The Lifetime Learning Center is pleased to announce this years exciting line-up for the 2016-17 season of Explorations in The ARTS. These performers bring a great diversity of musical arts tradition to our campus. Straight out of Wilmington and the 1950’s comes The Phantom Playboys, who will be sharing their early Rock-n-Roll, Rock-a-Billy and Surf sounds on December 9. For a sound out of Africa we welcome Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba in February. They will present dance music and rhythms from Senegal. Our final event in April, features The Carolina Klezmer project. You wont want to miss this joyous traditional music of Eastern Europe.
Our series can best be described as informances,* a unique recipe of two parts live performance, one part artist interview, stirred together with a pinch of Q&A and a dash of audience participation.
Putting the series all together for us is Master of Ceremonies, Finley Woolston, who will serve as our host for the series.
Putting the series all together for us is Master of Ceremonies, Finley Woolston, who will serve as our host for the series. Finley Woolston’s voice is very familiar across Eastern North Carolina to listeners of WTEB 89.3 FM, Public Radio East’s Classical Music station. For over 20 years Finley has hosted a variety of classical programs and currently is the host for PRE’s Classical Morning Concert, heard each weekday morning from 9:00 am to 12 noon. Finley is also the producer and host of The Choral Tradition, a program dedicated exclusively to choral music, heard each Sunday at 3:00 p.m. on PRE.
1950s Rock-a-Billy with a big splash of Surf
The Phantom Playboys bring the sounds of Rock-a-billy and 50s Rock-n-Roll with a big splash of surf and a flying jump-kick of raw energy! 
We invite you to get out your dancin shoes, because when this five-piece brass and steel train comes barreling up the tracks from Wilmington, there wont be a still foot in the house!
The swinginest, sultriest, suavest Rock-a-billy band from Wilmington, NC is made up of the following members: Eric Lawson is The Phantom, front man extraordinaire on lead vocals and saxophone; Henry Hank Blanton plays the blazing gee-tar and adds smooth vocals; Jones Jonesy Smith handles the slappin dog-house bass and is the weird dancer. Dont miss Jungle Jim Kaylis on drums and backing vocals, and their featured performer, Maaike Maaikebilly Brender à Brandis on trombone and vocals.
Buy Tickets: $24 General Admission Adults – $12 Students
West African dance music of Senegal meets the North Carolina Piedmont
Combining passionate originality with fierce authenticity, Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba take West African dance music into new territoryliterally, the North Carolina Piedmont. Thats where the leader of Kaira Ba, Diali Cissokho, a griot born to a family of professional musicians in Senegal, makes his transplanted home.
The bands repertoire is pure Manding, the centuries-old musical culture of Cissokhos ancestors. Its reformulated with modernizing impulses in a rock band format: agile bass lines interweave with the melodic twins of kora and electric guitar, supported by an explosive rhythm section of djembe and trapset drums. Kora master Cissokho is also the groups vocal frontman. His electrifying voice propels songs old and new about timeless themes of mythology, migration and universal love. Irrepressible dance grooves, serpentine guitar work and Cissokhos soulful vocals and kora playing illuminate stories of ancient West Africa in a globalizing world. In fact, universal love is a rough translation of Kaira Ba, a promise the band communicates live. The result of this cross-continental collaboration is a fresh and exhilarating musical experience.
The kora itself, a jumbo spike-lute with skin-and-gourd resonator, is handed down within families in West Africa. The band is rounded out by four outstanding North Carolina musicians Jonathan Henderson, Austin McCall, Will Ridenour and John Westmoreland, each bringing their own musical influences to bear.
Buy Tickets: $24 General Admission Adults – $12 Students
Shalom Y’all
Klezmer? You may ask. Why its the musical fusion of many cultures and traditions dating back thousands of years. The bulk of the tradition is rooted in Eastern European and Mediterranean cultures and the term refers to the music of the Jewish people of Eastern Europe. The music is played to celebrate joyous holidays and life-cycle events such as weddings, rites of passage and the holidays of Purim and Chanukah.
Throughout the history of the genre, the klezmorim incorporated local styles and expanded traditional sound with improvisation. And, as an aural tradition, much like Jazz, Klezmer music developed and kept its popularity from generation to generation.
The Carolina Klezmer Project was formed in 2005 by veteran Klezmer Bill Averbach, leader of the Austin Klezmorim, the Southwest United States oldest Klezmer band. You will hear and learn about this musical tradition when this six-member band plays the traditional horas, freilakhs, waltzes, shers and tzardisas.
Buy Tickets: $24 General Admission Adults – $12 Students
