Date: Saturday, June 27, 2015
Time: 11am
Venue: The Riverside Church (490 Riverside Drive, between W 120 & 122)
John Pietaro‘s obituary of Ornette Coleman was published in “ConterPunch” magazine, Check it out: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/ornette-colemans-revolution/
Interview by Richard Bennett
Photo courtesy of Arun Ramamurthy
The excellent violinist Arun Ramamurthy combines Carnatic music with jazz in his eponymously titled Arun Ramamurthy Trio. He lives in Brooklyn with wife, violinist Trina Basu and their baby son. When I offered him a baseball ticket in exchange for an interview, he quickly agreed. We sat in section 202 in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium on a sunny day. Arun was wearing a Don Mattingly Throwback Jersey. I bought Arun a hot dog and a beer and between innings we talked.
Richard Bennett (RB): In your ideal band, would you rather hire Questlove or Zakir Hussein?
Text by Marco Lienhard/Taikoza
About this project
We are excited at the project of recording a new CD of Taikoza‘s new pieces. We have been performing our new repertoire but we do not have the songs recorded yet. We hope that, with your help, we will be able to finally make this new CD. We have the opportunity to use a 6-foot long Taiko drum but could not find a space to record it. We finally found the Studio in New York that has doors big enough to fit it in.
Text by Matt Lavelle
My journey to deliver an alto saxophone to Giuseppi Logan began on my lunch break. I caught my breath from the hazardous selling floor and quietly made my exit towards Herald Square. I waded through the river of tourist consumer zombies. Three of them blew smoke in my face with their usual haughty vibe. Do you addicts even know how pernicious you are? I made my way up to John Baltimore Music on 46th street. John is one of the last men standing from the purge of the fabled Music Row at 48th street. When I arrived at his showroom of hornucopia, I was immediately greeted with a hug. John and I have history. Somehow we ended up talking about Miles son Gregory, and John told me a quick story.
Miles bought a brand new Red Ferrari at one point, right before he hit Europe for a tour. He left with explicit orders to Gregory that he would not touch the car. After Miles had left, Gregory took the car all over Canada. Afterward, Gregory was at Rod Baltimore’s shop. Rod was John’s Dad, and the king of music row at the time. Miles called Rod and said he had a trumpet emergency and was flying back to New York to fix it. Gregory heard the call and ran home to clean up the car. He thought he was in the clear until Miles looked for two-quarters that he had taped to the top of the front right tire. When Miles saw the missing quarters, he knew that Gregory disobeyed him, and he threw him out of the house.
Text by Richard Bennett
George Barba Yiorgi first appeared on the New York music scene as co-leader of the wildly successful Greek-rock band Annabouboula. When the group disbanded in 1994, he mysteriously disappeared for around twenty years. Rumours abounded; the most credible being that he was working as a merchant marine based out of Piraeus Greece. Barba Yiorgi reappeared in NYC in 2014, leading two groups, The ByzanTones (surf-rock) and Dervisi, a rembetika trio in which he sings and plays the tzouras, which is a thin string instrument related to the bouzouki.
Dervisi on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/barba-yiorgi/sets/dervisi-live-2014-3-songs
