Rise Bmore 2019

Rise Bmore April 19, 2019 Union Baptist Church An annual evening of words, music, and movement of Baltimore and for Baltimore, in honor of Freddie Gray

7:00 pm conversation A Revolutionary Summer Andrea M. Better, Nichelle Calhoun, Andria Nacina Cole, Shamoyia Gardiner, Nicole Karikari Brittani McNeill, moderator

8:00 pm performance Rise: Invocation (2015)

Judah Adashi danah bella, dancer jhon r. stronks, dancer Lavena Johanson, cello Judah Adashi, piano Shodekeh, breath artist

Still Here (2018)

J Pope J Pope, vocalist Brandon Woody, trumpet Troy Long, piano

Giovanni’s Room (2015)

J Pope J Pope, vocalist Shodekeh, beatboxer

Maya (2018)

Tariq Touré Tariq Touré, reader

Pipeline (SPP) (2018)

Wendel Patrick Wendel Patrick, piano

Thirsty (2015) / Peace (2018)

Brinae Ali Brinae Ali, vocalist/dancer Sean Jones, trumpet Wendel Patrick, live electronics

I Want to Go Home (2015) African-American Spiritual

Jessie Montgomery Taylor Hillary Boykins, vocalist Shodekeh, breath artist The Peabody String Sinfonia

RiseBmore.com :: @RiseBmore :: #RiseBmore Rise Bmore is sponsored in part by the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and by a generous donation from Gavin and Liz Farrell Special thanks to Pastor Alvin Hathaway and Union Baptist Church

About the Artists The music of composer and pianist Judah Adashi is guided by a belief that the creation and performance of new music can bear witness to injustice, create space for empathy, and serve as a call to action. Adashi’s compositions are grounded in the classical tradition and imbued with soul and pop influences ranging from Nina Simone to Björk. He is on the faculty of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He is the founder and artistic director of Rise Bmore, and of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, which has made Baltimore a destination for outstanding new music and musicians since 2005. Dr. Adashi holds degrees from Peabody and from Yale University. He lives in his hometown of Baltimore with his wife and frequent collaborator, cellist Lavena Johanson. For more information, visit judahadashi.com. danah bella, dance chair at the Peabody Conservatory, is the artistic director of d a n a h b e l l a DanceWorks — a modern dance company focused on reclaiming evocative movement as social practice. danah has performed and presented her work throughout the country including the Cool New York Festival in N.Y., the United States Asian American Festival in San Francisco, the Bates Dance Festival in Maine, the American College Dance Association’s National Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center, in Santa Barbara, Calif.; and ReVIEWING Black Mountain College, as well as in Mexico and Italy. She has taught workshops and has been artist-in-residence in festivals and universities throughout the United States and abroad including, Pro Danza Italia, Bates Dance Festival, Monterey Dance Fest, the American College Dance Association’s Regional and National conference, Western Michigan University, University of Virginia, Oklahoma Contemporary Dance Festival, Santa Barbara City College, and Goose Route Dance Festival. bella is also a founding member of Colectivo Caliban, an artist collective that transgresses disciplinary borders through sound and movement. She has worked in higher education since 2002 teaching modern technique, dance theory, and history. She has an MFA in performance from The Ohio State University and a BA in Dance from the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Andrea Michele Better, a native of Baltimore, MD, graduated from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Cum Laude, with a B.S. in Criminal Justice. During her matriculation at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore she was appointed President of the Pre-Law Society and served as a peer tutor as recommended by the Dean of Criminal Justice Studies. Upon graduation Andrea gained employment at T. Rowe Price where she continued to exhibit her leadership skills by training and coaching new hires. She is currently in T. Rowe Price’s Legal Department as a Senior Legal Analyst.

