What would a "Future Orchestra" look - and more
importantly, sound - like? Master percussionist, composer and bandleader Adam
Rudolph has created an illuminating and original answer to that question with
his innovative Go: Organic Orchestra. On the remarkable new album Ragmala - A
Garland of Ragas, the Orchestra joins forces with the boundary pushing Indian
classical musicians of Brooklyn Raga Massive, showcasing Rudolph's
game-changing vision.
The 40-piece ensemble embraces diverse cultures, genders,
traditions, generations and voices to create a breathtaking album that invents
a communal way forward while reverberating with echoes of the recent and
ancient past. Drawing parallels with another groundbreaking and singular epic,
Ragmala has already been referred to as a "Bitches Brew for the 21st
century" by Ahmet Ali Arslan of Açžk Radyo Istanbul.
"This album feels like the culmination of everything
I've been reaching for in my creative pursuits," says Rudolph, no small
claim from someone who's been a pioneering voice in jazz and world music for
more than 40 years. "With this music I can hear the humanity of all these
different musicians shine through, and
their voices bring forth something that's never existed before."
Continually evolving over the past two decades, Go: Organic
is an ensemble boundless in myriad senses; in its range of influences, its
adaptability, its scale, its potentiality and most importantly its imagination.
Though Rudolph's inventive approach to composing and conducting is challenging,
it also opens the band up to infinite variation. That adaptability is
dazzlingly illustrated by the contributions of Brooklyn Raga Massive and the
way that two already awe-inspiring groups merge into a boundary-blurring sonic
experience.
Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM) with their open, inclusive
spirit have been making waves in the music world by bringing Indian Classical
music to new territory, collaborating with minimalist composers, Afro-Cuban
maestros and jazz legends. Violinist Trina Basu, a longtime member of both Go:
Organic and BRM states, "In the history of Indian Classical music
collaborations, we have never heard anything recorded like Ragmala. We feel this is a new high-water mark for all
of us."
While the music of Ragmala (due out October 18, 2019 via
Meta Records) draws inspiration from a wealth of traditions - the
globe-spanning rhythmic influences that converge in Rudolph's music as well as
the Indian classical music explored by the members of Brooklyn Raga Massive
(BRM) - the resulting sound is something entirely new. The 40-piece orchestra
speaks in a hybrid tongue that reflects the immigrant experience, with diverse
cultures congregating and enriching one another in profound and surprising
ways.
That trove of voices is channeled into a transcendent,
harmonious sound through the groundbreaking improvisational conducting approach
invented by Rudolph, which allows each member's distinctive identity to shine
through while weaving together into a single vivid tapestry. On Ragmala, the
cumulative image is stunningly inclusive, comprising men and women, a range of
ages from teenagers to octogenarians, and a multi-cultural array of ethnicities
that can be traced, directly or through heritage, to such far-flung locales as
Japan, Dominican Republic, Korea, Morocco, China, India, Argentina, Canada,
West Africa, Brazil, Iran, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico, and Western and Eastern
Europe.
Bennie Maupin, the legendary reedist known for his work on
Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and in Herbie Hancock's ensembles, coined the term
"future orchestra" to describe the Go: Organic Orchestra, of which he
was an early member. Rudolph embraced the sobriquet for many reasons, he says,
not least of which was "the idea to create a musical environment for
individualism and spirit, for the voice of the musicians and a real essential
feeling to come forth in a large, communal way. With our ever-widening sense of
experience, of who we are and who we interact with as humans and as artists, I
found myself asking: how do we create something new together?"
Rudolph has assembled and led versions of the orchestra
around the globe, but the musicians on Ragmala represent some of his closest
and most long-standing musical relationships. That longevity is the result of a
deep commitment to the music and Rudolph's unique methodology, leading to a
keen sense of exploration and discovery. "Everyone here is wholly
committed to creating something together," Rudolph says. "They're
here because of this sense of musical community that everybody feels. They all
share the same excellence, rootedness, virtuosity and openness."
The members of the adventurous BRM collective are deeply
steeped in the traditions of Indian classical music. They refuse, however, to
be restricted by it; the idea behind the collective, birthed in 2012 in a
Prospect Heights bar, is to open the often rigid and hierarchical culture of
the music to experimentation and cross-cultural collaboration. Ragmala marks
the collective's most ambitious effort to date in the musical movement that the
New York Times, Wall Street Journal and New Yorker have recognized as a
"Raga Renaissance."
According to BRM guitarist David Ellenbogen, who
co-produced Ragmala, the possibilities offered by Rudolph's music scratched the
very itch that led many of them into BRM's more exploratory fold to begin with.
