Author Archives: Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Event Recommendation: “DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL” Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Full Weekend of Music, Spoken Word, Dance Toward Social Change

DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2015 POSTERThe Dissident Arts Festival, the annual gathering of revolutionary creativity, will fete its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event takes place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively.

Highlights of this year’s special anniversary Festival will be the reunion of free jazz master Daniel Carter and 1980s hardcore/no wave band Dissipated Face. Other features include modern dance/new music performance by Patricia Nicholson-Parker (co-producer of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art) which includes averitable all-star line-up including Jason Hwang and Michael TA Thompson. Another feature will be Downtown stalwart Trudy Silver and her multi-media radical group Where’s the Outrage? which can count violinist Rosie Hertlein and saxophonists Daniel Carter and Ras Moshe among its ranks. Additionally, make way for the neo-Beat spoken word of Steve Dalachinsky, the Nueva Cancion of Bernardo Palombo, liberation jazz by the Red Microphone, the expansive sound of the 12 Houses Orchestra (conducted by Matt Lavelle), poet Raymond Nat Turner’s Remembrance of the Victims of Police Violence, the “other-world art music” of Sumari, topical spoken word by Chris Butters, Safiya Martinez and Sana Shabazz, and Festival founder John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project which fetes the heritage of revolutionary poetry and prose over the past century.

The event is sponsored by the Len Ragozin Foundation and endorsed by the National Writers Union-New York UAW Local 1981 and DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY world music magazine.

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CD Review: Jon Irabagon…an utterly fascinating recording

Jon IrabagonArtist: Jon Irabagon
Title: Inaction is an Action
Label: Irabbagast Records
Genre: sopranino saxophone/nu jazz/experimental
Rel. date: September 15, 2015

CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

When I first saw Inaction is an Action, I was truly curious. A sopranino saxophone solo CD! I had to know what this guy was up to.

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Concert Review: Forró in the Dark / Cyro Baptista & Banquet of the Spirits / Letieres Leite & Orkestra Rumpilezz

Date: Thursday, July 30, 2015
Venue: Damrosch Park @ Lincoln Center
Concert review by Constance Cooper

Featured bands: Forró in the Dark / Cyro Baptista & Banquet of the Spirits / Letieres Leite & Orkestra Rumpilezz with Arturo O’Farrill, piano; Steven Bernstein, trumpet

Photo from F.I.T.D. FB page

Photo from F.I.T.D. FB page

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Music Listings – 8/3 through 8/9/2015

1. Rez Abbasi’s Junction

Date: Monday, August 3, 2015
Time: 8pm
Venue: Quinn’s (330 Main Street, Beacon, New York 12508)
Tickets: donation
Genre: jazz

Rez Abbasi: guitar
Mark Shim: tenor saxophone, EWI
Ben Stivers: keyboards
Kenny Grohowski: drums

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, removed at the age of four to the vastness of Southern California, schooled at the University of Southern California and the Manhattan School of Music in jazz and classical music, along with a pilgrimage in India under the tutelage of master percussionist, Ustad Alla Rakha, Rez Abbasi is a vivid synthesis of all the above stated influences and genres.

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CD Review: Rana Santacruz (Mexico) using his multi-instrumental and lyrical talents to great storytelling effect

Rana SantacruzArtist: Rana Santacruz
Title: Por Ahí
Label: self-produced
Genre: influences as diverse as Mariachi music, classic Mexican cinema, American bluegrass, and post-punk

Laughing at funerals and playing music at the apocalypse: Rana Santacruz releases Por Ahí
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

Por Ahi is the latest from eclectic – and eccentric – artist Rana Santacruz.

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