Composer Dan Wheetman to Explore Music and the Mind at UCSB Events

Music and the mind will be the focus of three free public events presented by the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UC Santa Barbara next month.

The combination of lectures and performances will feature actor, composer, and playwright Dan Wheetman with guest artists Kenny Edwards, David Jackson, Van Dyke Parks, and Phil Salazar.

On Monday, April 6, Wheetman will lecture on "The Blues, a Look at the Foundation of American Music."

He wrote the book for "It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues," which was nominated for four Tony Awards.

A songwriting session for different musical genres –– from traditional to pop to Broadway –– follows on Monday, April 20 with Wheetman and guest composers Parks, Edwards, and Jackson.

The events will be held at 4 p.m. in the Mosher Alumni House.

On April 13, at 4 p.m. there will be a discussion about the act of playing music with a performance by Wheetman, Jackson, Parks, and Salazar, a renowned bluegrass musician, in the Old Little Theater located in the College of Creative Studies.

Wheetman won a Drama-Logue Award for musical direction for "Lost Highway: The Music and Legend of Hank Williams."

He toured and recorded with John Denver for seven years, wrote a Christmas song for Kermit the Frog, recorded a 78 rpm with R. Crumb and the Good Tone Banjo Boys, and played a fiddle duet with Itzhak Perlman.

UCSB's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind brings together scholars and experts from a broad range of academic disciplines and creative fields to explore the multidimensional nature of the human mind.

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