The Old Town School of Folk Music hosts the final performance of this year's OneBeat, convening 25 innovative musicians from around the world to collectively write original music and develop ways to leverage music for social good. OneBeat inverts the standard approach to music diplomacy – touring an American band overseas – and focuses rather on providing the meeting place where musicians from around the world can collectively imagine new sonic universes and social realities.

This year's OneBeat theme – Musical Migrations – invites fellows to collaboratively write music that reflects on how large movements of people have shaped music, and how music-making can encourage dialogue, community resilience, and rootedness amidst displacement and upheaval. OneBeat's wonderfully eclectic cohort of 2016 fellows includes a Zimbabwean mbira player and vocalist, a provocative Sao Paulo-based sound artist, a Muscovite gusli player, a virtuosa darbuka player from Istanbul, a soul singer from Seattle, and 21 other incredible artists.

This culminating performance will feature the works of OneBeat ensembles, presenting heretofore unseen combinations traditional instruments, traditions, and storytelling, all of which will have been created in the month prior to this event during the OneBeat residency and tour. OneBeat musicians will be joined by members of the Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, based in Chicago.

OneBeat is an initiative of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with the New York-based music organization Bang on a Can's Found Sound Nation.

To learn more about the OneBeat journey, visit:

http://1beat.org/

Free Pre-Show Activities:

Street Studios 3:00 - 5:00 PM

A model for collaborative music-making pioneered by OneBeat producing organization Found Sound Nation (foundsoundnation.org) at the Lucerne Music Festival in Switzerland in 2011, and led by OneBeat fellows. The premise is simple: transport the basic elements of a music studio to a public place, and make the studio open and accessible to everyone in the local community, musicians and non-musicians alike. With a simple setup – a laptop, mics, midi controllers, speakers, and instruments – Street Studio producers invite passers-by and musicians to join in a music creation session that is completely improvised. Songs, beats, stories, and musical ideas offered by participants are recorded and actively transformed into loops and soundscapes. With an extraordinary ability to capture the "collective unconscious" of a public space, this improvised concert of original music and documentation is then shared with all participants and the world.

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North African and Middle Eastern Music 3:00 - 4:00 PM

Join OneBeat artists from Tunisia, Algeria and Turkey to explore rhythms and songs from North Africa and the Middle East.

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Zimbabwean Song and Dance 3:00 - 4:00 PM

Join OneBeat musicians who specialize in percussion and mbira (thumb piano) to learn about songs and rhythms from their home country of Zimbabwe.

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