NCID-1182
Edward Sarath
Director of the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies; Interim Director of the Center for World Performance Studies and Professor of Music
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 Music Performance (The University of Iowa)
About
Dr. Sarath is active as music performer, composer, recording artist, author/scholar, change visionary/activist. His CD called New Beginnings features the London Jazz Orchestra performing his large ensemble compositions. He is the founder and president of the International Society for Improvised Music, which just celebrated 10 years of festival/conferences around the world, and he is a member of a National Task Force and lead author of its report for reform--which strongly endorsed creativity and diversity--in music studies. Dr. Sarath's book, Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society (SUNY Albany 2013), is the first to apply to music principles of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory. Inspired by the 1987 proclamation of the US House of Representatives, HR 57, of "jazz as a national treasure," his current book (in progress) is called Black Music Matters, also the title of a class he teaches.
Current Work
Currently completing a book called Black Music Matters that critically interrogation through the lens of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory, the marginalization of African American music in music studies and celebrates the transformative potential of this important wave in the 21st century life. Also revising a work for symphony orchestra, choir, and jazz that sets to music Maya Angelou's poem, His Day is Done, that she dedicated to Nelson Mandela. Sustaining schedule of performing, speaking, and change visioning in music studies and higher education.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Consciousness, Integral Theory, Jazz, spirituality, Transdisciplinarity