Moving from January to the month of May, the New York Guitar Festival returns in 2016 with an intensely focused week of concert programming from May 8 to May 14, followed by a full day of free workshops, master classes, and panel discussions on May 15. In its new season of spring, the Festival continues a long-standing tradition: spotlighting a global range of guitar styles and cross-cultural mash-ups.
The 2016 roster includes Nigel North, a master of Renaissance lute; South African guitarist Derek Gripper (making his NYC debut!) whose recordings of Malian music mesmerically evoke the centuries-old West African kora; the Memphis-based, country blues singer-songwriter Valerie June; veteran sound-sculptor & ECM recording artist David Torn; pipa virtuosa Min Xiao-Fen, who weds traditional Chinese melodies with the bebop anthems of Thelonious Monk; alt-jazz pioneer and Wilco sideman Nels Cline; Living Colour’s Vernon Reid; rising star William Tyler of the “American Primitive” finger-picking style; and Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, to mention a few.
But perhaps the most influential musician at NYGF ’16 will be present in spirit only: the late Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who was born 101 years ago in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Why celebrate her centennial plus one? NYGF Founder & Artistic Director David Spelman observes, “Her one-hundredth anniversary met with little fanfare last year, aside from events in her home state as well as a fantastic remembrance of her in a British newspaper, The Guardian. Bob Dylan called Rosetta Tharpe a ‘force of nature’ and ‘one of the most important figures in 20th-century music,’ yet there’s been scant notice on the New York cultural scene of her achievements. We’d like to change that.” This year’s New York Guitar Festival opens with a Mother’s Day concert at Brookfield Place Winter Garden in honor of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Guest Curator Luther Dickinson, of North Mississippi Allstars, brings the creme de la creme of Delta blues and gospel artists to share the stage in tribute. Spelman adds, “We hope this event spurs recognition of Sisten Rosetta among contemporary performers. The style of electric guitar playing she invented spoke to and to a large extent shaped the musicality of The Who, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Rod Stewart, and countless others. And yet – shockingly – she’s never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
The New York Guitar Festival welcomes three new venues this year: The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe; the Williamsburg, Brooklyn concert hall National Sawdust (formerly a sawdust factory in the 1930s); and the East Village’s world music club DROM. “We’re overjoyed to be partnering with The Met,” says Spelman. 2016’s Guitar Marathon will take place at The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, and this year’s edition of the Alt Guitar Summit, curated by Joel Harrison, unfurls over two nights: one at National Sawdust, one within the intimately lit exposed brick walls of DROM. “New music in historic structures?” Spelman muses. “That could be a theme this year, but with the Marathon this time, it’s less about a specific repertoire and more about reverberance between sound and space. Rather than be confined to a single stage, the music will flow throughout the entire complex – in the Fuentidueña and Langon chapels, in the Pontaut Chapter House and Early Gothic Hall, as well as outside in the open-air Trie Café. The Romanesque and Gothic architecture of The Cloisters will become a member of the band, so to speak, as the sense of time evoked by vaulted ceilings and 12th-century limestone resonates with Simon Shaheen’s Middle-Eastern oud, or the eloquence of Nigel North’s Renaissance lute melodies, or with the ‘drone doom’ distorted guitar of Dylan Carlson from the band Earth,” Spelman states, “which I can’t wait to hear in this context.”
Since 1999, WNYC Radio has served as media partner to the New York Guitar Festival. This year, it’s also a host. John Schaefer will MC a live concert podcast from the Greene Space for a future edition of his signature radio show, New Sounds. Musical guests to be announced... The 2016 Festival will conclude on Sunday, May 15 with the launching of New York Guitar Festival Academy, to be held at The New School. “I’ve long wanted to expand the educational components of the Festival, and this takes an important first step in that direction,” Spelman explains. The Academy will present interviews with Festival artists as well as panel discussions on improvisation, instrument design, and compositional trends. “Our ambition is for the Academy to become the TED Talks of all things guitar,” says Spelman.
More events will be announced on the New York Guitar Festival website: http://www.newyorkguitarfestival.org.
