MIT – UniteBoston

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra continues its historic 45^th season on Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 8:00 pm, with a show on MIT’s main stage, Kresge Auditorium, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. The orchestra will perform the premiere of director Mark Harvey’s latest work, Faces of Souls, together with other Mark Harvey originals. Presented by MIT Music & Theater Arts. Free and open to the public. Information: 617-452-3205 or 617-776-8778.

Mark Harvey is a composer, educator, bandleader and retired Methodist minister. Many of his compositions explore themes of peace and social justice in American history and contemporary culture. The program on April 7 will center around these themes, His piece Faces of Souls is inspired by the Charles Ives composition Boston Common and the Augustus Saint-Gaudens statue commemorating Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, heroes of the Civil War. The April 7 show will feature other works by Mark Harvey, including The Journey (honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and the struggle for civil rights), and Blue Butterfly, a blues evoking the late Brother Blue (aka Hugh Morgan Hill), a legendary storyteller famous in Boston and beyond, and a longtime friend of Aardvark. The evening finale will be Harvey’s piece No Walls, Aardvark’s anthem of hope and inclusivity.

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra has been praised as “stunningly beautiful and adventurous” (New York City Jazz Record),”captivating” (Jazz Improv), “spellbinding” (The Boston Globe), and “beyond category” (Downbeat). JazzTimes wrote, “Aardvark suggests the best and the brashest of Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, George Russell, and even Frank Zappa.”

Founded in 1973, Aardvark has been a force in the international jazz scene for more than 45 years. The orchestra has premiered more than 175 works and appears on 14 CDs, including 8 on the Leo Records label. Guest artists have included jazz luminaries Jaki Byard, Sheila Jordan, Jimmy Giuffre, Geri Allen, Lewis Porter, Dominique Eade, Walter Thompson, and Matt Savage.

Founder and music director Mark Harvey has performed at the Knitting Factory, the Village Gate, the National Gallery of Art (DC), Fenway Park, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Berlin Jazz Festival (Germany), and the Baja State Theater (Mexico), to name a few. He has recorded with George Russell and Baird Hersey, and performed with Gil Evans, Howard McGhee, Sam Rivers, and others. Dr. Harvey teaches jazz studies at MIT.

Aardvark is: Allan Chase, Phil Scarff, Chris Rakowski, Dan Zupan/saxes and woodwinds; K.C. Dunbar, Jeanne Snodgrass/trumpets; Bob Pilkington, Jay Keyser/trombones; Jeff Marsanskis, Bill Lowe/bass trombones, tuba; Richard Nelson/guitar; John Funkhouser/string bass; Harry Wellott/drums; Jerry Edwards and Grace Hughes, vocalists; Mark Harvey/trumpet, music director. Aardvark veterans Arni Cheatham and Peter H. Bloom will miss the April 7 show, but will be back on the bandstand soon.

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra is managed by Americas Musicworks, Rebecca DeLamotte, director, telephone 617 776 8778, email: delamotte-amw@comcast.net

This week, we’re privileged to have a guest blogger, Ken Arnold. Ken is studying at Harvard and the founding director of a new ministry that brings together tech and missions-minded leaders in Boston. It’s exciting to see how influential technology can be in impacting the nations!

“I LOVE this merging of skills and purpose. I would do this daily… with more sleep.”
— Hackathon participant

On November 4-6, 2016, 1,426 technologists, developers, designers and mission workers in 28 cities and 16 nations around the world came together to build technology to support Christian missions, as part of an event called Indigitous #Hack. At our city’s event, 40 people gathered at the MIT Media Lab and formed six project teams to work on challenges posed by missions agencies. Projects included investigating the causes and consequences of youth sexting, configuring a portable router to distribute the Bible and other literature in remote areas, prototyping an app to connect people for spiritual mentoring, facilitating connections between Christians in Metro Boston, assisting people in searching for job opportunities abroad, and developing an information management system for a network of orphanages in Southeast Asia.

We worked late into the night. We worshipped and prayed together. We connected with cities around the world. Some of the things we built may already be in use in the mission field, while others explored an idea that may come to fruition years down the road. But the biggest impact was on our community. Nearly every Boston participant said the best part of the event was connecting with other believers and working with them towards God’s mission:

[The best part was] “Meeting friends, coding globally, dreaming about what missions will look like in the next ten years”
[It was] “fun to see other Christians come out of the woodwork, especially in a faith-hostile place like Boston where we are all hidden.”
“I’d never heard of any event like this that brought together technology and digitally minded Christians.”

What’s next?

Let’s do it again this year! This event was possible because of the passionate work of a diverse planning team. Want to be part of it? Let me know: kenneth.arnold@gmail.com.

Let’s connect ministry and tech. We’re building a broader community, starting off with a kickoff event one evening in April or May. Details coming soon, sign up for updates or just email me.

Share your challenges. What inspires you? What would you like to work on?

For those in other fields of work, what would it look like to gather people together to think about using their work and skills for the Gospel?

Come and join us as we dream with God about changing the world through innovative technology!

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra to premiere the latest work by Mark Harvey, Faces of Souls

Boston’s Christians Use Technology For World Missions

What’s next?

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