Poet and MacArthur Scholar Fred Moten and acclaimed Puerto Rican bassist Brandon López draw from contemporary art and cultural theory on Black fugitivity to explore Nathaniel Mackey‘s poetry and music and talk about how listening, with big ears, is always a variation on a kind of spooky, distant jazz practicing. 

The pair have collaborated on music albums and performance projects together since 2018. An American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar considered to be one of the foremost theorists of his generation, Moten is a professor of performance studies at New York University and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside. His books include the groundbreaking In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition and numerous poetry collections, and he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2020. López is a bassist, composer, and improviser working at the fringes of contemporary music. His playing has led him to work with the luminaries of the contemporary avant-garde such as Moten, Gerald Cleaver, and John Zorn, and he was a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic.

This event is in partnership with the Big Ears Festival and is part of the Denbo Center's 2024-25 Distinguished Lecture Series. See the BEF site here. The event is free and open to the public and to UT students and faculty.