Recommended Concert: Ancient & contemporary music from the Middle East & beyond: Kamran Hooshmand & SoSaLa w. Special Guests

DesktopDate: Sunday, October 18, 2015
Time: 7pm
Venue: CA Music Room (218 E. 25th Street, NY, NY 10010, Tel#: 212-686-4220 or 845-758-5919)
Ticket: $20 (including wine & snacks)
PLease call 212-686-4220 or 845-758-5919 for advanced reservations as space is limited.

Genre:  a mix of Middle Eastern/Balkan traditional & early music pieces and original contemporary Persian songs/nu world trash

Line up/show times: Doors @ 7:00 pm
SoSaLa: 8pm – 8:45pm
Kamran Hooshmand: 9pm – 9:45pm

About the artists

Kamran Hooshmand  is an Iranian-American musician, ethnomusicologist and scholar residing in Austin, Texas. He performs regularly with his bands the 1001 Nights Orchestra and Ojalá as well as frequently featured in Texas Early Music Projects’ concerts of Medieval, Sephardic and Renaissance music. His self-produced CDs have been on the top-10 lists of the Austin Chronicle. He has contributed to award-winning film and tv soundtracks from scoring silent films to IMAX and PBS documentaries. His most recent collaboration on the oud and santur is on the 2015 Grammy-nominated album Nocturne Diaries by American roots singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson.

Galeet Dardashti (photo courtesy of Galeet Dardashti)

Galeet Dardashti (photo courtesy of Galeet Dardashti)

In this concert, unlike big ensemble productions that he is normally associated with, Kamran will perform a mix of Middle Eastern/Balkan traditional & early music pieces and original contemporary Persian songs based on the poetry of some of Iran’s prominent poets on the barbat (Persian oud) and the guitar in an intimate, acoustic setting.

Kamran will be joined by master oboe player Jeff Kahan, the wonderful Mizrahi chanteuse Galeet Dardashti and the percussionist extraordinaire and frame drum specialist Alby Roblejo.

SoSaLa – a music collective formed in New York in 2011 – is fueled by improvisation, diverse instruments such as electric guitar, fula flute, piano, vibraphone, sabar, electric tar, kamancheh, daf, electric trumpet and electronics, blending melancholic melodies, with those of front-man and sax player Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi‘s native Iran.

The rhythm section blends Persian, African and African-American rhythms and instruments. Sohrab’s vocals give a dada-istic touch to social and political issues. The music is molded by his international background, as an Iranian raised in Germany who later moved to Japan, and now New York City. Altogether, they call the music “nu world trash.”

For this event Sohrab invited his colleagues Baba Donn Eaton (LAST POETS) on percussion, harmonica and vocals and Kaveh Haghtalab on kamancheh.