Tag Archives: THE RED MICROPHONE

Event Recommendation: “DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL” Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Full Weekend of Music, Spoken Word, Dance Toward Social Change

DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL 2015 POSTERThe Dissident Arts Festival, the annual gathering of revolutionary creativity, will fete its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event takes place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively.

Highlights of this year’s special anniversary Festival will be the reunion of free jazz master Daniel Carter and 1980s hardcore/no wave band Dissipated Face. Other features include modern dance/new music performance by Patricia Nicholson-Parker (co-producer of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art) which includes averitable all-star line-up including Jason Hwang and Michael TA Thompson. Another feature will be Downtown stalwart Trudy Silver and her multi-media radical group Where’s the Outrage? which can count violinist Rosie Hertlein and saxophonists Daniel Carter and Ras Moshe among its ranks. Additionally, make way for the neo-Beat spoken word of Steve Dalachinsky, the Nueva Cancion of Bernardo Palombo, liberation jazz by the Red Microphone, the expansive sound of the 12 Houses Orchestra (conducted by Matt Lavelle), poet Raymond Nat Turner’s Remembrance of the Victims of Police Violence, the “other-world art music” of Sumari, topical spoken word by Chris Butters, Safiya Martinez and Sana Shabazz, and Festival founder John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project which fetes the heritage of revolutionary poetry and prose over the past century.

The event is sponsored by the Len Ragozin Foundation and endorsed by the National Writers Union-New York UAW Local 1981 and DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY world music magazine.

Continue reading

CD Review: The Red Microphone’s new album “The Red Microphone Speaks!”… a fine collective effort created and constructed…

1363011873_red_microphone_at_ss_resized_600Artist: The Red Microphone
Title: The Red Microphone Speaks!
Label: self released
Genre: jazzy revolutionary music

CD Review by Matt Cole

Recently, I reviewed the CD release show for The Red Microphone‘s new album, The Red Microphone Speaks!. Having listened to the CD, I can safely say that The Red Microphone does just as well in the studio as live at putting together a very cohesive package of free, revolutionary-tinged music. Continue reading

Concert Review: The Red Microphone CD Release Show Performing Protest Songs

Date: April 17, 2013
Venue: ZirZamin (NY)

Review by Matt Cole

1360423124_red_microphone_cover_resized_600I saw The Red Microphone for the first time at their CD release show at ZirZamin for The Red Microphone Speaks!, and was thus happy to see that they were a quartet consisting of four members of the Dissident Arts Orchestra, who had created a fine improvised soundtrack to Eisenstein’s classic Battleship Potemkin a few months back. Specifically, The Red Microphone consists of John Pietaro on vibraphone and percussion; Ras Moshe on tenor and soprano sax, flute, and spoken words; Rocco John Iacovone on alto and soprano sax, and Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic on bass.

It can be a challenge for musicians to play free music in sync with each other, but The Red Microphone manages to be a very tight, cohesive unit. The music started with a driving baseline and ethereal vibraphone sounds, and soon the two saxes came in playing in harmony, at times sounding like they were in different keys that nonetheless created a good sound, not unlike what Charles Ives might have written had he anticipated the free music of the ’60s or the Downtown flowering of the ’80s and beyond. The overall sound was rooted in modern avant-garde jazz, leaning towards the free end; the sounds of rock, hard bop, and even a hint of modern classical also could be heard in the mix. Right away, I noticed that there was a lot of communication between the band members, enabling them to move together as a single unit, changing rhythms, feel, and tempo with ease (or at least it looked that way to Yours Truly, watching from the audience). Themes would appear, bounce around, make an impression, and vanish into the ether like a pair of virtual particles in sub-Planck time. The band members took turns taking the lead, with tenor man/flautist Ras Moshe playing bluesy, uplifting solos with a definite undertone of urgency just beneath (and often breaking) the surface. Throughout the set, the band showed a talent for evolving pieces, with individual instruments coming in and out over time as the music grew.

Continue reading

Event Recommendation: THE RED MICROPHONE presents the official release of “THE RED MICROPHONE SPEAKS!”

1360423124_red_microphone_cover_resized_600Date: Wednesday,  April 17, 2013
Time:  9pm
Venue: Zirzamin  (90 West Houston Street New York, NY 10012)
Ticket: t.b.a.
Genre: revolutionary jazz

Guest appearences by:
Cheryl Pyle/Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic – 8pm
Nick Gianni’s Evolution – 10pm

New York: The debut CD of new jazz ensemble THE RED MICROPHONE, The Red Microphone Speaks, will be officially released at Zirzamin in NYC’s West Village on April 17. THE RED MICROPHONE is comprised of veteran improvisational musicians John Pietaro (vibraphone, percussion), Ras Moshe (saxophones, flute), Rocco John Iacovone (saxophones), Nicolas Letman- Burtinovic (bass).
The disc brings together powerful revolutionary statements from the likes of Malcolm X, Pierre Degeyter & Eugene Pottier (composer and poet of ‘L’Internationale’), John Howard Lawson, Hanns Eisler, Angela Davis and Dalton Trumbo, through the media of free jazz, contemporary composition and more. The album contains a powerful sampling of our “special brand of new revolutionary jazz” (DooBeeDooBeeDoo) including reconstructions of radical themes, original music and free improvisations. Call it post-Dolphy, post-Ornette, post-Punk, post-Occupy music. The tapes were mastered by legendary downtown new music producer and musician Kramer (ex of NoiseNewYork studio and Shimmy-Disc records). Immediately after the mastering, Kramer had this to say about the disc:

Continue reading