Joel Laviolette
(he/him)
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Joel Laviolette is a composer, educator, instrument builder and performer based in Austin, Texas. His musical experience spans genres and crosses borders, weaving in elements from electronica to African marimba and mbira traditions. Joel is the director of the Rattletree School of Marimba and directs the groups Rattletree, Kupira Marimba, and Mafaro Marimba. Those bands have played well over 1000 shows internationally and have been featured on Jimmy Kimmel, ACL, SXSW, PASIC, and countless festivals, universities, and clubs around the world. As an internationally recognized expert on Zimbabwean mbira music, Joel has been featured on NPR, and he has been published in journals including Percussive Notes and the book Mbira Music: Structures and Processes. Joel has lived many years in Zimbabwe and studied with his primary teacher Newton Cheza Chozengwa for 28 years until his death in 2021. He has done extensive field recording in Zimbabwe and Mozambique and created the non-profit record label Mhumhi Records. Those recordings have been included in the International Library of African Music so that future generations may learn from them.
As a composer, Joel weaves the philosophical understanding of the structure of mbira music in to his daily life and work: Interactivity, the breaking down of the audience/performer barrier, improvisation, and deeply interlocking interplay are important considerations in his work. For the majority of his work, Joel strongly believes in the idea that everyone should come away with their own story and understanding about what a piece of music meant to them.