The Steve Weiss Mallet Festival and Workshop
Sponsored by Steve Weiss Music
www.vibesworkshop.com
There are two parts to this event. The vibraphone workshop and the concerts.
Scroll down for the vibraphone workshop
Scroll down for artist profiles
The concerts will be on:
- Aug 4th - at Settlement Music, 7pm, FREE
- 416 Queen St, Philadelphia, PA 19147
- Peformers
- Lynn Vartan
- University Of Delaware Percussion Department
- Tony Miceli
- Oliver Maymen
Aug 5th - All Star Vibe Jam Session (@Chris' Jazz Cafe)
- 1421 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA 19102
- Check Chris' Website for pricing
- 1421 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA 19102
Featuring
- Justin Vibes
- Jason Marsalis
- Christos Rafalides
- Tony Miceli
- Behn Gillece
- Tom Lawton (Piano)
- Lee Smith (Bass)
- Byron Landham (Drums)
- Aug - 6th at the Barnes Museum - Children's concert.
- 2025 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, PA 19130
- Performers
- Ivan Trevino - Marimba
- Temple University Percussion Dept. and more TBA
The Workshop July 31 - August 4
The workshop will take place from July 31st through Aug 4th.
- It will take place at Settlement Music School in the Queen Village section of Philadelphia, PA. Click here for a map with the location of the school.
- There will be instruments provided to practice on as well as practice rooms.
- There are a lot of Air BnB's in this neighborhood and you're a 10 minute walk from Center City, 20 minutes from shops on Walnut and Chestnut Street. The areas of Philly to search for are Queen Village and Bella Vista. Those neighborhoods are very close to the close and not a long walk to Chris' Jazz Cafe and not too long to the Barnes Foundation for the Sunday concert.
Workshop classes by:
- Jason Marsalis
- Christos Rafalides
- Tony Miceli
- Behn Gillece
- Oliver Mayman
- Harvey Price
A Typical Day Of The Workshop
Classes usually start at about 9:30 or ten. The school opens up at 9, so you can get in and practice early if you want.
We will do 2 classes in the morning before lunch. Most likely Harvey Price will kick things off and Oliver Maymen or I do the second class before lunch.
In my class (Tony Miceli) we'll talk a lot about fundamentals. The idea for me of being great is to also be able to do things great people can do on the instrument. That's playing good voicings and lines that describe the harmony. That means 'you sound good'. I want to focus on showing you ways to help you sound good.
Then we'll have lunch and some of you can practice if you want. We will meet probably around 2pm and have the afternoon class which will feature Behn Gillece or both.
Behn is a great bop player. His lines are just fantastic and his chords are really well thought out. He usually brings hand outs and talks about specific topics.
At the end of each day we will play together in some way. I'll have a bass player or bass and drums (I'm sure some of you can also play drums). We'll play through tunes or play free, whatever you want when you get up and play. It's a super comfortable environment to do this.
After the jam session, you'll have time until the school closes to practice. I'm assured 5 practice rooms and there will be 10 of us. I usually can get more rooms. In the past we divided the practice time up into a couple session for each room. It's always more than enough time to practice. It usually works out fine and I most likely will have more rooms.
The evening is yours. There is a great jazz club about 25 minute walk from the school (Chris Jazz Cafe), with Uber and no traffic it's 7 minutes tops. You can hang there, You can see what's happening at Verizon Hall, or the Ritz Movie Theatre which is our art theatre. It's great.
Thursday and Friday will feature the out of town guest artists. Jason Marsalis, Christos Rafalides and Warren Wolf.
There are plenty of great places to eat. In fact there's a great coffee shop half a block from the school. Check out Famous Deli on 4th St. The food is AMAZING.
If there's anything else you need to know, please email me. There are many air BnB's in the city and Bella Vista where the school is is a great community. If you have your spot where you are staying I can help you and tell you if it's not a good neighborhood etc. Most of all the neighborhoods around the school are really nice and very safe.
Email me if you need anything else: tony@tonymiceli.com
Expect a few minor changes but this is usually how it goes!
Justin Vibes
Known as a TikTok artist and influential figure on social media, this musician gained widespread recognition by captivating his over 8 million fans with his vibraphone performances. His TikTok videos have amassed an impressive total of over 106 million likes.
Not as well know is the fact that Justin is an incredible vibraphone player. Also he’s an incredible musician.
Lynn Vartan
Percussionist Lynn Vartan is an international performer and educator who is an advocate for diversity in music. As a new music percussionist Lynn has worked with Michael Colgrass, Vinny Golia, Arthur Jarvinen, Ursula Oppens, Joan Tower, Glen Velez, Xtet, James Newton, Chinary Ung, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble and Grammy Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music, and is known for her dynamic athleticism and exciting energy on stage. She has commissioned and/or performed countless new works for percussion by composers such as Donald Crockett, William Kraft, Carlos Rafael Rivera, Steve Hoey, Veronika Krausas, Erica Muhl, Arthur Jarvinen, Sean Heim, Jeff Holmes, Keith Bradshaw and Shaun Naidoo.
