Artist: Wisaal
Title: The Warp and the Weft
Label: self released
Genre: World: Middle East, Contemporary
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
According to the liner notes, the two key components of tapestry weaving are the warp and the weft. The warp threads are the foundation through which the weft threads are weaved to create the design. In the end, the former is hidden by the design revealed by the later. This is the conceptual foundation of Wisaal.
Text by Dawoud Kringle
On the night of Thursday, April 11, 2013, Justice for Jazz Artists held a demonstration and rally to begin its Jazz Built This! protest against jazz club owners who refuse to make modest pension contributions on behalf of the musicians who play in their clubs and make these club owners rich.
New York City is a Mecca for the best jazz musicians in the world. It was here that jazz became one of America’s greatest artistic and musical achievements. At the same time, many older musicians have little economic security and often retire in poverty. Broadway and symphony orchestras are protected by union contracts; jazz musicians are not. To add insult to injury, owners of prestigious and expensive jazz clubs (such as the Blue Note, Birdland, Jazz Standard, Village Vanguard and Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola) have prospered from the musicians who play in those clubs; while the musicians are not guaranteed minimum pay standards or benefits. Many of these clubs record the musicians with no remuneration (Some clubs have argued that players have de facto agreed to the clubs’ recording and use of their work simply by agreeing to play there; which is absurd. Under any basic union contract, musicians would receive compensation for work they create. Club owners already make ample profit from the live performance, and do not have the right to perpetually profit from the product that musicians create simply because the owners possess the space where the musicians play).
Date: Monday, April 15, 2013
Time: 6:30pm until 9:00pm
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (82nd Street at 5th Avenue, New York, New York 10028)
Ticket: $22
Genre: video & music
Join Spectrum as Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth, performs live in front of a projection of “Street,” a video by British-born artist James Nares that features Moore’s original music.
Over the course of a week in September 2011, Nares—a New Yorker since 1974—recorded sixteen hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan from a moving car. He then greatly slowed his source material, editing down the results to one hour of steady, continuous motion and scoring it with music for a twelve-string guitar composed and performed by Moore. Nares’s video forms the centerpiece of the exhibition “Street,” on view at the Museum through May 27, 2013.
Date: April, 6, 2013
Venue:the Rubin Museum of Art (NY)
Review by Dawoud Kringle, photos and video by Veronique Lerebours
HarmoNYom, and the Rubin Museum of Art presented a weekend long Pt. Ravi Shankar tribute series as part of the MUSIC ROOM FESTIVAL. On Saturday, April 6, I attended a performance of mandolin virtuoso Snehasish Mozumder, with Aditya Kalyanpur on tabla.
Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Time: 9pm
Venue: Zirzamin (90 West Houston Street New York, NY 10012)
Ticket: t.b.a.
Genre: revolutionary jazz
Guest appearences by:
Cheryl Pyle/Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic – 8pm
Nick Gianni’s Evolution – 10pm
New York: The debut CD of new jazz ensemble THE RED MICROPHONE, The Red Microphone Speaks, will be officially released at Zirzamin in NYC’s West Village on April 17. THE RED MICROPHONE is comprised of veteran improvisational musicians John Pietaro (vibraphone, percussion), Ras Moshe (saxophones, flute), Rocco John Iacovone (saxophones), Nicolas Letman- Burtinovic (bass).
The disc brings together powerful revolutionary statements from the likes of Malcolm X, Pierre Degeyter & Eugene Pottier (composer and poet of ‘L’Internationale’), John Howard Lawson, Hanns Eisler, Angela Davis and Dalton Trumbo, through the media of free jazz, contemporary composition and more. The album contains a powerful sampling of our “special brand of new revolutionary jazz” (DooBeeDooBeeDoo) including reconstructions of radical themes, original music and free improvisations. Call it post-Dolphy, post-Ornette, post-Punk, post-Occupy music. The tapes were mastered by legendary downtown new music producer and musician Kramer (ex of NoiseNewYork studio and Shimmy-Disc records). Immediately after the mastering, Kramer had this to say about the disc:
