Two questions your audience will not be able to drop.

One asks how musicians who share no spoken language build one anyway. The other asks whether two holes in a 60,000-year-old bone were cut by a Neanderthal or left by a carnivore's teeth.

Check a date See both talks

The problem

Two ways this booking goes wrong

The program has no through-line, so it plays as a sampler platter. Or the speaker knows the material cold and loses the room in nine minutes.

I have sat in both of those rooms. So has your audience.

The guide

Thirty years on the other side of that stage

I built the Pangean Orchestra around an Iraqi qanun, an Iranian santur and an Israeli tsimbl. Musicians came from the United States, Ireland, Brazil, India, Japan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Most had never met. We played Phoenix Symphony Hall in 2010, and USLOT Films left Los Angeles to document it.

I studied sabar in Dakar and taught at AfroRenn in Senegal. I have played the Sambadrome in Rio more than ten times. I have written for television since 2011. In 2022 I stood inside the cave at Divje Babe, in the space where the bone was found.

Talk one

World Maestro

How musicians build a shared language before they agree on anything.

Talk two

The First Instrument

Whether a 60,000-year-old bone could be the oldest known musical instrument, and why the evidence has not closed the question.

The plan

How it works

Tell me the date and who is in the room.
You get a one-page outline within the week: running time, format, tech, and what a class visit would add.
I arrive early, give the talk, and stay for the questions.

The program lasts an evening. The question leaves with them.

Check a date

PHOENIX SYMPHONY HALL 2010 · USLOT FILMS DOCUMENTARY · BBC SPORT, DISCOVERY, ANIMAL PLANET · 10M+ DOCUMENTED STREAMS · SABAR STUDY, DAKAR · SAMBADROME, RIO