Monthly Archives: March 2012

Music listings – 3/19 through 3/25

1. Japan Nite

Date: Monday, March 19, 2012
Time: 8:30pm
Venue: Public Assembly (70 North 6th St.,Brooklyn, NY)
Ticket: $15
Genre: Japanese indie rock

Line up:
1. ZZZ’s All-girl trio from Hyogo, featuring members of Hystoic Vein (who played Japan NIte’s US tour in 2011). http://zzzs-jpn.com/
2. NOKIES! Young Kyoto college students whose loose guitar style (think The Strokes) and off-kilter beats (a la Vampire Weekend) will make you smile, jump and dance. sites.google.com/site/nokiesweb
3. Kao=S Performance trio with Jack playing tsugaru-shamisen (kind of a Japanese banjo), Shuji on guitar, and “sword-dancing” singer Kaori.

2. Bill McHenry Quartet

Continue reading

Concert Review: Brief Impressions of Amir Elsaffir’s Two Rivers Ensemble

Venue: The Jazz Standard (NY)
Date: February 21, 2012

Review by Matt Cole

On Tuesday, the 21st of February, my friend Sohrab took me to the Jazz Standard to see the 9:30 set of Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble. ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American musician, proficient on the trumpet and santur (a Middle Eastern analogue to the dulcimer), whose music is a fusion of modern jazz, traditional Iraqi maqam, and a few other odd bits thrown in (as is happily inevitable these days). The band featured Ole Mathisen on tenor sax (he never quite got to his soprano), Tareq Abboushi on the buzuq, Zafer Tawil on oud and percussion, Carlo DeRosa on bass, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums.

The first piece of the evening was quite long; it almost felt like a suite. For the first five or ten minutes, the music felt a little unsettled, as if it wasn’t quite locked in, but I have a feeling that this was more due to my ears adjusting to a new and unfamiliar combination of musics. Certainly for the rest of the evening, the band was extremely tight. Each player got an extended section to take the lead, and the main theme was returned to several times between such flights. ElSaffar started the piece on santour, and switched fairly quickly to trumpet (on which he remained most of the night). The first piece was followed by what seemed to be a brief number, and then two more extended pieces. At some times, the feel of the night’s music was more of modern jazz, at others, maqam dominated, but there was never a time when both sounds weren’t in some way present. Never did it feel like a synthetic product, but rather a conversation between two traditions.

Continue reading

Concert review: Marc Ribot playing all kinds of sonic possibilities of the electric guitar

Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)
Date: February 16, 2012

Reviewed by Jim Hoey

On stage at a venue like Le Poisson Rouge, Marc Ribot eases into a chair surrounded by his guitars, accouterments and band mates for the night (John Medeski, piano, electric keys, William Parkerbass, and Andrew Cyrille drums). Immediately, upon striking their first notes, they conjure up decades of American Jazz, Blues, and avant-garde sounds, and lead into improvisational territory that would leave many other uninitiated players far behind.
 

Each of these musicians assembled by Ribot for this night are masters at their own instruments, with time under their belts, and experience mixing with other fellow travelers and elders like Cecil Taylor, Rashid Ali, Derek Bailey, Milford Graves, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Caetano Veloso, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn, and numerous others. It really can’t be understated, any one of these players could headline their own bill, draw a crowd in their own right, but together they make up a core group with tremendous chemistry, energy, and ability to anticipate what’s going to come next, so much so that the almost sold-out crowd, on this Thursday night, never tired of the spontaneity.

Continue reading

CD review: The Mast “Wild Poppies”…How did profit trump well-being?

Artist: The Mast
Title: Wild Poppies
Label: Channel A Records (self released)
Genre: psychedelic indie rock

Review by Dawoud Kringle

Every now and again, a CD comes my way that ends up dominating my CD player for a time. Every now and again, a body of music crosses my path that insinuates itself into my psyche, and speaks to me.

Continue reading

Recommended Kickstarter Campaign: LowLine – An Underground Park on NYC’s Lower East Side

Text by A Design project in Lower East Side, NY by Dan Barasch

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

What is the LowLine? We want to transform an abandoned trolley terminal on the Lower East Side of Manhattan into the world’s first underground park.  It will be a new kind of public space, using solar technology for natural illumination, and cutting edge design to capture and highlight a very special industrial space.

Continue reading