Lenox — Storyteller, beatboxer, and rapper Baba Israel and multi-instrumentalist and soundscape artist Sean Nowell will appear with dancers Audrey Thao Berger and B-Boy Spidey at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 26, at Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning. The event is presented under the auspices of “TLI for Families: Music Moves, Stories Groove.”
The program for Sunday morning is being described as a celebration of music, movement, and storytelling. The performance invites young people to bring music, poetry, and stories to life through interactive dance.
Baba Israel is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural ambassador whose work fuses hip-hop, spoken word, theater, and community engagement. Raised in New York by parents involved in The Living Theatre, he honed his craft at venues like the Nuyorican Poets Café. He co-founded Meta Bass ‘n’ Breath in Australia, where he also began his work in arts education and community theater. As a U.S. State Department cultural ambassador, he has led workshops and performances across the globe. His musical collaborations span DJ Logic, Zion I, and Outkast, and his acclaimed solo show “Boom Bap Meditations” toured internationally. Israel co-founded Playback NYC, bringing participatory theater to underserved communities. From 2009 to 2012, he led Manchester’s Contact Theatre, championing youth and boundary-pushing arts. A member of Soul Inscribed and co-creator of “The Spinning Wheel,” he now serves as co-artistic director at University Settlement and Curator of Performance at HI-ARTS. He holds an MFA from Goddard College.
Sean Nowell is a saxophonist, flutist, and composer with degrees in jazz composition from Berklee College of Music and jazz performance from the Manhattan School of Music. His work incorporates electronic effects to broaden his instruments’ timbre and spans genres including film scores, ballet, theater, classical, and both big-band and small-ensemble jazz. He has toured internationally as musical director for Bond Street Theatre and performed with a multimedia jazz ensemble at the Istanbul Jazz Festival. Nowell has also participated in cultural diplomacy tours with Soul Inscribed, a hip-hop collective, in Russia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Mauritius. He performs regularly at New York City venues such as Smalls, The 55 Bar, Groove, and The Blue Note and leads weekly improvisational sessions with his organ quartet, Subtonics. He has recorded with Stanley Clarke and George Duke and co-composed the score for the film “Off the Black.” His recordings are released through Posi-Tone Records.
Audrey Thao Berger is a choreographer based in New York City and originally from San Francisco. Her work focuses on interdependence, reciprocity, and community care, often drawing from natural ecosystems to explore how adaptive networks support survival and transformation. Her choreography has been presented at venues including the United States of Asian America Festival, The Place Theatre, Arts on Site, and the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. She has received an A4 “What Can We Do?” micro-grant, held fellowships at Motive Brooklyn and University Settlement, and is currently a 2024–2025 Artist in Residence at University Settlement. Berger also has experience in arts administration and production, with past roles at “Sleep No More,” the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in dance from the London Contemporary Dance School.
The Linde Center for Music and Learning is located at 3 W. Hawthorne Rd, Lenox, MA 01240. For more information and tickets, visit the TLI website.
