BLACK Communion is the sharing of experiences from the transnational Afro-diaspora, breaking down genre boundaries and encouraging experimentation through collaboration. This event series is a celebration of the connection between artists coming from various backgrounds and creative communities, united by their sonic activism ranging from composition to improvisation and sound art practices.

For each of the first 3 editions there will be encounters of 3 artists from either the Americas, Europe and Africa. The first evening each artist will perform on their own and on the second evening there will be open collaborations amongst the 3.

For this edition we have:
Kelvin Sholar, Savanna Morgan and Robert Machiri

Savanna Morgan (she/her) is an inter-disciplinary, neo-traditionalist musician, writer, and performer from East Texas. Her upcoming project “marginal delicacy”—arriving in August 2024–will be the debut EP for her pop adjacent, jazz-influenced neo-soul band Savanna Morgan and the Lovers. She is classically trained in both European and American (jazz) vocal styles. As the lead vocalist for the Notre Dame Jazz Band, she performed with the jazz orchestra and New Orleans Brass Band in the Collegiate Jazz Festival three years in a row.

Robert Machiri is a transient and a sound worker. He works primarily through auditory mediation manifested through social practice. Machiri’s work exists at the juncture of two streams; music and post-disciplinary reproduction presented through embodied and process driven modalities. By learning to unlearn intersecting listening, movement, mobility, sonicity and the image in search of other archival possibilities. His work is most notable through PUNGWE, a project of mutable practices that circle pan African soundings with related contemporary arts discourses and spaces.

Kelvin Lamar Sholar, (born May 22, 1973), is a Black American pianist, keyboardist, vocalist, bandleader, composer, arranger, musical director, model and educator.
Sholar’s career started at the age of five as a vocalist in Detroit, Michigan, with his mother’s choir. He later developed as a classical pianist, winning the Michigan Bach festival competition at sixteen. As a jazz pianist, Sholar worked with local artists like Kenny Gaddis, Larry Smith, Rodney Whittaker, Cassius Richmond, Marcus Belgrave, Quincy Stewart, Dean Haddad and Norma Jean Bell. Later, he gained much national and international exposure with Clark Terry, Lenny White, Wallace Roney, Kevin Saunderson, Bobby Watson, Mark Turner, Q-Tip, Greg Osby, Caron Wheeler, Jerry Gonzales, John Tchicai, Stevie Wonder, Nigel Kennedy and Carl Craig.