2024 First Commission Award Presented to Devon Gates

World premiere on 01.31.2024 at the 2024 Composers Now Festival Opening Event

@ National Sawdust, 7:30 pm

Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, and composer from Atlanta, Georgia. Through studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University and Berklee College of Music, she has worked with Terri Lyne Carrington, Linda May Han Oh, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, Claire Chase, and esperanza spalding, and has performed with Social Science, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Susie Ibarra, Michael Mayo, Alexa Tarantino, Immanuel Wilkins, Kenny Werner, and Tia Fuller. In 2020, she released her first EP, "Voice/Bass" on Bandcamp, followed by the release of single "skipped that step" in spring 2023. In 2022 her original composition "Don't Wait" was published in Berklee Press' "New Standards" collection of 101 lead sheets by female jazz composers.

composer mentor: Yosvany Terry

Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba. Yosvany went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Yosvany worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, and Frank Emilio and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez. From his earliest days in New York, Yosvany has been welcomed by a broad range of artists in the jazz and contemporary music community; playing with, Steve Coleman, Rufus Reid, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Roy Hargrove, Vijay Iyer, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Avishai Cohen, Baptiste Trotignon, Eddie Palmieri, and Gerald Clayton.

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