Laurel Black Music

Saturday, June 8 is a big day for L+M Duo!! Our visionary project titled Illuminating Wrigley comes to life at 8pm in a free concert just outside the Wrigley Building on iconic Michigan Avenue! This event marks the start of Wrigley's Centennial Celebration, so we commemorate important dates of the last 100 years in our programming. Our Collaborators Composer Steven Snowden was on board with this project from the beginning, and agreed in early 2017 to write a new work for L+M Duo inspired by the Wrigley Building.  Here we are in downtown Chicago - the first time the 3 of us met! Illuminating Wrigley closes with Steve's gorgeous new work for piano, marimba, and electronics titled 25 Million Candles , named for the amount of candlepower it took to light the building's exterior when it was completed in 1924.  The piece is alive with a rhythmic vitality that reminds us of the energy contained in a beam of light. Cadance Collective joined the Illuminating W...

Though it may seem that this post is about testing you on your professional music acronyms, I promise that's not the case.  Laurel's been a busy bee since school let out in early May. New Music Gathering 2017 New Music Gathering (NMG) is a pretty cool 3-day conference for anyone who participates in new music.  From May 11-13 we all gathered at Bowling Green State University to talk about, listen to, and dream about new projects together.  You can view this year's lecture, presentation, panel, and recital schedule here .  It was really cool - and not just because Steven Schick was the keynote speaker and featured guest artist.  L+M Duo performed during a concert on Saturday afternoon called Grab Bag of Awesome, featuring us as well as other chamber groups performing all kinds of music.  We played our first-ever commission, Magicicicada , by Pennsylvania-based composer Rusty Banks .  Though Marianne met Rusty before (actually at NMG 2016...

 Woohoo, y'all!! On behalf of the Percussive Arts Society, I am pleased to invite you to participate in the 42 annual Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC® 2017) in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year, PASIC® will take place Wednesday, November 8 through Saturday, November 11 at the Indiana Convention Center. Your Professional Development proposal, “ PercussionMind: The Mental Performance Habits of Today's Top Percussionists...and Where You Fit In ,” has been accepted to be presented at PASIC17! I am beyond excited that a current passion project, PercussionMind, will be revealed this year at PASIC.  If you want a quick summary of what it is, and learn about my collaborator, Mike Cerreto, check out the tab in the menu bar above. :) PercussionMind is inspired by that long thought-journey taken as a young adult as you wonder what, exactly, suits you best in the professional music realm.  Here's a jaunt through my personal story: In early undergrad, ...

This last fall was one of busyness and development. There are lots of exciting things to announce, like: I'm now on faculty at James Madison University! I've established a new chamber group: L+M Duo with Chicago-based pianist Marianne Parker I was accepted to the PAS Health and Wellness committee The  @ percussion podcast is alive and well, recording episode 77 this week! JMU Being asked to join the faculty at JMU was certainly a highlight of the last few months. It's great to be at a university again, teaching with husband, and resume working with passionate, talented colleagues.  It has been great to teach percussion again, share my 'healthy playing' research findings, and occasionally exercise empathic skills in those "talking lessons" which more resemble life coachings than music lessons. I also taught a Percussion Methods class for the first time. I learned a lot: things I'd do differently, things I'd incorporate, things I...