"I always had a theory that Indian classical, jazz, West African music and
so on could have a synergistic relationship," Ellenbogen says. "But
after spending decades looking through record libraries, I found very few
recordings lived up to the potential of these great traditions. I've spoken to
other musicians on this album and they said the same thing when they heard
these tracks: This is the music we've been searching for."
Any simplistic notion of a "cross-cultural"
hybrid, of some Indian-inflected jazz music, is instantly dispelled from the
opening moments ofRagmala. "Mousa Azure" is built around the exultant
voice of Gnawa master Hassan Hakmoun, whose collaboration with Rudolph began 30
years ago. Bringing down the spirits of Afro-Moroccan trance, Hakmoun sings a
traditional Gnawa song over a surging rhythmic bed, atop which Rudolph cues in
stabbing strings and soaring flutes as vocalist Samarth Nagarkar soulfully
responds. The mood then switches on "Rotations," a piece previously
recorded by Rudolph's smaller band Moving Pictures on its 2017 release Glare of
the Tiger. Here that irresistible groove bursts forth, albeit with overlapping
rhythms that intensify the whorl of sensation.
Each piece on this stellar recording transmits its own
feeling, occupies its own temporal and emotional space. There's the spare,
austere yearning of "Lamentations;" the sly wisdom of
"Turiya;" the rapturous funk of "Africa 21;" the
altered-consciousness levitation of "Sunset Lake." And so on for all
of the album's 20 pieces, each with its distinctive range of emotion, so
vividly communicated to the listener.
Combining cultural traditions at an indivisible genetic
level is something that BRM co-founder and violinist Arun Ramamurthy says comes
naturally to the collective's members. "A lot of us are Indian-Americans
and have deeply studied Indian classical music, but we all have other musical
influences inside of us. BRM's mission has always been to bridge cultures, to
bring all of these musical traditions together and find common ground so we can
all play as one community - because it's all one thing. This record is exactly
that, and I believe that it really brings out the individual sounds and
different backgrounds that each of the artists are coming from, and they're all
melding together in this beautiful union. It was a match made in heaven."
Over the past four decades, visionary composer, improviser
and percussionist Adam Rudolph has been hailed as "a pioneer in world
music" by the New York Times and "a master percussionist" by
DownBeat magazine. He has released more than 30 recordings under his own name
featuring his groundbreaking compositions and tradition-bridging percussion
work. Rudolph composes for his ensembles Moving Pictures, Hu Vibrational, and
Go: Organic Orchestra, a 30-piece group for which he has developed an original
music notation and conducting system, teaching and conducting hundreds of
musicians worldwide in his concept. Rudolph has performed with Don Cherry, Sam
Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders, Muhal Richard Abrams, Shankar, Wadada Leo Smith,
Philip Glass, Jon Hassel, Omar Sosa and Fred Anderson. He toured and recorded
extensively for 25-years with the legendary Yusef Lateef. Rudolph is also known as one the early innovators
of what is now called "World Music." In 1978 he co-founded Mandingo
Griot Society, one of the first groups to combine African and American music,
and in 1988 he recorded the first fusion of American and Moroccan Gnawa music
with Sintir player Hassan Hakmoun.
Go: Organic Orchestra is a 21st century vision of a
"future orchestra". Artistic
director Adam Rudolph's prototypical approach to composing and improvisational
conducting embraces music forms and cosmologies from around the world. Using a non-linear score with his unique
approach to rhythm as the seed material, Rudolph improvisationally conducts the
musicians in concert. This creates spontaneous orchestrations which serve as
both context and inspiration for the musicians' improvisational dialogue. Over
the past two decades Rudolph has taught and conducted hundreds of musicians in
the Go: Organic Orchestra concept throughout North America and Europe. Over the
years he has performed with Go: Organic Orchestra ensembles in New York, Los
Angeles and Austin, Naples, Palermo and Istanbul. Click here to view a list of
performance residencies.
Brooklyn Raga Massive
Praised by the Wall Street Journal for "expanding the
notion of what raga-the immersive, epic form of Indian music-can mean" and
dubbed the "leaders of the raga renaissance" by the New Yorker, the
fun-loving members of the Brooklyn Raga Massive collective have made huge waves
for "preserving the past while blurring genres in an inventive spirit"
(New York Times). Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM) is an artist collective dedicated
to creating cross-cultural understanding through the lens of Indian classical
and Raga inspired music. It is comprised of forward thinking musicians rooted
in both traditional Indian and South Asian classical music, as well as
cross-cultural Raga inspired music. The culturally inclusive nature of BRM has
not only built a strong community, but has become an incubator of new music
collaborations with sounds indigenous to Brooklyn.
