SeattleTimes.com: Virtuoso violinist, filmmaker, polymath: Quinton Morris will make you feel like a slacker

Quinton Morris writes:

February 19, 2016

Dear Friends,

I wanted to bring to your attention that the Seattle Times has highlighted my BREAKTHROUGH World Tour and Short Film in today's newspaper:

http://http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/classical-music/virtuoso-violinist-filmmaker-polymath-quinton-morris-will-make-you-feel-like-a-slacker/?utm_content=bufferab93f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=owned_buffer  

The tour has been incredibly successful with a wonderful debut at Les Arts Decoratifs in the Louvre Museum and a residency at the Universitie of Paris last month.  I am currently preparing for the next leg of the tour, which will take me to Guadeloupe in March.  I will be sharing more information about all of the exciting upcoming events about the tour in my newsletter next month!

The article also highlights a special performance with my collaborator Alastair Edmonstone and a panel discussion I will participant in with Seattle artist/writer Barbara Earl Thomas and STEM educator Zithri Saleem on the visual artwork of Kehinde Wiley.  This event will take place on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 (7:00pm) at the Northwest African American.  If you are in the Seattle area, I would love to see you there!

Finally, my nonprofit organization, The Quinton Morris Project is still accepting donations towards the BREAKTHROUGH World Tour.  The tour takes us to some very remote areas to provide educational and community projects to students who have very limited resources.  We provide everything from music lessons to manuscript paper and instruments to those students who can't afford it.  Your participation and gift is greatly appreciated.

I look forward to connecting with you again very soon.

Best wishes,

Quinton

The Quinton Morris Project

827 Hiawatha Place South #409

Seattle, WA  98144

Tax ID: 47-4809104

development@quintonmorris.org

Seattle-based virtuoso violinist Quinton Morris will join a panel about painter Kehinde Wiley at Northwest African American Museum on Feb. 24. 

Local virtuoso violinist Quinton Morris is on a world tour, teaching audiences about the work of Caribbean-born composer the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

Seattle Times

February 19, 2016

Local virtuoso violinist — and general polymath — Quinton Morris talks about the Kehinde Wiley exhibit at SAM and his world tour to teach audiences about Caribbean-born composer Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

                   By Tom Keogh

Special to The Seattle Times

Ask virtuoso violinist Quinton Morris what he’s working on at the moment, and his answer spans thousands of miles and several centuries.

In Seattle, where he lives, Morris will appear Feb. 24 at Northwest African American Museum (NAAM), where he will perform and participate in a panel discussion about the Kehinde Wiley exhibit at Seattle Art Museum.

Then there’s his globe-trotting, immersive project “Breakthrough,” about the 18th-century composer-violinist...Joseph Bologne, also known as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Morris’ “Breakthrough” itinerary, which does not yet include Seattle, will take him to China, Tanzania, Thailand and Australia, among other places.

A documentary film of that tour is being shot, while a separate “Breakthrough” film — part of the concert experience — is making its way into the U.S. film-festival circuit.

Then there’s Morris’ day job at Seattle University, where he serves as director of chamber and instrumental music, is an associate professor of violin and chamber music and has an associate appointment in the Global African Studies program.

Feel like a slacker yet?

NAAM, in a program-partnership with Seattle Art Museum, is presenting “Complex Exchange,” a conversation among Morris, STEM educator Zithri Saleem and writer-artist Barbara Earl Thomas about SAM’s exhibition of Wiley paintings, which present people of color (wearing contemporary attire) in the context of upper-class European portraiture.

The discussion will also cover works from the Kelly Collection of African American Art, now on view at NAAM.

Morris, fittingly, will play (with accompanist Alastair Edmonstone) William Grant Still’s 1943 Suite for Violin and Piano, which was inspired by paintings from the Harlem Renaissance. Still, who wrote 150 compositions, was the first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic) and write an opera (“Troubled Island”) performed by a major company (the New York City Opera).

“He was one of the most prolific of 20th-century composers,” says Morris, “and the dean of African-American composers.”

Morris, 38, is especially in demand right now for his “Breakthrough” concert-and-film presentations. He plays several compositions by Saint-Georges and talks about him to audiences. But the novel element is a short movie, also called “Breakthrough,” in which Morris himself plays Saint-Georges, the Guadeloupe-born son of a wealthy, white planter and an African slave.

Set in modern dress — no powdered wigs — “Breakthrough” dramatizes artistic and personal touchstones in Saint-Georges’ life.