Soundcheck

The South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim (aka "Dollar Brand") has had a notable career, helped early on by Duke Ellington,and  acknowledged later by Nelson Mandela, who called Ibrahim “our Mozart.” In 2019, Abdullah Ibrahim became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, and he’s recently released a new album, The Balance, (which is his 70th or 71st LP, and that's not including his work as a sideman, which might push the total album credits to over 100!) It's full of "lush horn lines, lilting melodies, and uplifting chord progressions, characteristic of Abdullah's own particular brand of Township Jazz." (Bandcamp) Abdullah Ibrahim performs some solo piano works in-studio.  Set list "Dreamtime" "Nisa" The Balance by Abdullah Ibrahim

London composer Cosmo Sheldrake is also a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. He’s got a knack for refreshingly playful and whimsical pop music that often incorporates natural sounds. On his latest record, The Much Much How How and I, the music gyres and gimbles like circus music meets forest-dwelling faeries in the wabe. There’s also a clever interplay of frolicking rhythms which perhaps reflects Sheldrake's work with young people. Cosmo Sheldrake performs some of his latest music in-studio. -Caryn Havlik  

London-based Kate Tempest is a spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright. Her visceral writing demands foreground-listening with its physicality of emotions, spoken-sung, delivered as incantation, slammed poetry, swaggering rap verse, a bit tent preacher and protest march. Her work was nominated for the Mercury Prize, her epic narrative poem “Brand New Ancients” was awarded the Ted Hughes Prize for innovation in poetry and she won a Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in recent years. She's collaborated with The Comet Is Coming, Sinead O'Connor, Bastille, and her own band, the Sound of Rum. Next Generation Poet Kate Tempest performs some of the pieces from her latest album, The Book Of Traps And Lessons, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:     

Toronto electro-psych dance-rock sibling trio DOOMSQUAD brings a mix of protest music, catharsis, and groove, plus banging flute solos to their outsider electronica. They’ve written songs about the anarchist and activist Emma Goldman along with New York drag queen Dorian Corey as well as modern societal struggles and eco-crises. Trevor, Jaclyn and Allie Blumas cite as inspirations their tour-mates Tanya Tagaq and Peaches, along with Underworld,  Peter Gabriel, Diamanda Galás, and Genesis P-Orridge. DOOMSQUAD joins us to make some of this art-dance music in-studio.  

NYC-based sound artist, sax player, and composer Lea Bertucci uses tape technology, resonant spaces, and sounds that occupy a gray area between music and noise. She augments her alto sax with processing and delay, turning it into a polyphonic instrument, and creates microtonal effects and complex rhythms as she does so. Her latest album is called Resonant Field; and Lea Bertucci joins us to play two extended pieces, in-studio. Watch the session here:     

Hear songs about darker days through a largely upbeat pop lens from Swedish trio, Peter, Bjorn and John. The Swedish trio will “probably never live down the whistling in their song “Young Folks”—an earworm if there ever was one.” (-John Schaefer) Their latest record, Darker Days, is an catchy and dancey, yet lyrically somber collection of songs, where the members find themselves digging into the past, taking on relationship issues, breaking their own bones (hence the imagery), to dig deep and work hard to get it together. PB&J play stripped-down songs for us, without John, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik  

Genius Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain, is one of the world’s exceptional percussionists. The son of Ustad Alla Rahka (who would have been 100 years old this year), Zakir is also a composer, improviser, and a great communicator in Persian, Gujarati, German, English, as well as in jazz, Afro-Cuban rhythms, Nigerian talking drums, or Indonesian gamelan. One of the most exciting ways that Zakir Hussain shares this deep and vast knowledge in performance is by way of the Masters of Percussion Tour – which is exactly as stunning as a music fan (especially a drum nerd) might ever imagine. For this year’s tour, the ensemble includes the sitar virtuoso and instrument inventor Niladri Kumar, along with the extraordinary jazzer Eric Harland (Charles Lloyd, Dave Holland's Prism) on Western drums, and the Kerala Drummers from the Southwestern coast of India. Zakir Hussain, Niladri Kumar, and Eric Harland join us in-studio for a sample of this astounding musical magic. - (NSAPA and drum nerd Caryn Havlik) See the Masters of Percussion Tour in New York on Wed., Apr. 24, at Town Hall, 7:30 pm. Watch the session here: 

