Monthly Archives: July 2012

Book recommendation: John Cage and the Music of Zen — a new John Cage biography!

Author: Kay Larson
Title: Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner LIfe of Artists
Publisher: Penguin Press, NY, NY
Country: USA
Format: book (illustrated. 474 pages)
Price: $29.95
Publishing date: September 5, 2012

John Cage ‘s immense contribution to the arts – and to music by Brian Eno and Philip Glass, Morton Feldman and Pierre Boulez, Nam June Paik and La Monte Young – has a crucial yet invisible Zen component.

A new biography, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Life of Artists (Penguin Press, 2012), by critic Kay Larson (New York Magazine, the New York Times), makes visible the music of Cage’s Zen path.

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Recommended workshop & concert: KARL BERGER’S IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA

Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra will come to Manhattan’s upper west side to perform at the beautiful El Taller space at 2710 Broadway ( corner of 104th St ) on Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Following a critically-acclaimed run at The Jazz Gallery, and before that at The Stone, Karl Berger’s Orchestra of 20 or more professional string, horn, and percussion soloists continues to turn improvisational ideas developed in the 7:30 pm workshop/rehearsal into a fully formed 9:00 pm orchestral performance. Using his “Music Mind” concept, Karl introduces a new approach and experience of harmonizing improvised sound.

Conducted in Karl’s inimitable style, developed at the legendary Creative Music Studio, this orchestra of extraordinary improvisers explores original themes, melodies from the world’s folk traditions and compositions written by legendary improvisers such as Don Cherry or Ornette Coleman, as well as musical ideas that arise spontaneously. One of the orchestra’s trademarks is Ingrid Sertso’s uncanny vocalization and poetry.

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Short film music documentary feature: Arto Lindsay…do you remember me?

Text by Sohrab Saadat Lardjevardi

Just by chance, when I was looking for a Melvin Gibbs YouTube video for the DooBeeDoo music listings, I found this video which features Arto Lindsay’s special appearance at the opening reception for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s exhibition, “Sketchbook for Arto”.

I have known Arto since 1991 when I met him and his band The Ambitious Lovers for the first time at the Club Quattro in Tokyo. We met backstage and became friends. I met him again in NY the next year. He invited me to his big apartment in Manhattan. We talked about the NY music scene and about doing some music together. The next year we met again in Tokyo, when he toured Japan again. In his free time I showed him around Tokyo.

From that time on I lost touch with him, because he didn’t come to Japan and I didn’t go to NY. But I heard from music colleagues that he moved to Brazil for private reasons.

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Music listings – 7/23 through 7/30

1. Melvin Gibbs Elevated Entity

Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Time: 10:30pm
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012, ph: 212- 505-3474)
Ticket: $15 (Special offer: two pairs of give away tickets. Please mail the names to sohrab.saadat@gmail.com by Wednesday 12 noon)
Genre: afro beat alternative funk hip-hop

Listening to Melvin Gibbs’ Elevated Entity and their new album Ancients Speak (LiveWired Music) is like walking down the street in New York and unexpectedly falling into a manhole, only to discover there is an African-American underground music scene where the African diaspora has knocked down all barriers between genres, placing creativity on equal status with groove. Afrobeat is rubbing against Hendrix-style guitar solos, hip hop has gone to Bahia and come back with the most primal electronic beats. Afro-Cuban spirits intermingle with the Holy Spirit. It’s a riotous gathering of all things African.

The line up:

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