ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE
This concert is a part of Chamber Music Detroit’s Black Artists Black Composers (BABC) initiative, created to provide a dedicated platform for exceptional Black classical musicians to showcase and celebrate the still-underrepresented contributions of Black performers and composers to the rich fabric of classical music in American life.
An evening of classical and improvised music with Derek Menchan, ‘cello and bass, accompanied by Kasan Belgrave, woodwinds, Brendon Davis, piano, & Jeannette Fang, piano.
Industry and Innovation Center Atrium
Wayne State University
461 Burroughs Street, Detroit, MI 48202
Featuring:
Florence Price - Adoration
Ottorino Respighi - Adagio con Variazioni
Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op.102 No.2
Brendon Davis - Rebellion Fantasy
Improvised works with Kasan Belgrave and Brendon Davis
Admission includes handcrafted cocktail/mocktail along with savory bites.
Afterglow entertainment provided by DJ & Keyboardist Jon Dixon
Signature cocktail/mocktail sponsored by Black Spirits Legacy
Catering provided by Chef Steve Couch of Mr. Eat Right
This concert is sponsored by GreenLeaf Trust
“(Menchan) creates works with a technical precision and sense of honesty that is hard to match in the music scene today.”
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Derek Menchan, cello and bass
Cellist Derek Menchan was trained in his native Florida and at the Manhattan School. There he earned a Master’s degree with Olga Rostropovich and was awarded the Pablo Casals Award for Musical Accomplishment and Human Endeavor. He continued his studies informally through extended mentoring relationships with legendary cellists Janos Starker and Harvey Shapiro. Menchan has concertized as a soloist and chamber musician extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, and has had world premieres of his own arrangements and compositions in celebrated halls across the country.
Menchan has been dubbed “an übercellist” by Inside Houston Magazine; described as a visionary artist whose music-making “unites technical precision with a sense of honesty that’s hard to match in the music scene today” on Ink19.com; lauded as “a mage” by Cultural Weekly Magazine; and “a person for whom anything is possible” on allaboutjazz.com. A polymath with interests and expertise in multiple creative and scholarly fields, Menchan is a critically acclaimed record producer, professor, visual artist, and comparative religions scholar.
Kasan Belgrave, woodwinds
Kasan Belgrave is a woodwind specialist, recording artist, and composer. He is one of the rising talents in Detroit’s younger generation of jazz. His energetic playing style and improvisational finesse are an expression of fusion and gospel, while keeping the tradition of jazz and feel-good blues firm at his core. Well-versed across many modern genres, the kind, mature, and witty poise of the young saxophonist can easily keep any audience intrigued until dawn. Belgrave has already made his mark all over the globe—first by touring Barbados with his father, Marcus Belgrave, at age 16, and later with Wynton Marsalis as a multi-woodwind instrumentalist with Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has also performed and taught clinics through a U.S. Embassy exchange program. This included an April 2025 visit to Japan with the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, where he held masterclasses at various Japanese universities. Kasan’s debut album, entitled “Dual Citizen,” was released in January 2025.
Brendon Davis, piano
A dynamic and in-demand pianist, composer, and collaborator, Brendon Davis moves fluidly across musical worlds with a voice that is both fearless and deeply grounded. In 2024, they earned 3rd place at the International Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition and were featured on NBC Nightly News in collaboration with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with performances on prestigious stages such as the Kennedy Center. That same year, they were selected to audition for Herbie Hancock for the Herbie Hancock Institute, marking them as a rising artist with global reach.
Equally at home in jazz, classical, gospel, R&B, techno, and experimental production, Davis is known for shaping sound through collaboration as much as virtuosity. Their work includes collaborations with Jessica Care Moore, Rodney Whitaker, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Randy Scott, among others. Blurring genre boundaries while honoring tradition, Davis brings a singular energy to every project—one that is imaginative, intentional, and unmistakably their own.
Jeannette Fang, piano
Jeannette Fang is an imaginative and expressive pianist whose dynamic performances have attracted the attention of both professionals as well as the concert going public. Since 2015, she has been the pianist of the acclaimed Garth Newel Piano Quartet, who perform over 50 concerts a year as artists in residence and artistic directors of the Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs, Virginia.
Fang has received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Seattle International Piano Competition, where she also received the President’s Award and Audience Favorite Prize. She has earned top prizes in the Dallas Chamber Symphony International Piano Competition and the MTNA Young Artist National Competition. She is the recipient of the Earl V. Moore Award and the Gottlieb Award, given by the University of Michigan, and the Elizabeth J. Parisot award from Yale School of Music, the winner of the Karlfried Nordman Scholarship Piano Competition at Juilliard, and was a National Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 2003.