Past Events

New Music Circle and KDHX present

Erik Friedlander’s Black Phoebe Trio
8 PM Thursday, March 16. 2017
The Stage at KDHX
3524 Washington Ave. 63103 (map)

Advanced tickets are available here 

Erik Friedlander – cello / compositions
Shoko Nagai – piano / accordian / electronics
Satoshi Takeshi – drums

“It’s not your skill level, it’s how much you communicate,” cellist Erik Friedlander suggests. “It’s how much you express that the audience really wants to hear. They come to hear you be real.” Friedlander, however, is clearly not a musician lacking for chops. The years of training and gigging he did to establish himself in New York City’s avantgarde jazz scenes, through his distinct approach to cello, has taken him all over the genre map by collaborative efforts with artists like Laurie Anderson, Mike Patton, The Mountain Goats, and extensive duties in John Zorn’s Masada groups. Recently he has focused on his own soloist and composer work, releasing a series of albums on ECM. In these works Friedlander displays an underlying sonic curiosity and ability to aurally convey deep emotional experience that shapes the ongoing evolution of his work. In his most most recent group project, Black Phoebe Trio, Friedlander brings together the talents of emerging talents Shoko Nagai (piano, accordion, electronics) and Satoshi Takeishi, (percussion).

This concert is presented in partnership with KDHX

Workshops TBA

PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE FOR THIS CONCERT (FRIDAY, JAN 20TH, 2017)

8 PM, January 20th, 2017
Joe’s Cafe
6014 Kingsbury Ave. 63112 (map)

Iva Bittová – violin / vocals
Hamid Drake – drums / percussion

Vocalist/violinist Iva Bittová (Czech Republic) is internationally known for her unique music, which draws on influences from her native Moravia and her lineage in the rich traditions of Slovakia and the Roma people. Her ability to bring those influences together with such modern inspirations as Meredith Monk’s wordless vocal pieces and free improvisation,  creates music that feels both ancient and new, simultaneously surprising and familiar. Bittová is a storyteller who rarely uses actual language to convey the emotions of her stories. While either singing wordlessly or using an implied language of her own, she crafts intimate, engrossing narratives, ultimately creating her own truly personal style of folk music.

Hamid Drake is an American jazz drummer and percussionist, living in Chicago, but spending a great deal of his time touring worldwide. Drake is widely regarded as one of the great percussionists in jazz and improvised music, with a uniquely poetic approach to drumming; he draws from Afro-Cuban, Indian and African percussion instruments and influences. His musical involvements date back to 1974 when he began working with the AACM and felt impelled to explore earlier forms of drumming. He soon began working with several of the greatest innovators in jazz at the time: Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, and Peter Brötzmann. In live settings he continually takes collaborators to higher rhythmic levels, while at the same time carving out space for his own explorations. For over 30 years he has remained one of the most consistently venturesome and compelling drummers of his time.

Additional workshops/events TBA

Born to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, 2016 Doris Duke Artist Jen Shyu is an experimental jazz vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, producer, and Fulbright scholar. Known mostly for her virtuosic singing with saxophonist and 2014 MacArthur Genius Fellow Steve Coleman since 2003 and having collaborated with innovators such as Anthony Braxton, she has performed her own music around the world in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and festivals around the world. The New York Times reviewed her live concerts as “the most arresting performances I’ve seen over the past five years. It’s not just the meticulous preparation of the work and the range of its reference, but its flexibility: She seems open, instinctual, almost fearless”. The Wall Street Journal said, “Her voice, a wonder of technical control and unrestrained emotion, tells a story dotted with well-researched facts and wild poetic allusions. She claims both as her truths.”

Jen is currently based in New York City, touring with her group Jade Tongue and performing Solo Rites: Seven Breaths in the US and abroad. In March 2016, she premiered Song of Silver Geese, a multilingual, ritual music drama composed for Jade Tongue, dancer Satoshi Haga, and Mivos Quartet at Roulette. She is currently working on this and her next solo work, which will result in a United States 50-state “Songs of the World Now (SOWN)” tour.