CONCERT SCHEDULE
OPENING NIGHT: “Ring the Golden Bells”
Celebrating 101 years of Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Presented by Arts Brookfield
Sunday, May 8, 8:30 PM, Brookfield Place Winter Garden. FREE. 230 Vesey Street
NYGF ‘16 begins with a Mother's Day concert in honor of gospel/blues legend Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock & roll. She was America’s first national gospel star, and her famous windmill guitar moves lived on in Keith Richards and Pete Townshend. From the Cotton Club to Carnegie Hall and the Apollo, Sister Rosetta merged sacred lyrics with secular rhythms in a scorching guitar style.
Summing up the significance of her reach, “She influenced everyone from Elvis Presley to Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, and Johnny Cash,” expounds Music Director/Band Leader Luther Dickinson. 2016 marks Sister Rosetta’s centennial + 1, and to celebrate her musical achievements Dickinson will share the stage with a roster that includes Grammy-winner Alvin Youngblood Hart, Valerie June, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops), blues vocalist Ruthie Foster, Trixie Whitley, and – making their NYC debut – the gospel-singing trio Como Mamas from Como, Mississippi.
First hearing Sister Rosetta’s music at a young age made an indelible impression on Hart, who says, “She's been a lifelong guitar influence to me,” adding, “and to real guitar legends as well; you can't tell me guys like Hendrix, Cooder, Richards didn't have at least one ear tuned in to Sister.” Tennessee native Valerie June found an on-going source of inspiration in Tharpe, “a big woman with a blazing electric guitar,” whose recorded legacy led June away from pop music to explore older country & blues.
Joining Dickinson in our Sister Rosetta house band will be John Medeski – of Medeski Martin & Wood fame – on keyboards, as well as drummer Daru Jones and bassist Dominic John Davis – both from Jack White’s band. Southern blues-rock rising star AJ Ghent, whose family pioneered the “sacred steel” tradition of playing gospel on lap and pedal steel guitars, rounds out the string section.
This opening night event takes its name from the song “When They Ring the Golden Bell,” Sister Rosetta’s paean to the “sweet forever” of an afterlife with “no sin or sorrow.”
ALTERNATIVE GUITAR SUMMIT
Curated by Joel Harrison
Founded in 2010, The Alternative Guitar Summit convenes daring, inventive composers and improvisers who emphasize new, unusual approaches to the guitar, beyond genre. “We're happily partnering again this year with the New York Guitar Festival,” states Summit curator Joel Harrison. “As in previous years,” Harrison continues, “the shows will be full of the joy of spontaneity. On any given night, you'll find gorgeous melody, shockingly surreal skronks, blaps, beeps, and howls, as well as soul, engrossing harmony, and dreamy clouds of sound.”
Monday, May 9, 7 PM
Beauty and Noise
National Sawdust, 80 N. Sixth Street, Brooklyn, NY
Creating sonic edifices and mysterious atmospheres, sometimes absent of notes, each of these musicians – Elliot Sharp, David Torn, Anthony Pirog, Ben Monder, and Patrick Higgins – "plays with noise." Some will perform solo, others will have accompaniment, some of the music will be composed, some improvised, with an emphasis on texture, electronic rapture.
“Of particular note,” Harrison points out, “will be a rare pairing of Sharp and Torn, both of whom are longtime innovators in this vein. Monder and Pirog are more from rock-influenced jazz, whereas Higgins stems from avant-garde classical by way of “brutal, punky fringes,” to quote The New Yorker.
Wednesday, May 11, 7:30 PM to 10 PM
“While We’re Still Here”
A Tribute to Joni Mitchell and Carla Bley
DROM, 85 Avenue A
This year, the Alt Guitar Summit launches a new annual series entitled "While We're Still Here," celebrating living composers. For this inaugural, the honorees will be none other than jazz big-band leader Carla Bley and the widely influential Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.
Bley, a 2015 NEA Jazz Masters recipient as well as the composer of “Ida Lupino” and “The Girl Who Cried Champagne,” plays piano, but like Duke Ellington, she makes an entire orchestra her instrument, expressing her trademark wit in large-scale structures of piquant harmonic density. She has also written for guitar, as heard on her 1977 Dinner Music and Gary Burton’s all-Bley album Dreams So Real. Mitchell, whose long career has traversed folk, pop, rock, and jazz, needs no introduction: her era-defining anthems like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “River,” and “Both Sides Now,” continue to resonate across the generations, as do her collaborations with the celebrated bassists Charles Mingus and Jaco Pastorius.
