Head for MOCAD Friday evening. It’s a show for the ears, eyes, mind and senses that we may only dream of.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) presents A. Spencer Barefield and Light Show Artists Joshua White & Gary Panter at MOCAD, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, Michigan, 48201. The performance begins Friday, April 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $6 per person and free for MOCAD museum members.
Multi-talented Detroit-based guitarist and composer A. Spencer Barefield has recorded and performed internationally as a leader, soloist, and accompanist with legendary progressive jazz voices like Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille, Richard Davis, Wadada Leo Smith and countless others. On this very special evening Barefield will present a rare solo performance along with Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show.
SOME HISTORY excerpted from joshualightshow.com:
In 1967, as the idea of synesthesia between music and light was becoming part of the culture, JOSHUA WHITE founded the Joshua Light Show. JLS was a group of artists who performed together, improvising multi-media projections in live concert venues. While much of their work was created for classical music and jazz, a major turning point came with the opening of Bill Graham’s Fillmore East on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the spring of 1968.
The Joshua Light Show were resident artists at Fillmore East and performed live behind all the major musical artists of the time: Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix. They also performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, and other major music venues.
GARY PANTER has worked on multiple fronts, including painting, design, comics, and commercial imagery, establishing a pattern of creating across traditional boundaries, and in multiple media, that endures to this day. Gary’s paintings occupy a large portion of a very prolific 1980s, during which he also designed the sets and puppets for Pee-wee’s Playhouse, completed record covers for the likes of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and maintained an active comics output through his own mini-comics and his contributions to Raw magazine and other anthologies. Returning to comics in the early 1990s, Gary drew seven issues of a Jimbo comic book. He then began delving into light shows, staging elaborate psychedelic performances in his studio space.
“A. SPENCER BAREFIELD is the best guitarist ignored by the U.S. jazz industry. He melds the techniques of Segovia and Jimi Hendrix into a startling jazz lexicon. The Detroit-based Barefield’s ensembles have included the likes of James Carter, Andrew Cyrille and Richard Davis, and his compositions have made bold use of string quartets.” — Bill Shoemaker, JazzTimes
Described by JazzTimes as “an extraordinary guitarist/composer,” Barefield has received numerous awards for composition and performance from National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Kresge Foundation and others. He has toured and recorded in the US, Canada, and Europe, extensively as a leader, soloist, and with numerous legendary artists. Barefield’s Creative Arts Collective has received international recognition for its innovative presentations, including its Creative Music at the Detroit Institute of Arts series; Day of Discovery at the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival; and current Palmer Woods Music in Homes series.