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Are you ready to explore the boundless universe of sound and unlock your inner STEM genius?
Step into AFRORACK: Season Seven - a place where curiosity is ignited through exciting hands-on activities, sparking fresh ideas and limitless creativity. Your adventure awaits!

This workshop is designed for grades K-5, but everyone can enjoy it! All genders and backgrounds are represented in this class. No musical training required: we have people with hearing impairments or who don’t hear at all taking part successfully. Workshop attendees are asked to follow two simple rules: “bring your imagination and curiosity.” Participants will take part in hands-on experiments.

Led by AFRORACK founder Aaron Guice with special guest Yaw Evans

Sat, Feb 19, 8pm-9pm
15 NE Hancock St, Portland, OR 97212
https://pica.org/events/r2r

Aaron Guice is a rising social advocate whose work focuses on community wellness, STEM learning, and technology justice. Born and raised in Chicago, Guice earned a bachelor's degree in Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College (Chicago). Early in his profession, he worked as an on-set recording engineer, later establishing himself as a prominent Los Angeles commercial sound designer. Following a 15 year career with cutting-edge directors and ground-breaking advertising agencies, his return to Chicago has led to an expansion into the world of modular synthesis.

Aaron's new vision for STEM education is a composite style that bridges the gap between communities of color and equity opportunities in the tech industry. Through this unique lens, modular becomes more than just sounds, more than just music, and more than just technology—it's literally a space for new ideas and dialogue, a platform where students can aim to reformat solutions for tomorrow's needs. His creative process is tailored to each project's content, community, or space to produce truly unique and advanced innovative experiences.

He has held masterclasses and frequently lectures on modular synthesis performance, technology, and their relationships to activism. The continuously evolving practice strives for civic empowerment and investment to increase access. Aaron not only provides talented young African American students with means of approaching modular synthesis, but also creates cultural products that link art with social, spatial, and sonic realms—shaping community narratives into a creative production.

Yaw Evans is an electronic music artist, composer and DJ from South London known for his innovative approach to house, 2-step garage and UK techno. Yaw first rose to popularity on Instagram in 2018 after he began posting minute-long videos of jams he’d created solely using a Digitakt. He soon built his own modular synthesizer to expand his Digitakt compositions, and he now makes multi-genre music using a custom hybrid set up of groove boxes and his modular synth.

Creatively inspired by London, Yaw’s distinctive electronic style is explorative, merging textures of his city's culture, music and identity into his sound. His debut EP ‘Memories Of Now’ was released under Los Angeles-based label Mystery Circles in late 2020. Followed by a single, remix project and 2022 EP with South London based label GD4YA. The E.P has had support from BBC radio and club DJ’s. Yaw has performed as DJ in a string of high profile nightclubs, most recently in Detroit’s Spotlite and London’s Fabric. As a content creator/composer Yaw has featured in interviews, created bespoke compositions and performances for brands such as Reverb, Roland, Spitfire Audio, Labs, Pioneer, L’Oréal, Selfridges and Sumo Digital. Yaw has been a guest lecturer at King Britt’s Blacktronika undergraduate course at the University of California San Diego, sharing his journey into electronic music and his use of modular synthesis and music technology. Yaw is also an AFRORACK instructor, supporting audio-focused STEM education for young people of colour.

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Synth Library Portland programming is funded in part by the Regional Arts and Cultural Council (@regionalarts), the Fred W. Fields Fund of Oregon Community Foundation (@the_ocf), and CommuniCare students at Portland State University (@communicareor).