music+audio+creative storytelling …
I’m a violinist, composer and audio producer in the Washington DC area. Some recent news …
April 29th: was a thrill to premiere a new piece, Season of No Regrets, with the fabulous PearsonWidrig Dance Theater at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Here’s a link to the beautifully shot video … My solo section begins at 36:35, and No Regrets starts (rather explosively) at 40:23
April 24-May 19: A song I wrote is featured in the searing new production of “Skin Tight” at The Studio Theater. In Jimmy Garver’s cool sound design, it’s mood swings from nostalgic Celtic to punk’d — here’s City Paper’s review.
May 18: Come on out to the annual return of the DC Sound Scene at the Goethe Institut — the DC Listening Lounge’s
playful annual fest of sonic creativity. I’ll be a featured musical performer.
June 1,2,5,6 13: It’s the DC Jazz Festival — this season features astonishing grandmasters such as Roy Haynes, Poncho Sanchez, Susana
Baca, Roy Hargrove, Pharoah Sanders, and I’m thrilled to be back playing at the Phillips Collection and Twins!
June 1 & 2, I’ll be “interpreting painting into Jazz” at the Phillips; June 6 I’ll be back there playing Thursdays after Five.
June 5 at Twins, I’m joined by the fantastic Marlysse Simmons (Bio Ritmo) and Felix Contreras for an eveingin of bolero jazz in the spirit of the late Bebo Valdez. And June 13 at Twins, the melodious bass man Eddie Eatmon joins Felix and myself as the core band of the Quiet Life Motel album reunite to play favorites from the album.
Some earlier highlights from 2012-2013 …
Jan 26 & 27: performed my live violin+loops score for gifted choreogrpher Stephanie Miracle‘s debut show at Dance Place. Previewed in the Washington Post Express.
Music from my new album, ”quiet life motel,” has been heard nationally on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, and was featured in a nationally broadcast interview I did on “The Story” with Dick Gordon — you can listen here to the full 19-minute interview segment (it starts 32 minutes into the show). It closed out the Dec 18, 2012 program.
Music from quiet life motel” also has been heard on other public radio outlets including WAMU, WPFW, Interfaith Voices, and WPPB (New York). It’s available on Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon … and Amazon Japan(!) You can order CDs and instantly download tracks at quietlifemotel.com Here’s a sample …
I love to make music, collaborate with dancers, interview interesting people for the radio, and tell stories in sound. I also publish my music under SchulmanCreative.
More on the music side: I’m delighted to be Musician-in-Residence for the internationally known Dance Exchange, based here in DC. Scoring and playing for modern dance has opened up a thrilling new creative ideas & collaborations — since September 2012, I’ve scored a site-specific piece for the amazing PearsonWidrig Dance Theater, created music for six evenings of lovelorn character vignettes perfromed by Uprooted Dance at Dance Exchange, and joined the Dance Company of Middlebury for a California tour. And in January 2013, I performed my original solo score to accompany the Dance Place debut of fast rising choreographer Stephanie Miracle.
photo: Zachary Z. Handler
My jazz performances are indebted to my mentor and teacher, jazz and salsa violin legend Eddie Drennon. I’ve performed four seasons running at the DC Jazz Festival, with Washington City Paper describing my work as “spontaneous and completely unique.” For info about musical bookings and projects, please follow this path …
On the audio side: I create and produce the award-winning Musicians in their words series heard widely on NPR, APM’s The Story, and other public radio outlets. I’m currently producing 20-minute pilots of the “Pop-Up Music Club” for North Carolina Public Radio, airing Dec 8 and 15, 2012. A MITOW piece on Joseph Shabalala that I did with Jeff Freymann-Weyr won the Silver Award: Best Documentary at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Here’s another favorite piece I did for NPR featuring the late Bo Diddley. I’ve also been senior producer of BBC Americana, and curated the audioambush series for the AFI. To learn more about Musicians in their own words and my audio work for NPR, BBC, PRI, APM, please follow this path …
I’m available to for events, classes, music licensing, commissions for dance and film, and for a range of audio services — including podcasts and first-person audio portraits. For more info, please call 301 908 4511. Or email schulmancreative-at-gmail-dot-com