Monthly Archives: December 2011

Music listings – 12/12 through 12/18

1. Lukas Ligeti’s Benefit of Clergy

Date: Wednesday, Decemember 14 , 2011
Time: 8pm
Venue: Café Orwell (247 Varet St., in Bushwick, Brooklyn by the Morgan Ave. L-Train stop)
Ticket: free
Genre: nu Jazz/improv

Lukas Ligeti (Vienna, Austria) is a composer and percussionist. His work incorporates elements of jazz, contemporary classical, and various world musics. For this show he invited Hannis Brown (voice, electronics, etc.), Hypercolor: Eyal Maoz (guitar) and James Ilgenfritz (bass). He is playing on the drums.

2. The Irondale Center presents Issue Project Room “Vidas Perfectas”

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Kickstarter fundraising campaign by Search & Restore (NY Jazz Organizers)!

Text by Adam Schatz (Search & Restore)

Search & Restore is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the new jazz and improvised music scene, grown out of a love for improvisation and bringing audiences and artists together in new ways. Since founded in 2007 by Adam Schatz, it has grown into one of the most exciting new jazz organizations around.

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Special women around us: Azam Ali – the singer and the music activist.

Concert review by Eric Lofhjelm

Azam Ali and (most of) the members of Niyaz played two shows in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving week. I left from my home in Maryland on Sunday the 20th and travelled to the northeast suburbs of Philly to visit with family. Monday afternoon I headed into the city and found the venue, Ibrahim Theatre, at International House on Chestnut St. Having a few hours to spare, I sought out the Occupy Philadelphia site to get a first-person view of the encampment, and perhaps some perspective that the media was not presenting.

Returning to the venue for the show, I was pleased to find a somewhat ethnically mixed crowd, and a dance floor! Raquy and The Cavemen, from NYC, opened the show with their energetic mix of drums, guitar and kamanche (Persian spike fiddle). Azam, her husband and co-writer Loga Ramin Torkian, and 3 others took the stage. They performed several songs from Azam’s latest release, From Night to the Edge of Day as well as favorites from the two Niyaz recordings. Azam invited the audience to the dance floor towards the end of the show, and it filled with mostly women, swirling, arms lifted, hips swinging.

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