In 2000 Andrea was drawn to support Baltimore’s youth, which resulted in her becoming a Big Sister with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake. Through 2017, she was an active mentor with the program, participating in both school-based and community matches. She has also served as a tutor through TutorMate, an online literacy program, engaging elementary students on a weekly basis with one-on-one reading sessions. Additionally, Andrea supports the Jamaica-based “Rick Rowe Reads” campaign, a youth literacy program providing roadside libraries enabling children easy access to books with the goal of sparking enthusiasm towards reading at an early age.

Andrea is an avid reader, marathoner, triathlete, yoga instructor and forever student of the yoga practice and yogic lifestyle. Her passion is to encourage youth—especially young women of color— to build a firm literary foundation that exposes them to the world and its many facets. She knows that exposure to literature is crucial and that it supports critical thinking and builds essential verbal and written communication skills—contributions that enable young people to live their best lives, fully and boldly.

Dubbing herself “little but mighty,” Mezzo Soprano Taylor Hillary Boykins doesn’t sell herself short when tackling the tall orders of the opera stage. Taylor has actively made her way around the Baltimore’s music scene and abroad. In 2016 she made her debut in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with one of Baltimore's staple chamber orchestras, Symphony Number One. In demand to sing traditional repertoire, Taylor was commissioned to perform An Evening of Opera; a lecture recital covering opera, art song, and a history of black opera singers, held at the University of Toledo in March of 2017. In April of 2018, she made her west coast debut as alto soloist with the Gonzaga University Concert Choir, performing Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time in Spokane, WA. A month later she was a finalist for the Chicago Oratorio Award. Currently, Taylor is in her third season performing in Maryland Opera Inc.’s Opera To-Go program throughout the greater Baltimore Area. She’s also a finalist for the Women in Opera & Operetta 2018-2019 Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Award. She has performed with Concert Artists of Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Peabody Opera Theater, Maryland Choral Society and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts over the years. Taylor has a MM in Vocal Performance from the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Denyce Graves. A native of Michigan, she received her BM degree from Oakland University School of Music, Theater, and Dance in the studio of contralto, Nadine Washington.

Alexandria “Brinae Ali” Bradley, born and raised in Flint, Michigan, is an interdisciplinary artist who believes in using the power of the arts to transform the conditions of the human spirit. When she is not traveling and performing, she is giving back to young people and grassroots organizing.

Currently, Bradley is the assistant artistic director of Tapology, Inc. a youth based outreach program in Flint, that believes in preserving the art of tap and jazz culture through education and performance. As an educator, she has collaborated with After School Activities Partnership, East Park Revitalization Alliance, Philadelphia Clef Club of Performing Arts, Raise It Up! Youth Arts and Awareness, Flint Youth Theatre, Mural Arts of Philadelphia, Young Audiences of New Jersey, Queens College, Long Island University, Ping Chong and Company, New Jersey Performing Arts Center and she was an artist in residence at the Carol Morgan School in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Queens College and Long Island University.

Ali has traveled and performed in countries such as, France, Germany, China, and Brazil. She also traveled with a team of tap dancers to Russia for a tour in 5 cities, working with the U.S. Embassy for its cultural exchange program celebrating National Tap Dance Day. Her Broadway and offBroadway experience has gained her positions as assistant dance captain for “Shuffle Along: the 1921 Sensation And All That Followed” choreographed by Savion Glover and directed by George C. Wolfe, company member of the New York and Touring cast of STOMP, special feature in the “Cotton Club Parade” which later became “After Midnight” under the musical direction of Wynton Marsalis, New York City Center Off -Center production of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” directed and choreographed by Savion Glover and was part of a two-week tour in Italy celebrating Ella Fitzgerald’s centennial. As a playwright and songwriter, she has won awards for her work including

Best Short Play at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival for her one woman show “Steps” and the Vox Populi Independence Music Award for “Destination Forever: Vol. 1 EP.” Currently she is developing a work in progress with trumpeter Sean Jones called “Dizzy Spellz” fusing tap, Bebop, Hip Hop, and Afro Cuban music to articulate the African American experience through the music of Dizzy Gillespie from an Afrofuturistic lens.

