Our upcoming Ritz Chamber Players 2024-2025 season, themed "Lift Every Voice," showcases the brilliance of Black composers from around the globe, offering a diverse and inspiring repertoire. We envision a collaboration where seniors involved with City of Jacksonville Senior Services could attend special performances at Terry Concert Hall on the campus of Jacksonville University on Fridays, prior to our regularly scheduled Ritz Chamber Players Saturday concerts. We look forward to discussing the ideal start time that works best for you and the seniors you serve.

A two-day festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of two of the most important compositions for percussion-marimba written in the 20th century, “Two Mexican Dances for Marimba”. These two works propelled marimba performance from transcriptions of classical works and stodgy, inaccessible works into raising the bar of technique, musicality and innovation, pushing the art form into physical realms not broached until these works. This is an opportunity to hear Gordon Stout discuss the works and the evolution of marimba repertoire and Adam Blackstock, a premier interpreter of Gordon Stout’s music.

THIS IS THE SPACE AGE presents as a series of case studies that utilize influence derived from residential Midcentury Modern architecture and aesthetics of Space Age product design and pop culture, to speculate the role of objects in the communication of identity. Work featured in this exhibition follows an autobiographical trajectory that moves from defining the Neo-Space Age object to using said object in mock lifestyle brand excerpts. Through analysis of personal associations to domestic life, both realized and idealized, these excerpts produce reactions to contemporary heterosexist culture norms established in postwar America. Such reactions lead to the materialization of remixed, DIY fragmentations of aspirational living that operate as extensions of self. Communicating the identity of the maker through their objecthood, these extensions morph into devices of queer futuring, on an unyielding mission to establish queer space in hetero-dominated territory.

Algorithmic Blooms investigates the interplay between objects, memory and evolving technologies focusing on how computer vision reshapes our perception of the world. Mann employs traditional photography alongside new technologies, prompting viewers to consider the changing landscapes of meaning and value in the face of technological disruption. Recent works combine traditional photographic approaches with computer vision. Tabletop arrangements in the studio feature broken cameras, cell phones and objects found in still-life paintings, like flowers and remnants of consumption. Hundreds of photographs of these arrangements are used to build 3D models through photogrammetry software. As he works, Mann delves into the hidden layers of the computer vision process, accessing and manipulating the intermediate calculations and data visualizations generated during the transformation. These ephemeral digital entities, typically unseen and discarded by the algorithms themselves, offer unique insights into the inner workings of computer vision.

A day of guitar immersion through lessons, classes, presentations and performance, this free event is open to all guitar students and enthusiasts of all levels.

Shannon Lockwood, cello and Scott Watkins, piano, recreate Jacqueline du Pré’s 1960s album ‘A Jacqueline du Pré Recital’ in honor of her 80th birthday in January.

Founder of the global grassroots Socrates Cafe initiative, author of the international bestseller ‘Socrates Cafe,’ and his most recent book is ‘Soul of Goodness,’ with a foreword by Dr. Cornel West. Author and Socratic discussion leader Christopher Phillips asks a question posed by Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ How do you answer this question? Do you know yourself best, or do others? Learn more at ChristopherPhillips.com or SocratesCafe.com.

Weaving together disparate elements, this work explores the complexities of identity, environmental responsibility and the impact of military service on the individual. In exploring the disconnection Herrera perceives in the modern world, she seeks to confront the dissonance inherent in a dual role as a guardian of the earth and a participant in an institution whose values she came to question. This body of work reflects the challenges Herrera faced as a woman in a predominantly male environment, concealing fragility, vulnerability and difference in a realm defined by force, control and conformity. She explores what it means to hold Native American identity while serving in an organization historically linked to genocide and ongoing global impositions. This internal conflict surfaces through the portrayal of a warrior, symbolizing Herrera’s yearning to shield Mother Earth from all the pervasive evils inflicted upon it.

Mayuko Ono Gray’s exhibition, 諸行無常_This too, shall pass, features the artist’s monumental graphite drawings that juxtapose Japanese calligraphic forms with depictions of the people, animals and still-lifes captured in her daily experiences. Reflecting on her life, which is culturally Japanese and American, Ono Gray’s graphite drawings hybridize influences from traditional Japanese calligraphy combined with Western drawing practices and aesthetics. Each drawing is titled with a Japanese proverb spelled out with hiragana and kanji characters intertwined to create a single line from the top right to the lower left of the pictorial space, following traditional Japanese writing format. The line serves as a metaphor for life and the path taken from birth to death. Through her works Ono Gray navigates her position living between two cultures and languages.