Sustainable African Blackwood: Harvesting the Music Tree

College of Marin Music Department presents a lecture-performance by Brenda Schuman-Post: Sustainable African Blackwood: Harvesting the Music Tree on Monday, April 16, at 12:30 p.m. in Olney Hall, room 96, Kentfield Campus.

Virtuoso oboist Brenda Schuman-Post has been studying and teaching about the music tree since 1992. In 2008 she won a Global Connections grant from Meet the Composer to create, via improvisation, a new piece of music. The music was intended to bond the people in whose forests African Blackwood grows with the people who play instruments made from that tree. She also became the first musician in history to witness every detail from finding and harvesting an African Blackwood tree, to the making of a top-of-the-line instrument.

Brenda will play the oboe, show slides and video, exhibit authentic Makonde sculptures, and present a hands-on display of the wood. Her talk will discuss the characteristics, uses, searching for and harvesting of the tree, and her experiences in East Africa. Attendees will learn about what’s currently being done to lift destitute East Africans out of poverty by preserving, conserving, protecting, and replanting African Blackwood.

For more information contact Boyd Jarrell at Boyd.Jarrell@marin.edu or 415.485.9491.