that came to mind.

"Curating this series has been an expansive experience for me. As participants, I hope you are inspired to spend more time getting to know your neighbors, their journeys, and the paths they pave."

 

A Note to Virginia Tech Students and Faculty

Your knowledge of this campus and the roads that led you to them has informed this series. I hope you witness, at least in a small way, how your input helped steer us to this place we have arrived. Thank you for your generosity.