Nichelle Calhoun is a researcher/podcaster with the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, Virginia, an area where her family has lived for over 200 years. Through her podcast Perpetual Blackness, whose pilot was developed by the Washington, DC, affiliate of NPR WAMU, she shares and parallels the voices of the Washington, DC, area’s many layers of Blackness as she traces her own family story over 9 generations from enslavement in rural Virginia to contemporary life in one of the Blackest locales in the country, the Washington, DC, area. Nichelle is the editor of Songs of Yemaya, an anthology hailing Black women’s voices. Nichelle Calhoun formerly lived in Miami, Florida where she did extensive community outreach but has recently moved to the DMV area to audio-document the various experiences of Blackness and be a contributing force to improving the lives of Black women and girls. She proudly works with A Revolutionary Summer learning from a community of Black women and girls who find safety and growth in the network and talents and voices of other Black women.

Andria Nacina Cole read The Color Purple in 9th grade. There was no one to tell. She read Beloved in 11th. Shared the glamour and devastation of it with a chemistry professor. He nodded when her eyes got wide, but also when she cried. She did not read Sonia Sanchez until college, and Gayl Jones?

She was 35 before she knew her. Also, along the way were: June Jordan, Lucille Clifton, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Edwidge Danticat, Ntozake Shange, Zadie Smith, Warsan Shire, Dorothy West, Paule Marshall, Zora Neale Hurston, Nikki Finney, Jamaica Kincaid, Toi Derricotte—the list is getting long and not nearly enough (it’s missing James Baldwin for instance—God knows Jimmy was a womanist). Each writer tilted her some. Put her in her body a bit. Valerie Boyd, for instance, a biographer, made her pay better attention to her own chopped up, glorious, on time (right on time) speech. Every one gifted her a thing. And she used them, the things—the command of metaphor, the stripped down structure, the burdened structure, the tone achieved little word by little word— to write her own stories, which have been published in places like Ploughshares, The Feminist Wire, and Fiction Circus.

What she has learned by practice and careful study has been supplemented, a wee bit, by degrees in writing from Morgan State and Johns Hopkins. She has also earned a few awards, including five grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, one of which was the organization's top prize. She is the 2010 recipient of the Cohen Award, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, and a Ruby’s Literary Awards artist. In 2017, Baltimore City Paper named her Best Storyteller.

In addition to her writing experience, she is a certified special education teacher. She taught middle and high school for 13 wonderful, difficult years, and still maintains relationships with many of her students. She has also taught a variety of English classes at the college level. Currently, she helps school communities resolve conflict and repair harm in her role as a restorative practices specialist with Akoben.

Shamoyia Gardiner is a first-generation American, first generation college graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelor’s in Political Science, and taught secondary science and speech and debate at an all-boys charter school in Jacksonville for several years. Her first love was the Miami spoken word poetry scene. Something about brown skin, sunshine, Spanglish colloquialisms, and salty beach air held her. The first poem she ever wrote was a tired amalgamation of her favorite song lyrics (all alternative and pop rock, all sung by white folk). After Mayda del Valle and her first poetry slam, she began to see light in other brown bodies. After bell hooks and her first year of college-level policy debate, she was blinded by her own (light). Those experiences have shaped her perspective on the value of high-quality education, invested community members, and the importance of paying forward good fortune. These values are manifested in how she spends her free time volunteering as a board member for The Intersection, the Director of Political Empowerment for the Greater Baltimore Leadership Association, a coordinator for A Revolutionary Summer, and as an active Baltimore Rising alumna. Shamoyia was, is, and will always be a teacher, a poet, a bookish nerd, a big sister, a mentor, an audiophile, and a fierce advocate for and companion to those who ask. She believes in the entropy of the universe and the power of empathy.

