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Event Type Description
Each week we upload a free Mini-Lesson to our YouTube channel featuring one of our Presenting Artists.
Topic
Polychords and Musical Possibilities
Description
Composer and saxophonist Felipe Salles demonstrates how to move beyond traditional harmony by incorporating polychords into your compositions, starting with chromatic bass notes and progressing through to fully realized double triads, using his pieces “V. Survivor's Guilt” and “Lullaby #5”.
About the Presenting Artists(s)
Felipe Salles is a Brazilian composer, conductor, arranger, saxophonist, and flutist living in the US since 1995.
He has worked and recorded with Paquito D'Rivera, Randy Brecker, David Liebman, Lionel Loueke, Jerry Bergonzi, Chico Pinheiro, Melissa Aldana, Magos Herrera among others, and has toured extensively in Europe, North and South America, India, and Australia. Salles' awards include a 2018 Guggenheim Foundation Composition Fellowship, a 2021 South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency, a 2015 and 2023 NALAC Fund for the Arts, a 2009 French American Jazz Exchange, and a 2005 Chamber Music America New Works. Salles' pieces have been performed by some of the top ensembles in the world including The Metropole Orchestra, UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, among others. Salles has released twelve critically acclaimed recordings as a leader, most recently Home is Here (2023) receiving a 4.5-star review from Downbeat Magazine, and the upcoming Camera Obscura (2025). He is currently a Professor of Jazz at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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