About the Show
Based on a children’s book, Harmony Street is a live stage performance that will captivate children with a colorful multimedia presentation, compelling percussion, and a lively storyteller. A young boy, moping because he is not permitted to take drumming lessons, starts to wander through his neighborhood. As he meets up with the other residents of Harmony Street, he learns that everyone is preparing for a block party right in his neighborhood. His neighbors introduce him – and the audience – to the vibrant rhythms of Guinea, Ghana, Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad and America. By the end of the show, our young boy … and those young people in the audience … are tapping their feet, clapping along, and actually playing some of the percussion instruments on the stage!
Harmony Street was the 2009 winner of the Stanier Arts Award, a prestigous grant program supporting the development of new performing arts works for children. Harmony Street enjoyed its world premiere in May 2009 at the 23rd Annual Pittsburgh International Children's Festival. The performance was incredibly well-received by educators, parents, and the students in the audience.
This 45-minute multimedia presentation offers vivid illustrations crafted by Michigan artist Kelly Carter, featured in the book by Maryland’s Ruth Ochs Webster. Depending upon the venue, the group will bring the appropriate technical equipment for the production – including a high-resolution rear projection system. And, of course, all percussion instruments are brought as well. Harmony Street will feature more than 50 percussion instruments ranging from a standard drum kit to congas to steel drums to repinique to djembe.
The performers for Harmony Street include an accomplished storyteller and the four instrumentalists from Resonance Percussion. The musicians of Resonance have been performing together since 2003 at venues and events such as Musikfest, the Pittsburgh International Children’s Theatre, the University of Pittsburgh, the Mid-Ohio Valley Multi-Cultural Festival in Parkersburg, WV, and the Andy Warhol Museum. The percussionists, trained in the steel band of pan master Ellie Mannette, have performed on five continents with such prestigious ensembles as the Pittsburgh Symphony, Umoja African Arts Ensemble, and the River City Brass Band.
Harmony Street will enliven any performance venue and, perhaps more importantly, promote the concepts of acceptance and cultural diversity, as well as an awareness of our global society.
The Musicians
Starting in 2003, Resonance Percussion has presented concerts that symbolize an intriguing journey from Africa to Cuba to Chicago and from the dawn of drumming to the ragtime of the 1920s to the swing era. Members of this ensemble have performed and studied on five continents and with such prestigious ensembles as the Pittsburgh Symphony, Umoja African Arts Ensemble, and the River City Brass Band.
They have performed at Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA, the Mid-Ohio Valley Multi-Cultural Festival in Parkersburg, WV, at the University of Pittsburgh, West Virginia University, Slippery Rock University, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, the Clarion University Autumn Leaf Festival, the Community College of Allegheny County, and the Andy Warhol Museum.
Resonance educates thousands of students a year with "Caribbean Traditions," an assembly program that traces steel drum music from its African roots to the present. They also offer a variety of master classes, clinics and residencies in steel drums, percussion, hand drumming and jazz.