Cellist Lavena Johanson is a commanding performer and a consummate musician. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed new and recent works by Bryce Dessner, Ted Hearne, Amy Beth Kirsten, Jessie Montgomery, Gemma Peacocke, Caroline Shaw, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Julia Wolfe on Baltimore’s Evolution Contemporary Music Series. Lavena has also premiered and recorded two pieces written expressly for her by her husband Judah Adashi including The Beauty of the Protest, a piece for singing cellist. Not one to shy away from a challenge, she is only the second cellist to ever perform both of Michael Hersch’s Sonatas for Unaccompanied Cello in one night (a truly exhausting and rewarding achievement), which was reviewed favorably by Tim Smith of The Baltimore Sun: “The Sonata suggests a haunted poem, and Johanson communicated its rare imagery in an intense, virtuosic performance.” In May 2018, Lavena was involved in the premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Spinning as part of a trio of three cellists, including Melody Giron and Maya Beiser, on the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University. Her first love has always been chamber music—specifically string quartets—and her proudest achievement in that realm came from reaching the semi-finals round of the 2014 Fischoff Competition with the Atlas String Quartet.

Outside of the classical music world, Lavena toured as a cellist with the indie rock band Ra Ra Riot, playing to sold-out crowds at the 9:30 Club (Washington, DC), The House of Blues (Cleveland, OH), and Lincoln Hall (Chicago, IL). She recently performed Bach’s Third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello at the Baltimore Bach Marathon in March 2019, fulfilling the third year of her six-year Bach Suites performance project. For more information, check out her website, lavenajohanson.com.

Music and spirituality have always been fully intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and activist Sean Jones. Singing and performing as a child with the church choir in his hometown of Warren, Ohio, Sean switched from the drums to the trumpet at the age of 10.

Sean is a musical chameleon and is comfortable in any musical setting no matter what the role or the genre. He is equally adept in being a member of an ensemble as he is at being a bandleader.

Sean turned a 6-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra into an offer from Wynton Marsalis for a permanent position as lead trumpeter, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015 Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, Sean has

managed to keep a core group of talented musicians together under his leadership forming the foundation for his groups that have produced and released eight recordings on the Mack Avenue Records, the latest is his 2017 release Sean Jones: Live from the Jazz Bistro.

Sean has been prominently featured with a number of artists, recording and/or performing with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson and Marcus Miller. Sean was selected by Miller, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for their Tribute to Miles tour in 2011.

He has also performed with the Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown Symphony Orchestras as well as Soulful Symphony in Baltimore and in a chamber group at the Salt Bay Chamber Festival.

Sean is also an internationally recognized educator. He was recently named the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz at John Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Before coming to Peabody, Sean served as the Chair of the Brass Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Nicole Karikari is a member of A Revolutionary Summer's coordination team. She has served as a tutor, facilitator, and mentor for community-based STEM programs in Maryland and Washington, DC. She has also traveled throughout the African Diaspora learning about health equity and the environment while finding joy in each space. Sometimes Nicole is a book juggler, a triathlete, and a yoga and meditation practices student.

Born in Baltimore, Troy Long got his start in music through the Baltimore School for the Arts’ TWIGS program, where he studied saxophone from 5th through 8th grade with the late Dominic Selvi. He then transitioned to high school at BSA, where he continued to study both the classical and jazz genres. After high school, Troy discovered his love for the piano and began to teach himself to play while studying jazz Saxophone at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Two years into his studies, he made the decision to switch to studying jazz piano, and is currently a senior. He has studied with Tim Green, Gary Thomas, Tim Murphy, Alexander Brown, Nasar Abadey, and Alex Norris. Troy has performed with musicians and artists that span most musical genres and has made it his mission to express the universality of music through his playing and artistry.

Expressive interpretation and a flexible range allow soprano Brittani McNeill to explore a wide span of music across genres and voice types. Currently an artist with Washington National Opera, Brittani performs as a soloist and in ensembles nationwide. She is a member of “Just Music”, a select group of artists handpicked by renowned composer and arranger Stacey. V. Gibbs.

