(Albany, NY): The Music Program of the University at Albany’s Department of Music and Theatre is pleased to present faculty member Kyra Gaunt in Education, Liberation (or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) on Sunday, September 11, 2022 at 3pm at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center on the uptown University at Albany campus at 1400 Washington Avenue.

A singer-songwriter and jazz vocalist, Gaunt revives her transformational 2019 debut performance of this one-woman show as she shares more stories of courage, vulnerability and liberation from overcoming performance anxiety and the emotional trauma of her upbringing and teaching in music, sociology and anthropology since 1996. Audience members can expect an intimate and interactive evening of stories and song about marginalization and belonging through jazz improv, Black art song, girls’ game-song and Gaunt’s own original R&B compositions.  Described by Gaunt as “a vocal memoir as podcast,” the program “calls on ancestors like Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston and Shirley Graham DuBois.”
Gaunt has appeared on stage and in jam sessions with an eclectic array of jazz artists including Bobby McFerrin, Bob James, Graham Haynes, imani uzuri, Curtis Lundy and Tarik Shah in addition to the Music Program’s own free-thinking jazz composer-pianist professor emeritus Bob Gluck with his fellow collaborators Tani Tabbal (drums) and Christopher Dean Sullivan (bass).

Using her gift of vocables and vocal improvisation, Gaunt has performed on the choreographic stage in a three-year collaboration with dancer/choreographer Preeti Vasudevan in a work based on the Indian saga of Savitri and Satyavan. The piece was workshopped at several venues in New York City. In 2017, her first book about Black girls’ musical play inspired the award-winning choreographer and director Camille A. Brown to choreograph and premiere BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play with her company Camille A. Brown & Dancers company at the Joyce Theater and Jacob’s Pillow. Gaunt served as a consultant for the production. Following that, Brown drew from Gaunt’s book again when she choreographed and directed her seven-time Tony-nominated Broadway production of For Colored Girls by Ntozake Shange in the summer of 2022.

Gaunt is currently writing a manuscript that explores how music and technology exploit, groom and orchestrate sexual and gender-based violence against very young Black girls online. This project is funded by a $25,000 grant from the Ms. Foundation’s Girls of Color Fund (2021-2023).

Beyond song and scholarship, one of her most cherished accolades was joining the TED community as a member of its inaugural class of 40 world-changing TED Fellows in 2009, who often collaborate around local and global issues. She is part of the team of TED Fellows that supported the #MeToo movement and feminism by leading a public art performance project known as BRICKxBRICK.org.  Gaunt has been featured in two notable TED videos: "How the Jump Rope Got Its Rhythm" with over 7.1 million views and “How Black Girls Can Reclaim their Voice in Music” released in July 2022. The second video received nearly 1M views in just over two months.

Advance tickets are $5 for the general public and $3 for students, seniors and UAlbany faculty-staff.  Tickets purchased on the day of the show are $10 for the general public and $8 for students, seniors and UAlbany faculty-staff. All tickets must be purchased on-line from the UAlbany Performing Arts Center’s site at www.albany.edu/pac.  Information and assistance can be obtained by contacting the UAlbany Performing Arts Center’s main office at (518) 442-3995 or [email protected].