Brooklyn's
Barbez, sui generis luminaries of the New York music scene will be performing
Wednesday, September 18th at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan, NY in celebration
of Bella Ciao, their fifth full-length album. The album was recorded and mixed by the incomparable Martin Bisi (Swans,
Sonic Youth, Herbie Hancock, Ramones, John Zorn) at B.C. Studios in Brooklyn,
NY with band leader and guitarist Dan Kaufman producing. Special guests on the
album include Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables, Will Oldham) on vocals, legendary
downtown experimental theatre director and poetess Fiona Templeton on voice,
and former Electro-Harmonix pedal inventor Dan Coates on electronics. Bella
Ciao was released by John Zorn's Tzadik label on August 27.
To open
the show, Barbez will perform the New York premiere of two movements of
acclaimed classical composer Yotam Haber's Roman Jewish inspired piece,
"Death Will Come and She Shall Have Your Eyes." This stirring work,
which will feature special guest avant-classical vocalist Dafna Naphtali,
includes field recordings of Roman cantors recorded by Leo Levi (the Alan Lomax
of Italy) in the 1940s and 50s and a guest appearance by the extraordinary new
music singer Dafna Naphtali. Haber, whose music has been described "as
deeply haunting" by New Yorker critic Alex Ross is a former recipient of
the Rome Prize and his works have been performed by Alarm Will Sound,
Either/Or, Flux Quartet and JACK Quartet among many others.
Haber's music is an
especially fitting compliment to this record release show for it was in 2009,
at a residency at the MacDowell Colony, that Haber first introduced Barbez
bandleader Dan Kaufman to Roman Jewish music. While there the pair collaborated
on Haber's score for a documentary about Rome's Jewish community and they have
shared a deep friendship and love for this singular music ever since.
Bella Ciao is inspired by both ancient Roman
Jewish melodies and the Italian Resistance during the Second World War. To help
tell that timeless story of defiance, the album incorporates poems by the great
Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and his renowned contemporary,
the poet Alfonso Gatto. The title track, the partisan anthem "Bella
Ciao," has been an international symbol of resistance for seventy years
and is re-imagined here in a stunning interpretation for a new generation. As
Gatto wrote many years after the war: "The Resistance ... is not an
exceptional moment of being; it is the opposite-a period that endures in time
and in history to form a common conscience."
As on
previous efforts Barbez weaves a haunting mosaic of avant-rock, old-world
cabaret, European folksong, and contemporary classical into a uniquely
beautiful and personal soundscape. An unconventional line-up, a kind of
rock-tinged chamber ensemble comprised of theremin, clarinet, violin,
vibraphone, electric guitar, bass and drums, forges a rich, indescribable-yet
beautiful-sonic tapestry that alternates between passages of quiet intensity
and passionate fury.
Since
its formation in Brooklyn in the late 1990s, Barbez has released five albums,
each of them engineered and mixed by Martin Bisi. The group's last record,
Force of Light, was an homage to the Romanian-Jewish Holocaust poet Paul Celan
and was hailed by allmusic.com as
"one of the most profound settings for poetry in music" of all time.
For the
past decade, Barbez has performed across the United States and Europe including
engagements at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles (sharing the bill with the MC5
and Sun Ra Arkestra), the Festival Territoria in Moscow, Russia, and the Museum
of Jewish Art and History in Paris, France. Over its history, Barbez has
collaborated with a diverse group of musicians including the cellist Julia Kent
of Antony and the Johnsons, the avant-vocalist Shelley Hirsch, and the singer and
guitarist Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Faun Fables.
Barbez
maintains a long-running collaboration with the experimental theatre director,
filmmaker, and playwright, John Jesurun, a MacArthur "genius" grant
winner, and has composed and performed scores for several of Jesurun's
theatrical works, which have been staged at the Berliner Festspiele, in Berlin,
Germany and the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York. Jesurun, who
directed the groundbreaking "Last Goodbye" video for Jeff Buckley,
has directed two videos for the band. Barbez has also contributed music for
several dance works, including One and The Making of Americans, both
choreographed by the Bessie-award winner Juliette Mapp and presented,
respectively, by Danspace Project and Dance Theatre Workshop in New York.
Barbez
is made up of the following members: Dan Kaufman (Rebecca Moore) guitar,
Pamelia Kurstin (David Byrne, Cibo Matto) theremin, Peter Hess (Balkan Beat
Box, Asphalt Orchestra) clarinets, Danny Tunick (The Clean, Bang on a Can
All-Stars) marimba, vibraphone, organ, piano Catherine McRae (filmmaker Sam
Green, the Quavers) violin, Peter Lettre (Shearwater) bass, and John Bollinger
(Sway Machinery) drums.
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