Brittani is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory where she was a proud recipient of the G. Raymond Ziegler Endowed Scholarship. She also earned a master's degree in vocal performance at Morgan State University and a Bachelor of Music in Performance at East Carolina University. A semi-finalist in the 2014 Sylvia Green Voice Competition, Brittani appeared as Julia in the U.S. premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park at the Baltimore Theater Project, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Jane Austen novel. Past performances include Cendrillon, The Medium, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Dream Lovers by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, The Consul, and performances in operas and scenes by emerging composers. A highlight on the concert stage was an appearance with the

Peabody Concert Orchestra as a soloist in Bach’s Magnificat. In addition to her classical training, Brittani has performance, recording, and teaching experience in various genres, and traveled for two years as the lead singer of a hip-hop/soul band.

Demonstrating and encouraging a strong commitment to community engagement and activism is an important part of Brittani’s work. She works and volunteers in the Baltimore community (a highlight of that service being the conceptualization and coordination of a community festival in West Baltimore in 2015), serves on committees dedicated to improving local institutions through diversity and cultural competency, and uses music to foster conversations about social and racial justice. Brittani is also an avid writer and blogger, and holds a B.S. in Communication with a concentration in Broadcast Journalism.

Wendel Patrick has been referred to as “David Foster Wallace reincarnated as a sound engineer”

by Urbanite Magazine and as “wildly talented” by the Baltimore Sun. He has been referred to by XLR8R magazine as “a hip-hop producer that could easily make any fan of Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, or Madlib flip out.” In the February 2018 issue of Baltimore magazine, Wendel Patrick was named one of 30 Baltimore Visionaries, calling him “one of the most influential and omnipresent figures in the local arts scene”. The alter ego of classical and jazz pianist Kevin Gift, Wendel Patrick is rapidly making a name for himself as a producer to be recognized. With five solo albums to his credit, he is equally at home behind two turntables, beatboxing, improvising, or playing a Mozart Concerto on stage with an orchestra. He is a co-founder of the Baltimore Boom Bap Society and cocreator of “Out of the Blocks”, the Edward R. Murrow award winning documentary radio program that has aired on WYPR, NPR and The BBC. Mr. Patrick is a recipient of the 2015 Baker Artist Awards’ Mary Sawyers Baker grand prize, and was a professor of music at Loyola University Maryland for eleven years. He currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University and at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he teaches “Hip Hop Music Production: History and Practice”, the first course of its kind to be taught at a major traditional music conservatory anywhere in the United States.

The Peabody String Sinfonia is a student-run, conductorless string orchestra whose mission is to bring healing and beauty to people in our Baltimore community who are in challenging situations, including cancer treatment, incarceration, homelessness, addiction, and hunger. Our members are students and alumni of the Peabody Conservatory of Music who volunteer their time for this purpose.

We value partnership, connection, and kinship most of all. We bring music where life is and our audience members bring life to the ensemble. This is a chance for students to experience connection with each other and our audiences and to enhance our appreciation of what it means to be a musician in the larger world beyond the conservatory and concert hall. The Peabody String Sinfonia is truly all about the music and our focus is on bringing the most beautiful string ensemble repertoire, prepared and performed at the highest level, to these communities.

Jasmine Pope, vocalist, percussionist and front-woman of J Pope and the HearNow, has been a powerful presence in Baltimore’s music scene for more than a decade. Pope has become well known for using jazz, soul, and hip hop to create music rooted in social justice, self-awareness, Blackness, and Queerness. Her most recent project, “Soul Searching,” was released in 2017. Baltimore magazine

has described her as an artist that, “doesn’t shy away from political, social, and religious issues. She frames them with a positive vibe that makes [her work] incredibly appealing.” Pope's diverse sound has placed her on stages around the country with artists such as Avery Sunshine, Kindred and the Family Soul, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Dan Deacon, Banda Magada, and Wendel Patrick. The purpose of her work is to use music and art to promote healing and spark restorative dialogues that address systematic oppression of marginalized groups. jhon r. stronks is a queer identifying gender non-conforming dancer/singer/choreographer, engaged in a practice that generates a genderqueer expression. Through this practice stronks examines their internal feminine nature and acknowledges how in response to subtle and not so subtle societal requests they have framed and contained the femininity that is their birthright.