Eight improvising guitarists will perform one piece each by Mitchell and Bley. Some of the artists involved include the lyrical Wolfgang Muthspiel, Wilco’s Nels Cline, Leni Stern with an African trio, Ben Monder with Becca Stevens, Sheryl Bailey, Joel Harrison, and trumpeter Dave Douglas with Chilean singer/guitarist Camila Meza.
LIVE FROM THE WNYC GREENE SPACE
http://www.thegreenespace.org/\
Thursday, May 12, 8 PM, 44 Charlton Street
John Schaefer hosts this special live webcast from The Greene Space, a 125-seat performance venue on the ground floor of New York Public Radio’s headquarters. The evening’s music making will later broadcast on WNYC Radio's New Sounds. Artists will be announced closer to the date. A short list of who’s performed there in the past includes Audra McDonald, Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and Joshua Bell.
AUDIBLE CLOISTERS: GUITAR MARATHON
Presented in collaboration with MetLiveArts
Free with Museum admission
Saturday, May 14, 10 AM to 6 PM, The Cloisters. 99 Margaret Corbin Drive
Perched atop North Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, with a view of the Hudson River below and cliffs of the Palisades across the way, The Cloisters houses one of the world's finest collections of medieval European art. The structure, assembled from Romanesque architecture and borrowings from Gothic cathedrals and abbeys, features chapel-like galleries, the repose of ornately carved tombs, unicorn tapestries, windows with centuries-old stained-glass panels, as well as cloistered gardens of fragrant herbs and spring crocus. In essence, what better place to hear 14 guitarists whose collective repertoire spans the Renaissance to right now. This year’s Guitar Marathon will be mostly unamped music and includes performances on the lute, oud, and pipa – all historic precursors of the guitar.
Hosted by WNYC's John Schaefer, curated by the New York Guitar Festival's Artistic Director David Spelman.
Marathon performers:
Dylan Carlson
Lead guitarist and singer of the Seattle-based drone-metal band Earth. His solo project Drcarlsonalbion draws on inspirations found in British folklore and occult legends.
Colin Davin
Currently on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Colin Davin studied classical guitar with Sharon Isbin. His repertoire encompasses Rodrigo, Britten, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Derek Gripper
A South African making his first New York performance, Derek Gripper transcribes works for the 21-string kora to six-string guitar. His 2012 album One Night on Earth: Music for the Strings of Mali has been extolled for its “depthless beauty” and “dream-like improvisatory nature.”
Alberta Khoury
A young Australian in her senior year at Juilliard, Ms. Khoury is getting to be known for the spiciness of her Bach interpretations. She studies guitar with Sharon Isbin.
Min Xiao-Fen
Chinese folk songs, Beijing operas, the jazz of Monk and Basie, all infuse Min Xiao-Fen’s approach to the pipa, a four-stringed lute that dates back centuries. A native of Nanjing, she composes, improvises, sings, and continually expands the pipa repertoire.
Ben Monder
A jazz artist equally at home in ethereal sonic structures and “noise,” Ben Monder has performed with iconic drummer Paul Motian, the singer Theo Bleckmann, and on the late David Bowie’s final album Blackstar.
Nigel North
Master of an instrument that gained popularity across Europe in Medieval times, Nigel North has recorded the complete lute works of English Renaissance composer John Dowland as well as transcribed Bach’s cello suites and solo violin works for the lute.
Noveller
The cinematically conceived one-woman project by ambient guitarist Sarah Lipstate. Noveller begins where Brian Eno and Vini Reilly end, creating “chill” soundscapes that have a fierce emotional core.
Vernon Reid
Co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition and auteur of the metal-funk band Living Colour. Reid will play duets with the celestial multi-instrumentalist Laraaji.
