This group’s collective background spans a wide range of musical experiences, including performances with world music ensembles, 20th century chamber groups and leading artists in the jazz and rhythm & blues fields. Featuring Hamid Drake, percussion; Graham Haynes, horns; Ned Rothenberg, winds; Kenny Wessel, guitars; Adam Rudolph, percussion; Steve Horn, winds; Brahim Fribgone, our; Shanir Blumenkrantz, contrabass. This evening’s concert coincides with the release of Rudolph’s new CD Dream Garden on Justin Time records. Interpretations of the compositions from the CD will be performed, as well a newly commissioned works.

The new compositions performed this evening were created with support from Chamber Music America’s New Works: Creation and Presentation Program funded though the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Presented with support from the Arts Department at RPI and the Performance program at the New York State Council on the Arts.

 Dream Garden features: Adam Rudolph: handrumset (congas, djembe, tarija) bendir, talking drum, thumb pianos, udu drums, cajon, gongs, percussion, sintir, vocal; Brahim Fribgane: oud, dumbek, vocal, udu, cajon, sintir, percussion; Graham Haynes: cornet, flugelhorn; Hamid Drake: trap drum set, bata, frame drums, congas, percussion, vocal; Kenny Wessel: electric and acoustic guitar; Ned Rothenberg: shakuhachi, bass flute, bass clarinet, alto saxophone; Shanir Blumenkranz: contrabass, oud and sintir; Steve Gorn: bansuri bamboo flute, soprano saxophone, clarinet.

Since 1991 Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures has performed at many major festivals and concert venues in both Europe and the United States. In addition, each member has concertized extensively throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia: their collective background spans a wide range of musical experiences, including performances with world music ensembles, 20th century chamber groups and leading artists in the jazz and rhythm & blues fields. The concert repertoire consists of original compositions by Mr. Rudolph that serve as a basis for improvisational dialogue.

About the Music

Adam Rudolph writes:

“I compose forms, which serve as thematic material to provide an orchestrated context for improvisational dialogue. Music materials consist, among other things, of original melodies, textural gestures, sound languages, tone rows, traditional and synthetic scales, diadic and intervallicaly generated harmonies, call and response, polyphony, dynamics, and the coloration of silences.

Unique forms are generated through my concept of “Cyclic Verticalism”, whereby polyrhythms, as used in African music, are combined with rhythm cycles, as used in Indian music. When combined with the above-described tonal materials, larger forms can be generated. In my compositions these materials are utilized to serve emotional coloration; what in India is called Rasa. Performers are given the freedom to use their imagination and listening ability to develop the compositions within their own individual motion and timing, while still relating to the overall form and to their aesthetic and musical functions. The concept is to generate unusual relationships of sound against sound, form against form, and rhythm against rhythm in a non-linear, ever shifting kaleidoscope of music images.

About Adam Rudolph

Originally from Chicago, composer and handrummer/percussionist Adam Rudolph has been hailed as “a pioneer in world music” by the New York Times and “a master percussionist” by Musician magazine. He has released over twenty recordings as a leader and appeared on numerous albums. For the past three decades he has performed extensively on concert stages and music festivals throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Since the 1970’s Rudolph has been developing his unique syncretic approach to hand drumming in creative collaborations with outstanding artists of cross-cultural and improvised music, including: Don Cherry, Jon Hassel, Sam Rivers, Hassan Hakmoun, L. Shankar, Omar Sosa, Wadada Leo Smith, and Pharaoh Sanders. In 1988 Rudolph began his association Yusef Lateef, with whom he has toured worldwide and recorded over 15 albums.

Rudolph is artistic director of and composes for several performing ensembles: Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures Quartet and Octet, Hu: Vibrational with Hamid Drake, and Vashti International Percussion Ensemble. He performs as half of the Wildflowers Duo with Butoh dance innovator Oguri. Rudolph also conducts and composes for the Go: Organic Orchestra, a 30-piece woodwind, brass, strings and percussion ensemble, which he founded in 2001.

Rudolph recently premiered his first Opera, The Dreamer, based on the text of Friedreich Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy”. His rhythm methodology book, Pure Rhythm was published by advance music, Germany in 2006. He has received grants and compositional commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the NEA, Arts International, Durfee Foundation and American Composers Forum.

About the Musicians:

Regarded as an emerging force in contemporary electronic and world music, GRAHAM HAYNES has redefined and deconstructed that genre some still call jazz. He has recorded seven critically acclaimed CDs as a leader and has worked with Steve Coleman, Roy Haynes, Ed Blackwell, Abbey Lincoln, Pharaoh Sanders, Vernon Reid, Cassandra Wilson, Butch Morris, David Murray, Karl Berger, Brice Wassy, Cheick Tidiane Seck, George Russell, George Adams, Jaki Byard, Bill Laswell, Sting, Sekou Sundiata, Tracie Morris, Talvin Singh, Will Calhoun, Don Byron, Greg Osby, and Geri Allen, among others.

STEVE GORN has performed Indian classical music and new American music on the bansuri bamboo flute and soprano saxophone in concerts and festivals throughout the world. A disciple of the late bansuri master, Sri Gour Goswami of Calcutta, he has recorded and performed with a wide range of artists including Paul Simon, Tony Levin, Jack DeJohnette, Glen Velez, and Simon Shaheen. He has composed for film, television, dance and theatre, and performed in concerts and festivals throughout the world.

HAMID DRAKE has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Africa and Japan with many of today’s outstanding artists in improvisational and world music’s, including: Don Cherry, David Murray, William Parker, Pharaoh Sanders, Dewey Redman, Jim Pepper, Marylyn Crispell, Peter Brotzman and A.A.C.M. co founder Fred Anderson. He also performs as leader of his own ensemble Bindu.

A virtuoso on both the oud and dumbek, BRAHIM FRIBGANE was born and raised in Morocco, where he grew up surrounded by North African, Gnawa, Berber, Arabic and Andulusian music. Brahim tours and performs extensively with Club D’elf, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Hassan Hakmoun, Vashti Percussion Group, and Leni Stern. He is a composer of dozens of songs on the oud.

Composer/Performer NED ROTHENBERG has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 25 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Recent recordings include Intervals, a double-cd of solo work, Ghost Stories, Power Lines and Port of Entry with his trio Sync. Other collaborators have included Sainkho Namchylak, Paul Dresher, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Yuji Takahashi and Evan Parker.

SHANIR EZRA BLUMENKRANZ is one of the NYC downtown scenes’ most in demand bass players. He has collaborated with Ikue Mori, Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Ravi Coltrane, Roy Campbell Jr., Tony Malaby, Jenny Scheinman, Avishai Cohen, Marty Ehrlich, Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, Min Xiao-Fen, Michiyo Yagi, Marc Ribot, Kenny Wollesen, Mark Feldman, and Louie Belogenis among others.

KENNY WESSEL worked with revolutionary jazz artist Ornette Coleman for over 12 years (1988-2000), touring the world as a member of Prime Time, during which time he performed “Skies of America,” Ornette Coleman’s seminal work for symphony orchestra and jazz ensemble, with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. Kenny has also worked with Steve Turre, David Leibman, Pat Metheny and Johnny Hartmann, and with North Indian musicians V.M. Bhatt, Debashish Bhattacharya, Karaikudi Mani, and Samir Chatterjee. Ken has toured South Asia and South America. He is currently on the faculties of the Music Conservatory of Westchester and Rutgers University.

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