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ENCORE: Cavani String Quartet & Mwatabu Okantah (June 10)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Music and poetry augmented one another on Saturday, June 10 at the Akron Public Library.

This much-anticipated concert on the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute series featured the impeccable playing of the Cavani String Quartet and infectious recitations by Mwatabu Okantah, poet and Professor of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University. Alongside standard repertory, the Cavani performed several Americana-inflected string quartets to the words of Okantah, providing a moving amalgam of words and music.

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Collage with the Cavani Quartet and Mwatabu Okantah at the Bop Stop

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cavani String Quartet has performed its music + poetry program with Kent State University professor Mwatabu Okantah in many venues since 1990. In his review of on ClevelandClassical.com of their performance on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series in 2018, Nicholas Stevens wrote

A refreshing reminder of both the unique powers and deeper kinships of music and poetry, the performance of Collage on October 14 filled the Auditorium of Pilgrim Church with sounds both tranquil and mighty. In an era when rhyming rhythmic recitation over instrumental sound hardly constitutes a new idea — hip-hop, after all, is the ascendant popular genre of the present century — Okantah and the Cavani have engineered something unique, brilliant, and vital. [Read more…]

Arts Renaissance Tremont: Cavani Quartet & Okantah (Oct. 14)

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by Nicholas Stevens

“…or does it explode?” In a concert last week on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series, the poet Mwatabu Okantah spoke this line from Langston Hughes’s Harlem as the final chord of a movement from Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 resounded. While the Cavani String Quartet, Okantah’s collaborators in the Collage: Music and Poetry project, paused, the Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Kent State University shot the audience a knowing smile and asked, “is everyone alright?” [Read more…]

Mwatabu Okantah to join Cavani Quartet for “Collage: Music & Poetry” this weekend

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you’ve ever been curious about weaving together music and spoken word — or if you’ve ever doubted it’s even worthwhile trying — take a listen here to a powerful, surprising combination: the music of Dvořák, played by the Cavani Quartet, and the original poetry of Mwatabu Okantah.

Then, for the price of a freewill offering, go hear the Quartet and Okantah in their program “Collage: Music & Poetry” on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series this Sunday, October 14 at 3:00 pm at Pilgrim Congregational Church. The interweaving not only of two art forms, but also of African and European cultural roots, promises to be fascinating — and a different experience from watching it online, as Cavani violinist Mari Sato told me during a recent telephone conversation.

“If you have that afternoon free and can experience it live, I have to say it’s quite magical,” Sato said. “The messages of the African-American experience, self-discovery, and friendship resonate deeply and move me every time. And the weaving in and out of the poetry with the music is different with each performance as we feed off of one another’s energy and enjoy the interplay of the two art forms. That spontaneity makes for a very live experience. There is nothing like it.” [Read more…]

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