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Gwen Laster

Gwen Laster is a nationally acclaimed musician who has been the recipient of awards by the National Endowment for the Arts, Jubilation Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Arts Mid Hudson, Lila Wallace, and the Cognac Hennessey 1st place Jazz Search. She's a native Detroiter whose creative influences come from the Motor City's exciting urban and classical music culture. Gwen started improvising and composing because of her parents love of jazz, blues, soul and classical music and her inspiring music teachers from Detroit's public schools.

Laster relocated to NYC after earning two music degrees from the University of Michigan. She began collaborating, performing and recording with internationally-known creative and commercial artists that include Anthony Braxton, Nona Hendryx, Aretha Franklin, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, Danny Elfman, Sun Ra Arkestra, Tyler, the Creator, Gladys Knight, Emeline Michel, Andrea Bocelli, David Foster, Alicia Keys, Rhianna, Shaggy, Andrew Baba Lamb, Natalie Cole, Solange, Mark Anthony, J Lo and Shakira at President Obama’s Inaugural Neighborhood Ball. Playing local jazz clubs and subbing Broadway shows (Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, Carousel, Wicked, Porgy and Bess, The King and I) were woven around Gwen's NYC performing and teaching rhythm.

With this momentum, Laster began leading original music ensembles, orchestrating and composing string arrangements.

She’s the visionary founder of the Creative Strings Improvisers Orchestra (CSIO), a music education ensemble rooted in teaching young strings players improvisation, composition and global ensemble music. The CSIO concept has been presented through residencies and workshops at various institutions that include El Sistema Ravinia, Harlem School of the Arts (Director of Jazz Strings), St. Ann's School, the Blue Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Wappingers Schools, Poughkeepsie Day School, Interlochen Summer Institute, the Sphinx Performance and Preparatory Academy, Eastman School of Music, the Center for Creative Education, the Howland Cultural Center, Bard College/adjunct Jazz Violin professor and the Beacon CSIO online classes.

Her symphonic, and creative chamber ensemble work includes the Sphinx Symphony, Sun Ra Arkestra, Go: Organic Orchestra, and the Colour of Music Virtuosi Chamber orchestra. ​ She's co-collaborator with the We Free Strings sextet, and leader of New MUSE4tet, an improvising string quartet offering 20th/21st century works and original compositions as a vehicle for social activism. ​ Her feature in Chamber Music America magazine for her commissioned work Black Lives Matter Suite (composed for New Muse4tet) shares her personal reflection and experiences that motivated the work.

Awards

National Endowment for the Arts, Jubilation Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Arts Mid Hudson, Lila Wallace, and 1st place in the Cognac Hennessey Jazz Search.


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Album Review

Sun Ra Arkestra: Living Sky

Read "Living Sky" reviewed by Stefano Merighi


Mentre la Enterplanetary Koncepts continua a sfornare inediti della Sun Ra Arkestra, il roccioso Marshall Allen--che va per i 100 il prossimo anno...-riesce a concepire di tanto in tanto nuove produzioni. Dopo l'apprezzato Swirling, ecco Living Sky, inciso a Philadelphia nel 2021, ancora sotto lo choc del COVID. E appare proprio come una seduta di musica dolcemente terapeutica questa raccolta di brani tenui, riposanti, deliziosi. Il gruppo raduna 19 elementi, che sotto la guida di Allen imbastiscono una ...

10
Album Review

Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky

Read "Living Sky" reviewed by Mark Corroto


In 2022, Sun Ra has been gone nearly thirty years, but thanks to maestro Marshall Allen his Arkestra has survived. Allen had been a member of Sun Ra's band since the late 1950s and it has been under Allen's leadership since 1995. Fans that have enjoyed the Arkestra in concert certainly hoped for the band to record and it wasn't until the splendid Swirling (Strut) was released in 2020 that wish was fulfilled. The Marshall Allen-led the Arkestra's second offering, ...

7
Album Review

Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky

Read "Living Sky" reviewed by Chris May


When Sun Ra aficionado and Omni Sound Records founder Ahmet Ulug reached out to Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen to commission a new album from the band, he gave Allen a tight brief. Ulug said that he wanted something: “Spiritual and hypnotic... down tempo, melodic and grooving... Music that is accessible and healing." Even though the crisis the world endured in 2020 and 2021 called out for such music, Ulug's directions to the veteran sonic-warrior may seem ...

6
Album Review

WeFreeStrings: Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage

Read "Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage" reviewed by Mark Corroto


History does repeat itself, violist Melanie Dyer draws from the same well of inspiration as Max Roach's We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1961). Maybe better put, history reveals Martin Luther King's arc of the moral universe has only bent a few degrees in the past sixty years. With Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage, the ensemble WeFreeStrings follows up their debut Fulfillment (self released, 2018). Dyer, a classically trained violist, found inspiration in the music ...

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Album Review

William Parker: Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World

Read "Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


If multi-instrumentalist/composer William Parker's ten-CD Migration Of Silence Into And Out Of The Tone World suggests a cohesive, high concept plan, it is something more. The beautifully packaged clamshell box set is comprised of mutually exclusive projects—one dating back ten years—with some common themes. There is an overall dedication of the music to “all people of the world who are searching for freedom...." Pandemic downtime resulted in Parker's accumulating enough material for many of these albums. Viewed as a whole, ...

5
Album Review

The New Muse 4Tet: Blue Lotus

Read "Blue Lotus" reviewed by John Pietaro


The New Muse 4Tet, led by violinist/violist Gwen Laster, is a post-modern, plain-speakng incarnation of the string quartet, augmented by tabla and voice. Laster has engaged in a series of such ensembles and has also served well under the leaderships of Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, the Sun Ra Arkestra, William Parker, Danny Elfman and others. She has also featured as soloist with R&B performers including Aretha Franklin, Nona Hendryx, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Lopez and Rhianna, as well as Shakira ...

5
Album Review

William Parker: Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World

Read "Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


L'attività musicale di William Parker è stata copiosamente documentata da circa centocinquanta dischi, che spaziano in un caleidocopio di gruppi fondati dallo stesso contrabbassista, formazioni cooperative, omaggi, collaborazioni. Ma nessun singolo lavoro, fino a questo momento, aveva focalizzato l'attenzione su un ventaglio di ispirazioni così ampio e completo come si fa ora nei dieci CD del cofanetto The Music of William Parker—Migration of Silence Into and Out of The Tone World. In questo lavoro monumentale, che viene ...

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