The UW-Madison Division of the Arts will welcome Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez as the Spring 2020 Interdisciplinary Artists in Residence.
The Spring 2020 Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program is presented by the UW-Madison Division of the Arts and hosted by the Asian American Studies Program, with Associate Professor Peggy Choy of the School of Education’s Dance Department as lead faculty. Co-sponsors include the Dance Department and the Mead Witter School of Music.
Barson is a composer, baritone saxophonist, historian, educator, and political activist, whose research and compositional practices interrogate the interfaces of the jazz idiom’s Afro-diasporic, American Indigenous, and Asian American influences. Composer and saxophonist Fred Ho was his mentor.
Rodriguez is an internationally renowned vocalist, educator, and Indigenous rights and ecological justice activist.
Together, Barson and rodriguez co-founded the Afro Yaqui Music Collective, an ensemble that combines Afro-Asian musical and political affinities with inspiration from the music of the Yaqui of northern Mexico. Barson and Rodriguez work to incorporate voices of regional and indigenous communities in the creation of their boundary pushing interdisciplinary works.
To learn more, visit this Division of the Arts web page.