Tony Miceli
Internationally renowned jazz vibraphonist Tony Miceli has established himself as one of the primary voices on the mallet instrument, winning hearts and minds wherever he plays. His achievements, however, go much further beyond. A sought-after recording artist, Miceli is an inspired educator who delivers vibraphone master classes the world over, enriching the students of Ireland, Germany, South Korea, Italy, for example, with an accompanying concert finale. Miceli promotes the instrument through his brainchild, vibesworkshop.com, a virtual meeting place and teaching tool for some 4000 student and professional members. He is also the co-creator of the World Vibes Congress, a formal gathering of players who share the desire to bring public awareness to the vibraphone. It is worth noting that Miceli is part of Team Omega, an elite group of vibes players that includes only three others, headliners David Friedman, Joe Locke, and Stefon Harris. At All About Jazz, Victor Schermer describes him as
“... a vibraphonist of astonishing virtuosity, musical resilience,
and inventiveness. His vibes playing is nothing short of
phenomenal.”
Ivan Trevino
Ivan Trevino (b.1983) is a Mexican-American composer, percussionist, writer and arts advocate. He has shared his music with audiences around the world, from Asia to South America to Madison Square Garden in New York City.
As a composer and songwriter, Ivan’s music has been performed on five continents in over 25 countries. He is a multi-award winning recipient of the Percussive Arts Society’s International Composition Contest and has over 70 compositions and songs to his name. Most recently, he was the featured composer on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
An active educator, Ivan currently serves as Lecturer in Percussion at University of Texas at Austin. He is also co-director of the Eastman Percussion Festival, a biennial summer festival hosted by Eastman School of Music. He is an artist and clinician for Innovative Percussion, Black Swamp Percussion, Zildjian Cymbals, Evans Drumheads, Pearl / Adams, Meinl, and Beetle Percussion.
Ivan is also well-known for his work as a drummer with Break of Reality, an international touring cello rock quartet. Break of Reality has released five studio albums and has been featured on PBS, Huffington Post, Yahoo Music and is on regular rotation on National Public Radio.
Christos Rafalides
Christos was born and raised in Greece, where he completed his studies in classical percussion. After receiving a scholarship from Berklee College of Music, he moved to Boston, attaining a BA in Jazz Vibraphone Performance and later moved to New York, where he graduated from Manhattan School of Music earning his MA in Jazz Vibraphone Performance.
Christos found his personal voice when he established 'Manhattan Vibes’, a band that has appeared at numerous New York's cutting edge venues including the Blue Note, the Jazz Standard, Smoke Jazz Club and Dizzy's Club Coca Cola. Highlights of his career include performances with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis, a US tour with the Charles Mingus ‘Epitaph' Band featuring bassist Christian McBride and conductor Gunther Schuller, a recording with the Harmony Ensemble of NY of Henry Mancini’s 'Peter Gunn' featuring Lew Soloff, Ronnie Cuber and Victor Lewis, recordings with vocalist Chaka Khan and a duo performance at Carnegie Hall with pianist Sergio Salvatore.
Behn Gillece
Vibraphonist Behn Gillece has built a reputation on the New York jazz scene as a virtuosic instrumentalist and prolific composer. Walk Of Fire (2017 Posi-Tone), his third album as leader, features a stellar group with a frontline of Walt Weiskopf on tenor, Michael Dease on trombone and Bruce Harris on trumpet. This powerful frontline is accompanied by pianist Adam Birnbaum, bassist Clovis Nicolas, and drummer Jason Tiemann who make Gillece’s ten original compositions groove and swing.
Oliver Mayman
From Ann Arbor, MI, and now based in Philadelphia, Oliver Mayman is a vibraphonist, composer, arranger, and educator. Beginning on the drums and piano, the vibraphone was an inevitable discovery as a teenager – the instrument essentially fusing the mechanics of drumming with the harmonic capabilities of the piano. Since then, he has quickly become a distinguished voice on the instrument, redefining its role in music through an inventive technical approach and a discerning creative ear.
He has performed as a bandleader across the Midwest and East Coast at storied venues like Cliff Bell’s, the Blue LLama, and Chris’ Jazz Cafe, and has also been featured in several larger, iconic events like the Detroit Jazz Festival and the World Vibes Congress. Additionally a sought-after accompanist and sideman, he has performed in countless other venues with various groups, and aims to play the vibraphone as a suitable alternative to the piano, capable of fully assuming a rhythmically and harmonically supportive role in any setting.
He also has extensive experience as an educator, teaching a full private studio of vibraphone students in addition to being on faculty at vibesworkshop.com, the largest online vibraphone community in the world. With a unique approach and pedagogical method to the instrument, he advocates his own novel dampening techniques, adaptations of pianistic ideas, and other innovative 4-mallet concepts, in addition to the fundamentals required by any modern musician. He is also the author of “Dampening Studies,” a comprehensive method for dampening on the vibraphone.
In 2022, he was selected as a Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition jazz winner. He was also a member of the 2022 JM Jazz World Orchestra, which tours Europe each summer. In 2021, he won the Italy Percussive Arts Society jazz vibraphone competition, the largest of its kind. He also received a Downbeat Magazine student award for outstanding combo (2019) and outstanding soloist (2020) and was awarded second place in the junior open division at the prestigious 2018 M-Prize International Chamber Arts Competition.