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Current Projects
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A Jewish Celebration (Putumayo), From ancient times to the modern era, celebration has had a thousand sounds in the world’s Jewish communities. The songs that accompany these moments of joy and reflection take different forms and embrace unexpected genres across the Jewish Diaspora. From Moldava to Uganda, tango to ska, A Jewish Celebration chronicles the upbeat diversity of global Jewish music. 10/12/12 >> go there
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A Tribe Called Red, 2013 North American Tour, Break dance moves at pow wows. Round-dance flashmobs to show community might. EDM that pounds with traditional drumming, reggae’s pulse and sway, and dubstep beats. It’s all part of the scene that Ottawa’s A Tribe Called Red sprang from and helped create. 03/05/13 >> go there
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Anton Batagov and Yungchen Lhamo, Tayatha (Cantaloupe Music), As the snow drifted down, covering New York City and its environs in a foot-deep blanket of white, classically trained pianist and post-minimalist composer Anton Batagov put his fingers to the keys. “I had not a single note on paper. No files, nothing,” he remembers. 05/08/13 >> go there
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Appalatin, Waterside, “Hey, there’s a guy playing a charango on Bardstown Road!” That’s how Fernando Moya, a Louisville-based Ecuadoran flute and panpipe virtuoso, first heard about Appalatin, the unexpected meeting of Kentucky-raised musicians and masterful Latin émigrés. Moya was so excited, he grabbed his own charango (a diminutive Andean lute-like instrument) and ran down to see what was going on. He soon joined the band.
05/01/13 >> go there
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Brushy One-String, Destiny, When filmmaker Luciano Blotta walked out of a rural Jamaican recording studio, way off the beaten path of tourists and music hounds, he saw something wildly unusual: a man with an instrument. Even more surprising, the instrument in question—a battered but resonant acoustic guitar—had only one string. 03/13/13 >> go there
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Chris Berry, King of Me (Kanaga System Krush), He tossed out everything else, then cut the mbira in half. Chris Berry spent eight years in Zimbabwe, learning mbira (thumb piano) and steeping himself in its role in both rituals and festivities. He wrote hit songs, turned to lush, complex arrangements for a big brash band, and took the Zimbabwean scene by storm, only to be forced to flee after band members perished and his own life was under threat. 05/02/13 >> go there
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Clearwater Festival, Croton-on-Hudson, NY, Bold beats and folk icons, hand-crafted delicacies and gorgeous produce, unexpected art installations and an old-school working waterfront. Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival, also simply and affectionately known as the Clearwater Festival unites major musical figures and green activism, building a creative community in one of the most scenic spots on the Hudson River. 02/20/13 >> go there
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Fanfare Ciocarlia, 2013 North American Tour, Fanfare Ciocarlia, the brass orchestra from the village of Zece Prajini in northeastern Romania, is one of the world's foremost live Gypsy bands. And finally, they’re back. 07/25/12 >> go there
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Fela! On Tour 2013, Every Tuesday, Fela Kuti would go to his Lagos club and main base of musical operations, The Shrine. There, before a core group of supporters and fans, the musical revolutionary and gifted composer would take questions and answer them, often using his radical responses and the crowd’s ideas as the seed of his next song. 01/18/13 >> go there
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Femi Kuti, No Place For My Dream (Knitting Factory Records), Once they bombed them; now they are building museums to honor them. Tapped as Afrobeat founding father Fela Kuti’s chosen successor, Femi Kuti has fought for his own voice and for his family’s freedom. On a tide of growing international recognition, Femi has broken the chains that bound Afrobeat, adding his own vision and restoring his father’s legacy to its proper place. 02/27/13 >> go there
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Gypsophilia, Horska EP, North American Tour, The club is packed. There’s dancing on the tables, a line around the block. The guitars are blazing, the fiddle and trumpet blasting, reviving the days when jazz music was actually meant for getting down. 04/26/13 >> go there
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Hadar Maoz, US Showcase, Inspired by Central Asian mystic singing, by long lines of Bukharian Jewish women raising their voices and beating out complex rhythms, Israeli vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Hadar Maoz knows how to channel centuries of spiritual teaching and joyful music. A dynamic performer, Maoz takes her roots and filters them through her other love—funk and rock—organically uniting Asian modes and Western pop grooves. 02/13/13 >> go there
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Jason Seed Stringtet, In the Gallery, “Learn what you can, then get out of your own way and create! This music often finds itself straddling the world between folk and classical music,” reflects Seed. “But it’s folk music that comes not from a formal geographic or cultural area, but from my own brain.” 05/01/13 >> go there
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Kodo, 2013 One Earth Tour, The visceral intensity, the athleticism, of taiko drumming in the hands of a master group like Japan’s Kodo may feel like the polar opposite of kabuki theater’s controlled, nuanced performances. Yet when Kodo announced it had found a new Artistic Director in kabuki icon Tamasaburo Bando—often referred to simply as “Tamasaburo”—it made perfect sense. 07/11/12 >> go there