Bayonne is quite literally a one-man band. That one man is minimalist composer and experimental musician Roger Sellers, who’s based in Austin, TX, not actually Bayonne, NJ. Partly inspired by the big-sounding symphonic pop of the 1960’s, Roger stacks and layers his voice, synths, live instruments, and percussion through his live looping station to achieve his music. His latest album is called Drastic Measures and he’ll play some of these ultra-layered, textured songs, in-studio. -Caryn Havlik  Watch the session here:     

British producer, musician, and DJ Quantic (aka Will Holland) builds up jazzy, groovy, and dancefloor-ready music around funk guitar and bass riffs, keyboards and synths, punchy drums, sometimes featuring a vocalist, sometimes not. Sometimes he’ll explore traditions from somewhere else: Caribbean, Latin America and Africa, or from other times: psychedelia, experimental and rhythmically rich sounds of deep funk and soul. His latest is called, ‘Atlantic Oscillations’ and Quantic has hand-picked musicians to play some of those tunes, in-studio.  Watch the session here:    

Dan Tepfer is a sought-after composer and pianist who also studied computer programming and physics. His album of improvisations on Bach’s Goldberg Variations drew a lot of attention some eight years ago. Now, he’s released Natural Machines, a record of music for pianist and computer that responds to his real-time improvisations according to “simple rules” - musical algorithims that he programmed. Dan Tepfer joins us to explain what he’s done, and to do some of it on a Yamaha digital piano, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:     

The Israeli band called A-WA had a huge hit on its very first attempt when their song "Habib Galbi" (“Love of My Heart”) – which blended traditional Yemenite folk music with modern dance beats – became the first Arabic-language song to ever become the #1 song in Israel. It was also a viral hit throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Even Pitbull got into the act, featuring on a remix of the song.  A-WA is led by a trio of sisters from a Yemeni Jewish family who sing in Arabic and English. Their most recent album Bayti Fi Rasi, is Yemenite traditional music mixed with hip-hop, reggae, and electronic music is called and they’re here to play some of it for us, in-studio. - John Schaefer  

France-based Cameroonian musician Blick Bassy’s quiet and beautiful songs fall somewhere on the spectrum of blues, folk-soul, and pop, and embody a deep reverence for the traditional music of Cameroon and other parts of Africa. On his latest, record, 1958, dedicated to the memory of Ruben Um Nyobé, Felix Moumié and the other heroes of Cameroonian independence, Bassy embraces a listener (mostly in his ancestral language of Basaa) over minimal cello, trumpet, trombone, keyboards, and electronic production. Bassy performs some of these songs, in an intimate, acoustic setting in-studio. - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:    

London-based Xhosa singer, actor, musician, and author Nakhane (born Toure) grew up on a musical diet of Mozart, Handel, and South African choral pieces, along with Marvin Gaye and the O’Jays in South Africa, eventually wrenching himself away from a conservative Christian upbringing to accept, then embrace his sexuality. Now a leading voice among queer musicians, Nakhane seduces, swaggers, and charms with his tender falsetto in his sometimes dance-leaning, grandly orchestrated “anti-gospel” glam-soul-pop. In interviews, he has professed admiration for musicians including Anohni, Busi Mhlongo, David Bowie, Mbongwana Star and Nina Simone. He plays provocative and slow-burning songs from his latest, a collection called You Will Not Die, in-studio. - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:     

The Sudan-born, Ohio-raised and Brooklyn-based singer and musician Ahmed Gallab records under the name Sinkane and the latest Sinkane record, Dépaysé, is an irresistible mix of western and African funk, Sudanese folk music, 1960s psychedelia, with pop, rock, soul music besides. Dépaysé is a French word that means being taken out of your homeland, being dislocated and as Gallab writes, the record “is the story of an immigrant’s journey of self-discovery in the Trump era.”  Sinkane, as an American band, is Gallab’s own words, “comprised of people from all over the world”: himself (Sudanese), guitarist Jonny Lam (Chinese), keyboardist Elenna Canlas (Filipina), drummer Chris St. Hilaire (Trinidadian), and bassist Michael “Ish” Montgomery (Black American.) Sinkane joins us in-studio to play songs from the latest, Dépaysé.  - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:    Dépaysé by SINKANE

Big Bend is a collaborative project led by pianist Nathan Phillips, who assembled a rotating cast of musicians, including ambient zither player Laraaji, the renowned slide guitarist Susan Alcorn, and many others. Although Phillips is a composer, the Big Bend project grew out of improvisations, and the resulting songs live in a gray area between art song, pop song, and ambient music. Nathan has assembled a version of Big Bend, with guitar and strings, and they'll perform songs from his latest, Radish, in-studio.  Watch the session here:    Radish by Big Bend