February Guild Program

Come join us for a special Symphony Guild program to be held on Thursday, February 10 at 1:00 PM. Designed to enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the February 12 Masterworks concert by the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, our speaker will focus on 20th century American music composed by the African-American musicians who had such an influence on all composers of the time.

Our speaker is Dr. William Bares, Associate professor of music at UNC-Asheville. Dr. Bares received his Ph.D in ethnomusicology from Harvard University, and taught at Harvard, Brown, Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory before becoming co-director of jazz studies at UNC Asheville in 2011. He has published articles in American Music, Jazz Research Journal, the Grove Dictionary of American Music, and Jazz and Culture, among others. His book, Jazz and the European Dream, is forthcoming on Routledge Press’s Transnational Studies in Jazz Series. An active pianist and music promoter in Asheville’s musical community, Bares was the featured pianist in the Blue Ridge Orchestra’s performance of Rhapsody in Blue, coordinated “Ecomusicologies 2014: Dialogues”—a conference/festival that took place in Asheville, hosted the weekly Sunday Jazz Showcase at Asheville’s Isis Music Hall, and is a longtime member of The Core, a lauded modern jazz quintet that plays regularly in the Western North Carolina region.

Please note that this program is at 1:00 PM, a little later than usual. The program will be held at the Asheville Symphony offices, 27 College Place, Asheville, NC 28801. All attendees are expected to be vaccinated, and masks are mandatory.