Pierce Freelon is an electric young professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a musician who has charmed audiences domestically and internationally from Brazil to India. His multi-media performance/presentations offer a bold glimpse into his world: merging jazz, black history and culture, scholarship, activism and hip hop.
Freelon visits Northeast State on Nov. 8 for two shows at 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Wellmont Regional Center for the Performing Arts Theater at the main campus in Blountville. Both shows are free and open to the public.
Dynamic artist Pierce Freelon visits Northeast State on Nov. 8.
Freelon is a musician, professor, and artivist with a passion for creativity and community. He is front man of the genre-bending The Beast, hailed as a “natural, engaging blend of jazz and hip hop,” by Jazz Times Magazine. He has taught music, African-American studies and political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina Central University. Freelon is the co-founder of ARTVSM – a company merging art and activism by any medium necessary.
He will present the Beatmaking Lab, Beat Making Lab started as an innovative course taught in the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Founded by producer/DJ Apple Juice Kid (Stephen Levitin) and Dr. Mark Katz in 2011, the curriculum offers instruction in practical beat making, a history of popular music production, and entrepreneurship.
The first international Beat Making Lab was established in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the summer of 2012. Freelon and Levitin traveled to Goma to build a studio at a local non-profit called Yole!Africa. International Beat Making Labs are being developed for implementation in Senegal, Kenya, Cameroon and Brazil.
Contact 423.279.7668 or jpkelly@NortheastState.edu for information.
