Three Thursday conversations with renowned jazz artists on composing with a
social justice lens

IAP 2021: It Must Be Now!— Advancing social justice actions through music and media

January 13, 20, and 27: 5:00-6:30pm

Attend individual conversations or the full series as a whole: these events are remote and will be live-streamed on Zoom. This event was previously scheduled for the Lewis Library but will now be a virtual event, register for event link.

Join Terri Lyne Carrington, Braxton Cook, and Sean Jones, the composers for It Must Be Now! (IMBN!) as they each discuss their process for composing new music on themes of racial and social injustice.

IMBN! is a multi-year project culminating in a large-scale work for MIT musicians on May 7th, 2022. These conversations over IAP aim to provide an opportunity for the composers to share the behind-the-scenes of their creative process, and for the MIT/Greater Boston community to engage in open dialogue about how these themes take hold across the MIT campus and beyond.

Attend individual conversations or the full series as a whole. Light refreshments served after each event.

Register here.

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Between the Light and the Dark

Thursday, January 13th — 5:00-6:30pm

Braxton Cook’s composition dives into the juxtaposition between the light and the dark as he questions where we find ourselves as a society facing the collective trauma of the pandemic and police brutality while attempting to adjust our perspective to emphasize what we have instead of what we’ve lost. The audience conversation will be facilitated by Tracie D. Jones, Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

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The Resilience of Black Women

Thursday, January 20th — 5:00-6:30pm

Terri Lyne Carrington’s composition investigates the common struggles, inherent truths and sheer resilience of Black women, born into a world of injustice and tasked with navigating the overt and subliminal burdens placed on them while claiming the right to be free and whole. Carrington’s piece reflects on the legacy of creativity and invention of enslaved Africans and their descendants and aims to find a path forward to abolition, self-determination, and justice.

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What if we were all connected?

Thursday, January 27th – 5:00-6:30pm

Sean Jones’ composition explores the concept of Pangea (an ancient supercontinent) as an Afrofuturism vehicle, probing the question of whether a more geographically linked world would still cause such deep rifts and misunderstandings of who we are as human beings?

These conversations are sponsored by the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology, the MIT Lewis Music Library, and MIT Music and Theater Arts.

It Must Be Now! Performance
Saturday, May 7, 2022
More details coming soon