Adrian Younge pulls from the past and vast musical cultures

There’s a Portuguese word, saudade, that doesn’t translate exactly to English. Maybe it works out to something like “a mournful longing?” But composer and multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge describes its meaning perfectly in trying to pinpoint his own particular brand of emotive music. “It’s the vortex of where dark music meets romantic music,” he says on […]

Composer Nicole Mitchell tills Charlottesville’s creative landscape

Nicole Mitchell has sown the seeds of inventive music across the country through time in Chicago’s jazz scene, teaching in southern California and Pittsburgh, and now as a member of the University of Virginia’s music faculty. She splits time between Charlottesville and rural North Carolina, but harbors a desire to enliven central Virginia’s creative music […]