Four members of the MTA faculty received funding from the MIT SHASS Research Fund for upcoming projects. Congratulations to Charlotte Brathwaite, Sara Brown, Fred Harris, and Mark Harvey!
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Charlotte Brathwaite | Assistant Professor, Music and Theater Arts
SHASS research funding will support Forgotten Paradise: Grazettes Sun, a film project by director Brathwaite. Inspired by being united with her estranged brother for the first time, Brathwaite plans to take a small crew on a research trip to the Gold Coast (Ghana, Benin and Togo) to excavate the jigsaw puzzle of history and memory and to identify locations significant to her own ancestry and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Sara Brown | Director of Design, Music and Theater Arts
SHASS research funding will allow Brown to join the prodution of Gregory Spears’ opera, Fellow Travelers, which dramatizes the lives of Americans whose careers were ended and lives transformed during the “Lavender Scare,” a period in the Cold War when LGBTQ people were expelled from the federal government because of their sexual identities.
Frederick Harris, Jr. | Director of the Wind and Jazz Ensembles, Music and Theater Arts
With the support of SHASS research funding, Harris plans to begin researching the life and musical career of Herb Pomeroy (1930-2007) toward a biography, whose working title is It’s the Note You Don’t Play: The musical life of Herb Pomeroy. In addition to portraying Pomeroy's personal life, this book will also provide analysis of the three major areas of his musicianship: trumpeter, director/conductor, and educator.
Mark Harvey | Senior Lecturer, Music and Theater Arts
SHASS Research Funds will enable the recording and production of a new album of original compositions by Harvey, all performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. The centerpiece will be “Swamp-a-Rama,” a composition at turns satirical and serious that responds to the current socio-political climate in the United States.
