Category Archives: Reviews

Concert review: Afrocubism Celebrates Brooklyn!

Date: June 9, 2012
Venue: Prospect Park /Bandshell (Brooklyn, NY)

Review by Augusta Palmer

Though the weather forecast threatened a downpour, the skies miraculously cleared just as the opening act, Alsarah and the Nubatones, took the stage at Prospect Park last Saturday for the second show in the 2012 Celebrate Brooklyn Season. Alsarah is a Sudanese-born singer, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist with a gorgeous, velvet- toned voice. Alsarah and the Nubatones played a selection of Nubian “songs of return” from the 1970s as well as original material and traditional music from central Sudan. The band, which also includes Karine Fleurima on vocals, Haig Manoukian on oud, Rami El Aasser on percussion, and Mawuena Kodjovi on bass, got the crowd moving with their beautiful vocal duets, lyrical oud, and infectious beat.

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Concert review: Jeremy Siskind…sometimes great music just falls into your lap!

Date: May 30, 2012
Venue: Carnegie Hall
Concert review by Dawoud Kringle

Sometimes great music just falls into your lap. The founder and editor of DooBeeDooBeeDoo called me at the last minute and asked if I would review a recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall. This was somewhat inconvenient for me, as I had an early performance of my own that day. But, I agreed. After my own performance on a pleasant summer evening, I ran home, dropped off my instruments and headed for the legendary venue to listen to a pianist I’d never heard of. 

That pianist is Jeremy Siskind.

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A matinee performance by New York’s Gamelan Dharma Swara group @ Le Poisson Rouge

Date: May 20, 2012
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)
Photos: C. Bay Millin
Review by Jim Hoey

Sunday, May 20, 2012 – On this bright Sunday, I found myself slipping into Le Poisson Rouge and down their steps for a matinee performance by New York’s Gamelan Dharma Swara group. The space was dark, set up with chairs for the sit-down lunch crowd, and the stage was curiously lined with the golden-hued gamelan instruments including the metallophones (gambang, slenthem, saron, gender), gongs, and other percussion instruments (like the kettle-like kenang and bonang) of the Balinese art form that predates the arrival of Hindu and Buddhist culture on the islands of Indonesia.

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Concert review: Taikoza banged the big barrel-sized taiko here among the steel and concrete skyscrapers of New York…

Date: Saturday, May 5, 2012
Venue: The Manhattan Movement and Arts Center
Videos and photos: by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
Concert review by Jim Hoey

Taiko is an ancient form of Japanese drumming that most New Yorkers have no familiarity with, yet recently the Taikoza group, led by Swiss-born director Marco Lienhard, banged the big barrel-sized  taiko here among the steel and concrete skyscrapers of New York in the time-honored, Japanese, tradition of cleansing the Spring atmosphere of evil spirits through the banging of drums, dancing, and playing of flutes (shakahachi and fue), and a Japanese 13 strings instrument (koto).

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Concert review: Iran’s Pavarotti and music actvist Mohammad Reza Shajarian and the Shahnaz Ensemble at Town Hall.

Date: April 20, 2012
Venue: Town Hall (NY)

Text by Aida Shahghasemi 

A few weeks after his son, Homayoun (read review here), Mohammad Reza Shajarian and the Shahnaz Ensemble gave a concert at Town Hall last month which portrayed creativity and innovation within the realm of Persian classical music.

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