Category Archives: Concert And Event Reviews

Concert review: Mohammad-Reza Lotfi – the virtuoso tar and setar player came after almost ten years of absence from New York City!!!

Date: April 15, 2012
Venue: Symphony Space (NY)
Concert review by Aida Shahghasemi   
Mohammad-Reza Lotfi, the virtuoso tar and setar player came to the Symphony Space stage on W. 96th street after almost ten years of absence from New York City. As he regularly does, Lotfi walked on with his white cotton shirt and pants and gracefully carried himself to the point of readiness, legs crossed, tar in hand,  looking up at another world for the initial inspiration. On his side, he had his loyal tombak player, Mohammad Ghavihelm.

Courtesy of World Music Institut
Courtesy of World Music Institut

Lotfi began his career over forty years ago. He was born in 1947, in Gorgan, a northern province of Iran. Encouraged by a musical family, he delved deep into playing tar and soon he was the student of some of Iran’s biggest traditional music masters such as Aliakbar Shahnazi, Habibollah Salehi, Hossein Dehlavi, Abdollah Davami, Sa’id Hormozi, and Nourali Boroumand. His studies carried him to Western classical music conservatories, where conducting, composing, and orchestral membership became additional areas of study and fascination. Lotfi rose out of a fertile cultural and musical era in Iran. The seventies holds memories of influential individuals such as Dr. Dariush Safvat and initiations such as the Center for Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music, from which some of the most prominent Persian Classical musicians of today prospered. These include Mohammad-Reza Lotfi, Hossein Alizadeh, Parisa, Hossein Omoumi, Naser Farhangfar, Dariush Tala’i, Majid Kiani, and Mahmoud Farahmand.

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Concert review: Simon Shaheen – The Call, Songs of Arab Pride, Dignity and Liberation!

Date: April 10, 2012
Location: CUNY Graduate Center/ Live@365 World Music Series, presented by Elebash, curated by Isabel Soffer
Reviewed by Brian Prunka
Simon Shaheen is well-known among Arabic music enthusiasts as one of the most gifted living performers on the oud, the fretless near-eastern antecedent to the lute and as a superb violinist.  For several decades he has worked tirelessly to increase awareness and understanding among Western musicians and audiences of the rich Arabic musical tradition, and encouraged Arab musicians to embrace their musical heritage. I became aware of Simon in the late 1990s when I first began learning the oud, and learned of the annual Arabic Music Retreat that he directs each summer.  Simon and his colleagues, such as Ali Jihad Racy and Bassam Saba, introduced to me and countless others the remarkable depth and richness of the Arabic Tradition.  While my opinions on this performance may not be wholly objective, I hope that my intimate familiarity with the playing styles of the musicians will compensate to some degree for that deficiency.

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Concert review: Nass Gwana performing the sounds of Moroccan Gnawa music in New York

Date: March 27th, 2012
Venue: Zebulon (Brooklyn, NY)
Concert review by Jim Hoey

Zebulon, on Saturday night, was jumping with the sounds of Moroccan Gnawa music, a mix of Arabic, Sufi, and Sub-Saharan Berber mysticism. The band, Nass Gwana, performed three sets for the night, featuring the 3-stringed sintar (desert bass/guitar), which was shared by two of their players, and lots of droning kalabash (castanets), and vocals by almost all of their members.

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Concert Review: Brief Impressions of Amir Elsaffir’s Two Rivers Ensemble

Venue: The Jazz Standard (NY)
Date: February 21, 2012

Review by Matt Cole

On Tuesday, the 21st of February, my friend Sohrab took me to the Jazz Standard to see the 9:30 set of Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble. ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American musician, proficient on the trumpet and santur (a Middle Eastern analogue to the dulcimer), whose music is a fusion of modern jazz, traditional Iraqi maqam, and a few other odd bits thrown in (as is happily inevitable these days). The band featured Ole Mathisen on tenor sax (he never quite got to his soprano), Tareq Abboushi on the buzuq, Zafer Tawil on oud and percussion, Carlo DeRosa on bass, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums.

The first piece of the evening was quite long; it almost felt like a suite. For the first five or ten minutes, the music felt a little unsettled, as if it wasn’t quite locked in, but I have a feeling that this was more due to my ears adjusting to a new and unfamiliar combination of musics. Certainly for the rest of the evening, the band was extremely tight. Each player got an extended section to take the lead, and the main theme was returned to several times between such flights. ElSaffar started the piece on santour, and switched fairly quickly to trumpet (on which he remained most of the night). The first piece was followed by what seemed to be a brief number, and then two more extended pieces. At some times, the feel of the night’s music was more of modern jazz, at others, maqam dominated, but there was never a time when both sounds weren’t in some way present. Never did it feel like a synthetic product, but rather a conversation between two traditions.

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Concert review: Marc Ribot playing all kinds of sonic possibilities of the electric guitar

Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)
Date: February 16, 2012

Reviewed by Jim Hoey

On stage at a venue like Le Poisson Rouge, Marc Ribot eases into a chair surrounded by his guitars, accouterments and band mates for the night (John Medeski, piano, electric keys, William Parker, bass, and Andrew Cyrille drums). Immediately, upon striking their first notes, they conjure up decades of American Jazz, Blues, and avant-garde sounds, and lead into improvisational territory that would leave many other uninitiated players far behind.
 

Each of these musicians assembled by Ribot for this night are masters at their own instruments, with time under their belts, and experience mixing with other fellow travelers and elders like Cecil Taylor, Rashid Ali, Derek Bailey, Milford Graves, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Caetano Veloso, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn, and numerous others. It really can’t be understated, any one of these players could headline their own bill, draw a crowd in their own right, but together they make up a core group with tremendous chemistry, energy, and ability to anticipate what’s going to come next, so much so that the almost sold-out crowd, on this Thursday night, never tired of the spontaneity.

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