Gyan Riley
Composer/guitarist Gyan Riley erases the boundaries between jazz, world music, and contemporary classical. He’s one-half of the chamber-folk duo Probosci, and has performed with Zakir Hussain, Dawn Upshaw, and his dad, the pianist/composer Terry Riley.
Simon Shaheen
A Palestinian virtuoso of the oud (an ancient Middle Eastern instrument that pre-dates even the lute) Simon Shaheen plays traditional Arabic music as well as jazz fusion.
Marija Temo
An adherent of traditional flamenco even as she pushes the genre in new directions, guitarist, singer, dancer, and rule-bender Marija Temo frequently performs with chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras. She appears in Sobre las Olas, a documentary on flamenco in the U.S.
William Tyler
An Appalachian otherworldliness permeates the music of Nashville’s William Tyler. Through intimate yet sonically cavernous structures, Tyler’s incantatory fingerstyle suggests John Fahey playing ragas.
Ryley Walker
With his 1970s-inspired debut album Primrose Green, young singer-songwriter Ryley Walker evokes the moody Brit pop vibe of Van Morrison, Nick Drake, and Tim Buckley.
NEW YORK GUITAR FESTIVAL ACADEMY
A full day of free classes, workshops, and panel discussions
Sunday, May 15, 9 AM to 6 PM, The New School, Wollman Hall. 65 West 11th Street
Launching at NYGF ’16, this new tradition brings together students, instrument makers, composers, audiophiles, discerning aficionados, and master soloists in convivial symposiums devoted to different aspects of performing, recording, writing for, and building guitars. The Academy will be co-curated by David Spelman and Ed Keller, the director of The New School's Center for Transformative Media (home to the “Future of Guitar” series).
A partial list of highlights (with more details to come):
- Classical guitarist (and New School faculty member) Michael Newman interviews Derek Gripper, Nigel North, and others.
- The New School/Center for Transformative Media's Ed Keller moderates a panel with luthiers on new directions in instrument design and materials.
- Alt Guitar Summit's Joel Harrison moderates panels on contemporary improvisation and the electric guitar; and trends in contemporary composition for classical guitar.
- Derek Gripper discusses transcribing kora music for classical guitar.
- Nigel North recreates “The French Lute of the 17th-century,” a presentation on the instrument, tuning, tablatures, and music that a lutenist lived with 350 years ago.
About The New School’s “Future of Guitar” series:
Since 2013, The New School’s Center for Transformative Media has presented a series of lectures, workshops, and performances focusing on the cutting edge present and future of guitar and instrument design. Co-sponsored by Parsons School of Design and Mannes College of Music, this series builds cross-divisional collaborations at The New School and has brought internationally renowned luthiers, designers, builders, materials innovators, composers, performers, theorists, and sound designers together to explore points of connection between the traditions of musical instrument design and sound production, as well as new forms of design thinking facilitated by materials science, emergent materials, parametric design, the internet of things, networked sound, and the politics of “noise.” Guests and performers have included Marco Cappelli, Perry Hall, Fred Hand, Ratzo Harris, Charlie Hunter, Gary Lee, Allan Marcus, Michi Matsuda, Ava Mendoza, Dom Minasi, Michael Newman, Laura Oltman, Ken Parker, Joe Ravo, Gyan Riley, Barry Salmon, Aron Sanchez, Elliott Sharp, Ned Steinberger, Ola Strandberg, Florian Vorreiter, and Charles Yang.
http://ctm.parsons.edu/
About MetLiveArts:
The groundbreaking live arts series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores contemporary performance through the lens of the Museum’s exhibitions and peerless gallery spaces with exceptional performances and talks. MetLiveArts invites artists, performers, curators, and thought-leaders to explore and collaborate within the Met, leading with new commissions, world premieres, and site-specific durational performances that have been named some of the most “Memorable” and “Best of” performances in New York City by the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Broadway World. For tickets and information, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets or call 212-570-3949.
About the New York Guitar Festival:
The New York Guitar Festival produces innovative experiences that celebrate the guitar’s musical personality and are designed to foster creativity and joy, energize communities, and nurture the next generation of performers and audiences.
More events will be announced on the New York Guitar Festival website: www.newyorkguitarfestival.org.
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