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Louis Armstrong Visiting Professors

Wolfram Knauer

Wolfram Knauer is the director of the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt, Germany's only and Europe's largest public jazz archive. Knauer studied musicology, English and American literature, art history, sociology and holds a Ph.D. from Kiel University. Under his direction, the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt has become a major information and research center frequented by researchers from all over the world. Knauer regularly organizes the Darmstadt Jazzforum, an international conference on jazz. He had teaching appointments at several major universities and is regular speaker at international conferences. Knauer's scholarly credits include several books on jazz (among them the scholarly Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, the 9th volume of which entitled "Jazz goes Pop goes Jazz" was published in 2006) as well as numerous essays in German, American and international books and scholarly journals. He serves on numerous international advisory board ("The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz", 1988, 2001; Center for Black Music Research, Chicago, since 1999; Goethe-Institut since 2005). He has written and produced radio features on jazz, among them a four hour feature on soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet. For his achievements in establishing the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt as an internationally acclaimed information and documentation center on jazz Knauer was awarded the prestigious Hessischer Jazzpreis 2002 (Hesse Jazz Award 2002).

William Lowe

Fall 2007 Courses

Bill Lowe is a performer, composer and educator whose recordings include work with Muhal Richard Abrams (Heringa Suite); Henry Threadgill (Rag, Bush and All); Frank Foster (Shiny Stockings, Manhattan Fever and We Do It Different); Trudy Silver (heroes/heroines); CMIF Orchestra (The Sky Cries the Blues); Andy Jaffe Sextet (Manhattan Projections); as well as the debut album of JUBA (Look On The Rainbow) and the albums of James Jabbo Ware and the Me, We and Them Orchestra, (TODAY'S MOVE, HERITAGE IS, SOMETHING’S COMING, and most recently, VIGNETTES IN THE STYLE OF ELLINGTON). As co-leader of the Bill Lowe/Philippe Crettien Quintet, Lowe is co-producer and principal composer of that aggregation's debut album, (Sunday Train). The 1991 French tour of the quintet included an engagement at the Sunset Club in Paris. The quintet served as featured performers and workshop faculty for the City of Toulon Jazz Festival, where Prof. Lowe was the Director of Pedagogy and Instruction from 1991 through 1995. In November of 1994, Prof. Lowe performed in the Jazz Festival in Kyoto, Japan, as a member of the Boston Blazing Jazz Orchestra. Lowe is co-founder and co-director of the Boston Jazz Repertory Orchestra.

Prof. Lowe was co-producer and featured performer with the annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert in Boston from 1988 through 2004. As a member of Joyful Noise, the core performance and teaching group of the JCMC, Prof. Lowe continues to lecture and perform in a variety of elementary, middle and High Schools in the greater Boston area, as well as appearing on the debut CD, 12th Annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert and co-producing the second JCMC recording, COLTRANE’S ASHE! In 1995, Lowe and other members of Joyful Noise were members of the United States Delegation to the Inaugural Conference, "Culture and Social Transformation: Creative Improvisation," held in Holguin, Cuba, January 3-10, 1995. The 12 member US delegation included a group of professors/musicians. As a scholar of African American Studies and as trombonist, tubaist and composer, Prof. Lowe shared music making practices and performance pedagogy in a series of lectures, concerts and research sessions with the assembled group of Cuban intellectuals, writers, educators and musicians. In addition, he extended his on going cultural studies work with the literary/musical environments of “Nuestras Americas” by presenting a paper at the conference exploring the cross referencing of African American musical styles and images in the expressive constructs of Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, Langston Hughes and Samuel Delany, entitled: Towards a musical reading of Alejo Carpentier’s Concierto Barroco and Samuel Delany’s Neveryóna: The Deferred Dream books of Tomorrow’s Daily Daily Considered as BeBop Slave Narratives.

Professor Lowe was the recipient of a major commissioning grant from Meet The Composer and the World Music Institute in 1996 in support of another cycle of his SIGNIFYIN’ NATIVES composition project entitled “Living Lives, Telling Times: A ‘Trane Trip” for the annual JCMC concert.

Lowe's others credits as trombonist and tubaist include touring and performances with Cecil Taylor orchestra Humane; Makonda Ken McIntire; Sam Rivers; Dizzy Gillespie; Eartha Kitt; Clark Terry; Thad Jones/Mel Lewis; Slide Hampton; Bill Barron; Collective Black Artists; Onzie Matthews; George Russell; Bill Dixon; Jaki Byard; the John Coltrane Memorial Ensemble; Archie Shepp; Grover Mitchell; Mercer Ellington; various Broadway and symphonic orchestras; and he is chief composer for the Bill Lowe Ensemble as well as co-founder of PARADIGM SHIFT: A NEW BRASS NOTION and THE OTHER TET. One of Lowe's operas, Reb's Last Funeral: Resolution of Invisible Whips, has received commissioning support from the Connecticut Commission for the Arts and Northeastern University. Another large work for theater is CROSSING JOHN AT THE CROSSROADS, with music by Lowe and text by Gilbert McCaulley which has been performed at the University of Amherst and the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center: this “dispora play is intended for performances in Cuba, Brazil and the UK. An Associate Professor of African American Studies and Music at Northeastern University from 1989 – 2005, Lowe is presently on the faculty at Barnard College. He has also taught at Wesleyan and Yale Universities in Connecticut and the City University in New York. Professor Lowe is also an adjunct professor at New England Conservatory in the Musicology Department. His commissioned piece, LITANY OF DEFERRED DESIRE, a setting to music of the texts of Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes and Samuel Delaney, was premiered at Jordan Hall. As a trombonist and tubaist Lowe has performed with Carl Atkins, Gunther Schuller, George Russell and others at New England Conservatory.

Prof. Lowe's present research activities in American Studies include work with contemporary Science Fiction writing, African American Intellectual History, New World Aesthetics and Popular Culture Theory, as well as the Bill Barron Biography Project. Lowe’s “Paying Dues Towards An African American Aesthetic: An Autobiographical Essay” is Chapter 7 of The Triumph Of The Soul: Cultural and Psychological Aspects of African American Music.

Laura Johnson

Summer 2007 Courses

Laura Johnson is a jazz and music education administrator based in New York City. She currently serves as Executive Producer for Jazz at Lincoln Center, overseeing its Frederick P. Rose Hall programming, special initiatives, media projects, and collaborations with other arts organizations, in conjunction with artistic director Wynton Marsalis since March 2007. Until 2005 she served as Vice President of Education for Jazz at Lincoln Center, where she founded its education department in 1995 and created such programs as the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival; Jazz for Young People curriculum and concerts; classes and workshops for people of all ages; and publication of print music and educational materials.

From 2005 to 2007, Johnson served as a consultant for clients including the Wallace Foundation Arts Learning Initiative at the Center for Arts Education-NYC, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, Wharton Center at Michigan State University, Jazz Museum of Harlem, and All Souls at Sundown jazz and poetry series.

She is a Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor in Jazz Studies for the 2006-07 school year at Columbia University and is teaching new courses on jazz integration for education majors, offered jointly with Teachers College. She also serves as Treasurer of the Executive Board for the International Association for Jazz Education.

Previously the founding Director of Education for the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and Director of Touring and Education for The Minnesota Opera, Johnson has also taught and performed vocal music and musical theater. She holds a bachelors degree in music education, and is a native of Iowa.

Brent Edwards

Spring 2007 Courses

Brent Edwards was an associate professor in the English Department at Rutgers University, and is now an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard University Press, 2003) and the co-editor of Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004). He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Callaloo and Transition and is the co-editor of Social Text.

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