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Steel Band to perform spring concert April 22

April 10, 2012

The NIU Steel Band, under the direction of Liam Teague and Cliff Alexis, will present its spring 2012 concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall of the Music Building.

Promising an eclectic blend of music from across the globe, the concert will be streamed live.

Joining NIU’s musicians are guest artists The Jonathan Scales Fourchestra and guest conductor Jeannine Remy.

Steel pannist and virtuoso composer  Jonathan Scales formed his “Fourchestra” in 2007 as a means to deliver his musically complex, but somehow accessible, ideas to anyone willing to listen. Driftwood Magazine wrote, “Scales is to steel pans … what Bela Fleck is to the banjo – an über innovator.” The group is said to have “a Thelonius Monk-like attitude with a Mozart creativity that works,” according to Pan on the Net.

Remy, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at NIU and her doctorate at the University of Arizona, lectures at the Department for Creative and Festival Arts at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad. The NIU Steel Band will play Remy’s original composition for steelband, “The Renewal.”

The concert is free and open to the public, and the auditorium is accessible to all. For more information, contact Lynn Slater at (815) 753-1546 or lslater@niu.edu.