Catherine Bent via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Catherine Bent:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Catherine Bent
- City: Boston
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Constantly challenging and redrawing boundaries, cellist Catherine Bent has never fit easily into any category. Classically trained on cello and piano, conservatory trained in jazz, and professionally experienced in countless genres, Catherine built a career on the margins while patiently uncovering her unique artistic voice.
In graduate school Catherine started playing choro, the infectious Brazilian hybrid of European dance music and African rhythms. Following the initial interest, she dove deep into the tradition and went on to spend many months in Rio de Janeiro—building her repertoire in jam sessions and alongside masters—and took the choro scene by storm with her virtuosity on the cello and fluency in the style.
Of infinite interest to Catherine is the relationship of phrase—music carried on the breath—and groove—music felt in the body—which she explores in her musical projects and international collaborations. In Macayú Trio, Quebra Tudo, Trio Caxangá and the duo Elis & Catherine, she and her colleagues mix elements of jazz and Latin music with dynamic ensemble interplay and tight arrangements. When the music calls for it, the playing is highly refined; at other times exploratory and free.
In her newest—and first solo—album release, she presents ten original compositions, each paying tribute to a distinct Brazilian musical tradition. While choro is at the heart of the album, you will hear samba, forró, frevo, maracatú and xote, all enriched by the unique sonority of Catherine's cello and through the prism of her imagination.
Contact Information
- Contact by Webpage: http://catherinebent.com/contact
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://catherinebent.com/store
- ▶ Twitter: cellorinha
- ▶ Instagram: catherinebentmusic
- ▶ Website: http://catherinebent.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/cellorinha
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCpw-hWDCWlbfwUe4arsaA-Q
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/2ywe4v1LmBMTSklZVuNgUR
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/3GhVS16L08dyCSQq3noMar
My Instruction
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Lessons/Workshops:
Private Instruction in Cello
Besides her teaching at Berklee College of Music, in Ear Training, Harmony, Arranging, and Strings, Catherine teaches individual lessons, in person and by Zoom/Skype/Facetime. Catherine teaches foundational classical cello technique and extended techniques in diverse applications from classical repertoire to groove playing and improvisation.
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