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Live from Festival au Desert, Held outside Timbuktu, the Festival in the Desert has long been where cultures come together in unexpected ways. Artists from the Arctic Circle to the small Pacific Island of New Caledonia, from rock stars like Bono and Robert Plant to traditional musicians from remote communities, have all found a warm welcome at the Festival, helping to put little-known Saharan music on the global map. 01/30/13 >> go there
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Live@365, 2012-2013 Concert Series (NYC), It seems so simple: A bouncing strip of metal or other material, buzzing and pinging over the resonant open mouth. Yet Wang Li takes this simplicity and finds every subtlety, every overtone, melodic element, and percussive potential in this ancient instrument. 07/20/12 >> go there
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Lotus World Music & Arts Festival, 20 Years (Bloomington, IN), Indiana has a secret. Hidden in one of America’s great small towns—complete with idyllic courthouse square and thriving main street—is an unexpected hub of global culture. From Tibetan monasteries to Afghan and Burmese eateries, Bloomington goes beyond the laidback cosmopolitanism of most Midwestern college towns. The cornerstone of Bloomington’s global side is the annual Lotus World Music and Arts Festival. 03/01/13 >> go there
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Ludovico Einaudi, In a Time Lapse (Ponderosa), Time contracts and expands, creating a space for greater depth, greater feeling. It can plod by, or rush in a swift, meaningless blur. Italian alt-classical composer Ludovico Einaudi began contemplating time’s qualities as he reflected on his life and on the writings of Henry David Thoreau. “In Walden, Thoreau describes the sounds he hears in the woods, in his cabin, in great detail,” Einaudi explains. “Those sounds, and the different impression of time he expresses, stuck with me, as I traveled and performed and began to compose new pieces.” 02/28/13 >> go there
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Matuto, The Devil and the Diamond (Motema Music), It’s Carnival in Recife. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And watch out: That just may be the Devil spinning through the drunken, dancing crowd, trying to get friendly with the saint in disguise, with the diamond in the rough. 10/11/12 >> go there
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Mike Massy, U.S. Debut Concert (New York, NY), Lebanese pianist, composer, and singer Mike Massy has an inborn agility that springs from his unique heritage: Classically trained in both Western and Middle Eastern canons, enthralled with the cosmopolitan worlds of jazz, chanson, and good old pop, the young artist has carved out a space for himself and for a different sound in a tough scene. And done so with striking delicacy. 04/02/13 >> go there
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Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits, Sarawoga, Oliver Mtukudzi, affectionately called “Tuku” by fans worldwide, has weathered storms with his sharp observations and gracious emphasis on the basic human experiences that unite us all: childhood and aging, respect and hope, women’s rights and AIDS, community and connection. 03/13/13 >> go there
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Orchid Ensemble, US 2013 Tour, Words can create a new, uncanny world. They can tie down the meaning of a musical piece—or inspire and liberate its performers. The poetry and words that underpin Orchid Ensemble’s live repertoire and new recording, Life Death Tears Dream, conjure otherworldly landscapes, wandering spirits, and ethereal loves. All while integrating traditions rarely considered compatible. 01/30/13 >> go there
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Pandit Chitresh Das, National Tour and Film Debut, Master dancer and educator Chitresh Das makes every gesture—every arch of the eyebrow, every flick of the finger—vibrate with meaning, with an innate creativity and utter commitment based on centuries of intertwining cultural threads. Though so well versed in the classical Indian dance form of kathak that its complex disciplines have become second nature, Das has forged a new, uncompromising path of collaboration and cultural translation, working with flamenco dancers, tap whiz kids, and contemporary performance expectations to continue kathak’s lively evolution. 02/08/13 >> go there
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Salaam, Salaam’s wily innovations may raise a few eyebrows among hardcore purists—though they are the apple of many a Middle Eastern music aficionado and belly dancer’s eye. These experiments run deeper than merely jazzing up or rockifying Middle Eastern tunes, or following the approach common in Arab music today of throwing an electric keyboard behind an otherwise traditional arrangement. They are the products of years of research and a longing to bring ancient musics fully into a global and fluid world, while opening American eyes to what Moore aptly calls “the beautiful sides of Middle Eastern culture” that are too often overlooked. 06/24/09 >> go there
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Women of Brazil (Putumayo), From Carmen Miranda’s playful intensity in the 1940s and 50s and Astrud Gilberto’s sultry alto in the 1960s to today’s multi-talented young generation, the voices of Brazilian women have long shaped popular song worldwide. Through classic samba and bossa nova, female Brazilian vocalists have won a place in hearts across the planet. 04/04/13 >> go there
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