Timbalooloo
Timbalooloo
Timbalooloo
Jazz for Kids
Sunday, March 16, 2025
2:00 PM - Pfleeger Concert Hall
Oran Etkin’s music can be heard on major concert stages and on a Grammy Award-winning compilation. With Timbalooloo, Etkin takes children on a journey around the world, exploring different instruments and cultures and discovering how vibrant global cultures form the backbone of American music and society. Don’t miss one of the few productions for young audiences to be embraced by major theaters and jazz festivals all around the world — from the Kennedy Center to Istanbul Jazz Fest, North Sea Jazz to Shanghai Theater!
Timbalooloo is more than just a live concert. It is a comprehensive teaching method that started off in New York, but has been embraced internationally, including organizations like UNESCO, American Speech Language Hearing Association, and Mladi Ladi Jazz in Prague, which now trains young musicians to teach Etkin’s Timbalooloo method in Czech public schools! The method is inspired by the natural and fluent way that children learn languages at an early age and strives to foster fluency in the language of music in an intuitive and fun way.
Best suited for ages 2 - 9 years old and their grown ups.
Banner images: Dusan Reljin
Tickets
$30 General Admission
$20 Subscribers, Seniors (55+), Glassboro Residents, Military (retired & active), Rowan Employees, Rowan Alumni, ADA Accessible Seating, Students (Non-Rowan)
FREE Youth (12 and under)
FREE for Rowan Students
Video
Press
On June 27, 2024 Oran Etkin was featured on NPR's Jazz Night in America program, hosted by Christian McBride.
LISTEN NOW
Artist Bio
Oran Etkin has been described as “Ebullient” by the New York Times, and voted #1 rising star clarinetist in DownBeat Magazine’s Critic’s Poll. His music can be heard on major concert stages throughout the world and a Grammy Award-winning compilation, but he is also equally at home sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a gaggle of children as he shows them how to make instruments come alive and speak the language of music. Etkin’s project for children, Timbalooloo, is one of the few young-audiences productions to be embraced by major theaters and jazz festivals all around the world — from Kennedy Center to Istanbul Jazz Fest, North Sea Jazz to Shanghai Theater. Now with his latest Timbalooloo album and live-show, “Finding Friends Far From Home, A Journey With Clara Net” Etkin shares his love of cultures from around the world with children back home. The alum was recorded on location in Zimbabwe, Czech Republic, Turkey and China and tells a story of Clara Net (Etkin’s clarinet) meeting new instrument friends and creating new music across cultural boundaries.
The concerts start with a problem... Etkin’s friend Clara (who later turns out to be Clara Net-his clarinet) fell asleep and came to the concert in her bed! The children help Etkin wake her up, and Clara Net calls for her mother, Big Mama Tuba, who answers from the back of the audience with a rumble! Together with the full band, Etkin takes the children on a journey around the world, exploring different instruments and cultures and discovering how vibrant global cultures form the backbone of American music and society.
Etkin is on the faculty of The New School University and has also appeared as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. French newspaper Libération chose his Paris concert as one of the top 6 musical events of the year, hailing it as ”a concert of weightlessness, class, spark, inspiration and sharing. Magic uninterrupted... for such is the music of Etkin: sensitive to the exchange with the audience.”
About the Marie Rader Presenting Series
The Marie Rader Presenting Series (MRPS) at Rowan University is a curated performing arts series that uplifts the region's cultural landscape. Focused on community engagement, artistic integrity, and inclusion, MRPS provides public offerings that reflect the innovation and quality consistent with Rowan's overall standards of high achievement and transformation, while providing unprecedented access for youth, families, and seniors.
Because of the Marie Rader Series, you don't have to travel to New York or Philadelphia to see some of the most influential leaders in dance, music, theatre and beyond. This series is also designed to introduce you to artists you wouldn't otherwise encounter-- artists who reflect not only the future of performing arts, but who help us envision a better world, right now, right here in South Jersey.
The Marie Rader is made possible in part through generous support from the Henry M. Rowan Family Foundation via the Marie Rader Memorial Fund and through funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
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