As a choreographer, stronks has been accused of presenting audiences with seemingly unruly work that reveals itself according to its own logic. Seeing their work as collage, stronks’ choreographic expressions combine the fundamental elements of composition, with a confluence of movement styles and techniques drawn from a personal movement foundation in Modern, Post-Modern, Jazz, Ballet, and Africanist dance training. From this place, stronks dives into the deep end playing with alternative structures for dance making that are more intuitive and often unpredictable. The result is the creation of a broad field for the dancing, where the context is clear; the eye has choices, and the viewer gets to decide.

With over 30 years of experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking beatboxer, vocal percussionist, and breath artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of Hip Hop music and culture. He currently serves as a musical accompanist and composer in residence for Towson University’s Department of Dance and is the founding director of Embody, A Festival Series of the Vocal Arts, which strives for artistic and cultural convergence through a variety of vocal traditions from the worlds of opera and throat singing to the many forms of vocal percussion.

Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion born within the world of Hip Hop and easily exists as one of the most highly advanced vocal art forms to known to humankind. Imitating and often replacing a drum set, drum machine, or drum loop through a series of vocal effects or percussive sounds primarily produced by the larynx, nasal, and oral cavities, Beatboxing exemplifies the Hip Hop philosophy of creating meaningful artistic expressions with limited resources at its most extreme; it replaces the source of the timeless Break Beat with the Human Voice, becoming a ubiquitous feature of the American city experience and soundscape.

In previous years Talifero served as music faculty of the American Dance Festival at Duke University and has served as the chosen musician for a variety of master class experiences led by such luminaries as Ailey II of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Ensemble, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In his close relationship with the world of dance, he has acquired a wealth of experiences of applying his vocal and rhythmic skills in the movement context of ballet, capoeira, fire movement, belly dancing and a wide range of modern dance techniques pioneered by such legends as Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Lester Horton.

Over the years, Talifero has moved from Beatboxing’s Hip Hop roots to explore innovative and convergent collaborations with a wide range of traditional artists. He serves as the Beatboxer and vocal percussionist for the globally renowned Alash, one of the world’s leading Tuvan Throat Singing ensembles, and is featured on their recent Smithsonian Folkways album release Achai; he is a recent collaborator with the exquisite Silkroad Ensemble based at Harvard University and founded by legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma; and is serving as the resident Beatboxer and cultural ambassador of the local Baltimore chapter of Classical Revolution.

Talifero has also become more immersed in recent years within the realm of Hip Hop-inspired Science Communication, which includes creating the math and music based course Beatbox Algebra in collaboration with the Homewood Arts Center of Johns Hopkins University; serving as the host for World Voice Day presented by the Johns Hopkins Voice Center; and serving as a panelist and musician for The Neuroscience of Art, a weeklong conference presented by the Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.

Beyond the stage and lights of his work, Talifero also serves as an active board member of the Asian Arts and Culture Center of Towson University and the Baltimore Sister Cities Program of the City of Baltimore’s Office of the Mayor.

Tariq Touré’s poetry and prose covers social justice, Black Muslim Narratives, arts and current events. Among publications that have featured his work include Muslim Matters, Salon, Washington Post, Al Jazeera and Sapelo Square.

Black Seeds, Touré’s debut collection of poetry is ranked among the top in African American Poetry and Literature on Amazon and the winner of Best Poetry Book of Baltimore in 2016 by City Paper.

Touré has been a featured lecturer/performer at Howard University, Princeton University, and Georgetown University, among many others. He has been regarded by legendary hip-hop artist Black Thought as the Amiri Baraka of our era. Imam Omar Suleiman has identified Tariq as a vessel of the Muslim community.

