Celebrating disability pride month
Hello friends!
First off, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who came out to Earth-Space Balance last Friday. The event was a tremendous success full of warmth, kindness and dancing. If you missed it, or want to come to something like that again, never fear--planning for the second installment is underway.
It's disability pride month!
As you know, my disability identity is a core tenant of my artistic identity. From my albums Dances for Different Bodies and Not Amazing to the way I conceive of sound and music, blindness may not define, but certainly heavily informs the way I create and interact with the world.
July is Disability Pride Month--a celebration of the progress of the Disability rights movement. I am honored to be presenting some programming in collaboration with the Chicago Mayor's Office and Chicago Public Libraries to celebrate in musical style--or, in otherwords, we'll be bringing the Calculated Discomfort party energy to civic programming.
Tommy Carroll Trio at Malcom X College Jul. 22
First up, I'll be playing the closing performance at the Mayor's Office ADA35 celebration.
Thirty five years ago the federal government passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that businesses and institutions offering public services have to be physically accessible. It sounds simple, but it was a fight to get there, and it's still a fight to perfect it to this day. While I personally believe laws can only go so far to increasing inclusion, I still think it's important to celebrate these historical moments--I know that my experience in school growing up would have been way worse without the ADA.
The event runs all day 10-5, but my Trio plays from 3:15-4:15. Expect high octane fun jazz standards and a few of my compositions.
Get full event details and RSVP for free here.
Musical workshop at Sulzer Library Jul. 29
To round out the month, I'll be doing a community workshop at Sulzer Regional Library on Tuesday July 29th.
I'll be kicking the event off with some solo drumming and talking about disability identity and musical ethos. Then I'll open it up for everyone to participate in some collaborative drumming / sonic storytelling. It'll be a great time to loosen up on a Tuesday evening.