Venue: Pianos (NY)
Date: December, 2013
Review by Dawoud Kringle
One December night, people jammed into the main room of the Lower East Side’s music venues Pianos NYC. The Kominas, a Pakistani/American/Muslim Taqwacore Punk group who’d come to national attention after the publication of Michael Muhammad Knight’s groundbreaking novel The Taqwacores were playing as part of South Asian Film Festival.
Venue: Drom (NY)
Date: November 24, 2013
Concert review and photos by Matt Cole and Linda Boney
On Sunday, the 24th of November, I caught an enjoyable double bill of Dawoud Kringle‘s eclectic ensemble Renegade Sufi and Holly Cordero‘s jazzy project Truculently Audacious at Alphabet City’s Drom. Though different stylistically on the surface, these two bands nonetheless went quite well together.
Truculently Audacious
(Photo by Matt Cole)
Venue: Snug Harbor (New Orleans)
Date: November 29, 2013
Review and photo by DJ Ruby (DooBeeDoo’s New Orleans contributor)
Sublime may be the only appropriate way to describe B3 organ master Dr. Lonnie Smith’s November 29th performance for the small but packed room at Snug Harbor on bustling Frenchmen Street. With each key change the audience followed him eagerly through levels of exaltation in the music that seemed to ooze from his fingers.
Date: October 27, 2013
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)
Review by Dawoud Kringle
On an early Sunday night, Le Poisson Rouge was packed to the rafters for a performance of Armenian jazz. The show was billed as “Armenian Jazz with Arto & Friends.” The concert was dedicated to Paul Motian, and Armenian American whose musical legacy barely requires an introduction.
Arto & friends is Arto Tunçboyaciyan (percussion, drums, vocals, guitar), Lucy Yeghiazarayan (violin, vocals), Tatev Yeghiazarayan (piano, vocals, percussion), Michael Sarian (trumpet), and Noah Garabedian (bass).
Date: October 18, 2013
Venue: Spectrum (NY)
Review and videos by Dawoud Kringle
Friday afternoons are an unusual time of the day to hold a concert. CMJ was holding a big shindig at Arlen’s Grocery and you get your occasional concert in the park. But it’s still not conventional: at least not for music venues. However, Spectrum (a music/art/science venue on Manhattan’s lower east side that combines a fearless urge to present the best of New York’s underground elite in a comfortable home-like setting) had other ideas. One Friday I ventured to attend the performance of Tom Chess‘ ensemble Bandit Hat (Tom Chess; oud/ney, Jimmy Mngwandi; bass, and Daniel Kurfirst; drums/percussion).
The music started with some free, atonal smokiness from the bass, which was shattered by a scintillating punch in the sternum from the oud, and directed the formless sounds toward its own tonality. The percussion eased in, and it all coalesced into a Moroccan sounding 6/8 groove. From there, the audience was swept up in a modern magic carpet ride.
