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the soul of jazz strings

Akua Dixon jazz cello, composer

 

Akua Dixon

 

Akua Dixon, jazz cellist/composer
Akua Dixon, jazz cello and comoposer
Akua Dixon
Career Highlights 
Jazz & World Music
Carnegie Hall Musical Ambassador and Clinician.
Yamaha Artist.
Recipient, 1998 African American Classical Music Award from Spellman College.  Founder/Leader/Composer/Arranger & Cellist:  Quartette Indigo. Founding Member & original Cellist: Max Roach Double Quartet.  Founding Member/Composer & original Cellist:  Uptown String Quartet.
Founding Member/Director of New Music/Composer/Conductor/Cellist & Vocal Soloist:  The String Reunion.
Compositions, arrangements & transcriptions performed by The String Reunion, Quartette Indigo, Uptown String Quartet, Akua Dixon Swing Quartet, Akua Dixon String Ensemble and many others.
Albums:  Quartette Indigo/QI (Landmark), QI/Afrika! Afrika! (Savant Records).
String Contractor, Woody Shaw/For Sure.
Cello Solos on disc:  Quartette Indigo/QI, Quartette Indigo/Afrika! Afrika! Steve Turre/Viewpoints & Vibrations, Viewpoint, Right There, Fire & Ice, Rhythm Within, Steve Turre, Lotus Flower, Spirits Up Above.  Buster Williams/Dreams Come True, Heartbeat. Carlos Franzetti/The Prime Element, James "Blood" Ulmer/Harmolodic Guitar with Strings, Chico Hamilton/Forestorn.
Vocal soloist:  Archie Shepp/Attica Blues Big Band, Carlos Franzetti/The Prime Element, Steve Turre/Right There
Latin Music:  performances & recordings:  Son Primero, Larry Harlow, Charanga America, La Lupe, Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Johnny Pacheco, Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe/Tu Bien lo Sabes, Nestor Torres/no me provoques [featuring "The Afro American String Quartet"] Suave (1981), Gilberto Santa Rosa, Luis Bonilla, Rafael De Jesus, Willie Colon, Perico. 
Many Latin recordings with and for noted violinist/arranger Eddie Drennon, also the disco classic It Don't Mean A Thing [featured The String Reunion] (Casablanca, 1978).  Cello on Walter Murphy/A Fifth of Beethoven (1976).
Ensembles:  MRDQ:  debut concert at KOOL Jazz Festival, Avery Fisher Hall/Lincoln Center, NYC (1982).  
MRDQ:  First European tour (1983) Pori, Molde, Montmartre, Bari, Nickelsdorf, Lugano, Seville jazz festivals and many others. Black Swan Quartet:  First European tour.
European tours with Archie Shepp, Henry Threadgill, Joseph Jarman, Rufus Reid, QI & Steve Turre 
Quartette Indigo -- KOOL Jazz Festival (NYC), Berlin Jazz Festival, Tri-C Jazz Festival, Saint Lucia Jazz Festival.  Ensembles:  Spiritweaving (Betty Neals, poet, Akua Dixon, cello & voice, Amina Claudine Myers, piano & voice, Gayle Dixon, violin & voice [repertoire features original compositions]).   LSD Trio (Anne LeBaron, La Donna Smith, Akua Dixon).  AGA Trio (Amina Claudine Myers, Gayle Dixon & Akua Dixon). Henry Threadgill's Society Situation Dance Band and Wind String Ensemble. 
Selected Broadway shows:  Lady Day, music by Cal Massey.  Black Broadway, with Eubie Blake, Adelaide Hall and Milt Hinton.
TV:  Soul with Novella Nelson.  David Letterman Show with Aretha Franklin,
Wyclef John:  Notated score, conducted and tutored children for the Urban Symphony Orchestra (MTV) and Chris Rock Show
Many concerts with Jazzmobile (compositions by Jimmy Heath, Ernie Wilkins, others), Collective Black Artists
World Music:  Mantuila Nyomo, Kazumi Watanabe, Pete Seeger 
Dance Theatre of Harlem:  Asst Principal Cellist and orchestra member for many years, with performances at Lincoln Center, City Center, Aaron Davis Hall and others.   
Alvin Ailey Dance Co: performances with Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, conductor, and
Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Jon Faddis, conductor.    
Studio work:  recordings for Woody Shaw, Carmen McRae, Archie Shepp, Abbey Lincoln, Antonio Hart, Don Cherry, Terrence Blanchard (fllm score), Avery Sharpe, David Byrne, Ray Chew, and numerous others
Stage Orchestras:  many performances with internationally acclaimed artists including Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick,  Diana Ross, Betty Carter, Nancy Wilson, Whitney Houston, CeCe Winans, and many others at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, City Center, Apollo Theatre:  many artists, including James Brown, Aretha Franklin and a host of others.  
Strings with Jazz Ensemble:  McCoy Tyner, Yusef Lateef, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Claude "Fiddler" Williams. 
Performed Dizzy Gillespie's film score, The Winter In Lisbon with Quartette Indigo
Numerous concerts with and for children.
Clinics and workshops at numerous schools and colleges.
Akua Dixon, jazz cello
Music Industry & Composition
Member, Local 802 AFM, Associated Musicians of Greater NY.  
Composer: The Opera of Marie Laveau, performed at Henry Street Settlement, NYC
Engaged by Ruth Ellington to write and perform string arrangements of Duke Ellington compositions at Symphony Space, NYC
Engaged by Sue Mingus to write and perform string arrangements of Charles Mingus compositions at Lincoln Center, NYC 
Notated score for Rahsaan Roland Kirk/Journey Song, Tryin' To Make It Over the Hump
Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre:  Notated and conducted Riverside, by Judith Jamison.  Notated drum score by Kimati Dinizulu.  Conducted Revelations. 
Donald Byrd Dance Co. at Wolftrap:  Conductor. 
String Arrangements/String Contractor, cellist for Lauryn Hill, Aretha Franklin, Cassandra Wilson, Naima Shambourger and others. 
Grants:  Meet the Composer, Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts

Akua Dixon, jazz cello

Affiliations

Performing Rights:  SESAC

Local 802 AFM, Associated Musicians of Greater NY

International Association for Jazz Education

 

Akua Dixon, jazz cello

Thank you for your interest!  This page is far from complete -- only a portion of Akua's resume relating to jazz strings has been included.  Still to come -- her work in the classical, Broadway, popular, "legit," and commercial music fields.  For further biographical information, please read "Madame Jazz," by Leslie Gourse (Oxford University Press).  You may also visit Akua's website at www.akuadixon.com  or contact: 

..... .....: akua@jazzbows.com

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