By Dawoud Kringle
On Tuesday, May 21st, 2019, the New York Composers Circle presented “New Music for Ensembles and Electronics;” a concert of music by several of its members. The event was hosted by the National Opera Center.
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CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
Artist: Mehmet Polat & Embracing Colours
Title: Quantum Leap
Label: Aftab Rec
Genre: World music
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Text by Dawoud Kringle
For the third year in a row, the Trump Administration repeated its efforts to destroy the arts in the US. The White House has proposed a federal budget that would shutter the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which supports PBS and NPR) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Like the two previous years under Trump, the plans diminishing appropriations for each agency are a clear attempt to facilitate its demise.
The cuts total $897 million of the $4.7 trillion 2020 spending plan.
In the beginning of his administration, Trump called for the complete elimination of these agencies. The Republican-led Congress funded them both times, with the NEA, NEH and IMLS each seeing small increases in 2019. The 2020 budget provides $29 million for the NEA and $38 million for the NEH, both funded at $155 million this year. The CPB would receive $30 million, down from $465 million, and the IMLS would receive $23 million, a $219 million cut. This translates to about $1.35 per citizen per year.
Artist: Jeanne Gies & Howard Alden
Title: Window: The Music of Manu Lafer
Label: Tratore
Genre: Brazilian jazz
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
Manu Lafer is an interesting man. A prolific and accomplished musician and composer with over 300 songs to his catalog, and a discography of over 15 CDs, he studied guitar with Luiz Tatit, Cezar Mendes Nogueira, and Ítalo Perón; and studied singing with Ná Ozzetti, Fernanda Gianesella and Wagner Barbosa. In addition to his extensive experience as a producer, arranger, and composer, Lafer also studied medicine at Escola Paulista de Medicina in at São Paulo. He earned a doctorate in pediatrics, and has worked as a visiting researcher at Columbia University in New York and with the Food and Drug Administration in Maryland.
Artist: Peter Wetzler
Title: Falling Awake
Label: Sound Forms
Genre: solo piano/nu classic/improv
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
When I was asked to write a review of Peter Wetzler’s 2009 CD Falling Awake, I was expecting (for reasons I can’t explain) a classical pianist whose CD contained the usual standards of the genre, and one or two pieces by a living composer. My assumption was wrong, and pleasantly so.
