Exotic Drums & Percussion Instruments in Jazz
Featuring Dwight James
Co-starring the collection & expertise of the librarians in the Music Department

Reserve your Free Ticket Here!

Dwight James is a Philadelphia-born and bred drummer, percussionist, and educator. He has performed in concerts in various venues around the globe and has facilitated educational workshops in schools, community centers, museums, and churches. Over his long career, Dwight James has shared the stage with many jazz, R&B, classical, and gospel artists, as well as with storytellers, poets, and spoken-word artists.

A member of Philadelphia’s adventurous musical front during the 1970s and 80s, James was also featured on many classic recordings, including Khan Jamal Creative Art Ensemble’s 1972 recording, Drum Dance to the Motherland, Sounds of Liberation’s 1972 self-titled debut album, ‎and Khan Jamal Quintet’s 2002 album Balafon Dance. Most important is his first album as a leader, the Cadence Jazz Records’ 1983 release, entitled Inner Heat.

Over three previous concert seasons at the Parkway Central Library, veteran and up-and-coming Philly musicians have explored some questions. What has the Great Migration meant to music in Philadelphia? What happens if librarians commission composers to write music inspired by resources culled from Parkway Central’s subject departments? Musicians answered with concert suites build around children’s books exploring mass incarceration, seedy crime novelettes from Philbrick Hall, historic letters found in our Newspaper and Microfilm Center urging 19th-century African Americans to move to the northern cities, and much more. 

Now, for its fourth season with the eminent Philadelphia Jazz Project, our Mysterious Travelers series returns with Further Investigations to generate more new music inspired by library collections. We’re expounding on last season’s internal investigations theme to include more library departments and more musicians. And it’s still completely free!  Get ready for concerts touching just about every department in the library and every brick in Philly history. This season musicians will explore voodoo and the afterlife with the Education, Philosophy, and Religion Department; railway maps of Philadelphia with the Maps Collection; Brazilian and Cuban percussion with the Music Department; Oscar Wilde, Clemens, Edgar Allan Poe with the Rare Book Department; and more.  One Monday a month, settle into your seat in the Montgomery Auditorium in the Parkway Central Library—the site where musicians met with librarians to find their musical muses—and let the music find you. 

All events in this series are free. All concerts start at 7:00 p.m. and will be held in the Montgomery Auditorium.

The Philadelphia Jazz Project (PJP) works to inspire a network to support, promote, archive, and celebrate the diverse elements within the Philadelphia jazz community, with the larger goal of connecting to the global community. www.philajazzproject.org

Parkway Central Library | Montgomery Auditorium
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Accessibility: A wheelchair ramp is located at the Library’s Wood Street entrance, and an elevator for the public is located next to the building’s northeast courtyard.

For more information, full biographies, and the most up-to-date details, visit freelibrary.org or call 215-686-5316.