In 2017, Touré’s writing was contributed to Gordon Parks Fellow and Time magazine-featured photojournalist Devin Allen’s book and exhibit, A Beautiful Ghetto, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Touré is the author of 2 Parts Oxygen, his sophomore collection exploring faith, family, and fatherhood. Executive director of the Muslim Wellness Foundation Kameelah Rashad calls his latest book 2 Parts Oxygen an “Emotional Tour de Force.”

Brandon Woody was referred to as one of the top upcoming young performing artists in the region

by The Baltimore Sun in 2015. He started playing the trumpet 12 years ago. He grew up in east Baltimore and attended several cultural programs around the city at a young age, including Eubie Blake Cultural Center, Peabody Preparatory, Morgan State summer camps, and the Leith Walk band program. Brandon is an alumnus of the Baltimore School for the Arts, and during his time there, he participated in programs such as the Berklee Jazz Workshop, Grammy Camp, Young Arts Competition, and the Shenandoah Jazz Soloists Competition. He started his own band, UPENDO, in 2015 and has performed across the east and west coast. Brandon received a full scholarship after high school to attend the Brubeck Institute, and immediately following, received a full scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of Music. Brandon recently moved back to Baltimore to work on

his album. He has also taken part in numerous competitions such as BSA Concerto competition, the Peabody Concerto Competition, and the Shenandoah Jazz Soloists Competition. Brandon has studied with Cecile Bridgewater, Ambrose Akinmusire, Patrick Whitehead, and Tiger Okoshi. He has performed with masters such as Craig Alston, Quincy Phillips, Corey Fonville, Ray Angry, Benny Maupin, Lewis Nash, Stefon Harris, Danilo Perez, Terri-Lynne Carrington, Steve Wilson, Essiet Essiet, John Patitucci, Ed Simon, Warren Wolf, and Tarus Mateen and at venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center Appel Room, Metro Gallery, Lincoln Center Atrium, The Meyerhoff, Smalls Jazz Club, Fat Cat, Zinc Bar, The Lyric Opera House, The Kimmel Center, Martha’s Vineyard Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Bohemian Caverns, Aaron Davis Hall, Watts Tower Jazz Fest LA, Davis Jazz Festival, An die Musik, Twins Jazz Club, Creative Alliance, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Jazz Club Coca Cola. Brandon has played and recorded with several rappers and singers, including Miranda Curtis, Sophie Marks, Neptune, Victoria Canal. He opened up for the Newport Jazz Festival, and performed in the Danilo Perez Band. He performed the music of Clifford Brown with Strings and the music of Max Roach and Brown with Jon Faddis in January 2018 at Aaron Davis Hall as part of a special celebration of Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Manhattan School of Music.

Brandon taught at the New Jersey Performance Arts Center, Highlandtown Elementary, and co-led the first Peabody creative improvisation summer camp in 2018. Brandon has curated several shows in Baltimore in an effort to bring people together that might not always get the chance to be together and has a year-long Performance Series at An Die Musik. He is currently working on two pieces for film scores for Baltimore artists. His city is the single-most important and influential aspect on his music. Brandon will be releasing his first album in June 2019. He is endorsed by B.A.C. Musical Instruments.

Rise Bmore Founder/Artistic Director Recording Engineer Assistant Engineer Video Photography Lighting Artist Liaison Ticketing

Judah Adashi Edwin Huet Atticus Hebson Patrick Montegna Megan Lloyd Chris Allen, Lighting Dragon Design Gabriella Souza Sonia Matheus

Rise Bmore is an annual concert marking the anniversary of Freddie Gray’s 2015 death while in Baltimore police custody. The 2017 event was named Best Concert in Baltimore magazine’s annual Best of Baltimore issue, with the following citation: “This yearly performance, which recognizes the anniversary of Freddie Gray's death, gathers artists – from Peabody professors to hip-hop ingénues – who represent a cross section of our city.” :: Please mark your calendars for Rise Bmore’s 5th anniversary on Sunday, April 19, 2020. ::