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.
Artist: Kosi
Title: One More Cup of Coffee
Label: self-released
Genre: blues/jazz/soul
You can download or purchase the album on Amazon, BandCamp and kosi-sings.com.
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
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.
Artist: Meg Okura & the Pan Asian Jazz Ensemble
Title: Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto
Label: self released
Genre: chamber jazz
CD Review by Matt Cole
As I’m not very familiar with the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, I would seem to be an odd choice to review a CD of his compositions. However, given that Meg Okura & the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble have created a jazzy re-imagining of Sakamoto’s synth pop creations that is apparently quite different from the original, I may be more able to hear and then review the album without preconceptions (perhaps like sending someone unfamiliar with Ayler to review New Grass, which, curiously enough, was my own introduction to Ayler). The selections on the CD cover a near-20 year span, from his 1978 debut “Thousand Knives” to 1997’s “Untitled #01″ (on this album as “Grief”). Violinist/arranger Meg Okura, in the liner notes, writes that a number of arranging techniques and approaches were used, with some pieces remade anew (e.g. “The End of Asia,” “Thousand Knives”), while others hew close to the original (“The Last Emperor Theme”).
