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University of Southern Maine, May 5, 2023
Earlier this year I gave my first public concert since before COVID. I had been invited to sing at the Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, and we wound up having a program almost concurrently with their Commencement.
Harmonium accompaniment was provided by Kaavya Valiveti and Rajesh Pai was on tabla. This was a very sympathetic team and I felt quite relaxed.
I opened with a full-length Puriya Kalyan. Vilambit: Hovana laagi saanjh / Drut: Jawoon tore charan.
The first half finished with one of my favorite light pieces, the Pahadi geet Jyuda kinjo dolna.
After the interval I started off with a two-parter in Hindol. The medium teentaal bandish Hori khelata hai giridhari is a great vehicle for bol-bant, and Rajesh and I got into some enjoyable rhythmic play. The drut composition Sundara aati chatur naar in ektaal has a very nice lilt.
The penultimate item was a tarana in Khamaj. This is an old traditional Gwalior cheez with some nice pakhawaj bols in the last line of the antara.
And I ended with Jamuna ke teer in Bhairavi.
I really enjoyed this concert. Though the audience was mostly newcomers to the music, they listened with great sympathy and feeling. There were several old friends there, including one person I’d last seen in 1976(!).
If for some reason you want to listen to the entire thing from beginning to end, with the introduction by Vaishali Mamgain and all of my remarks, here it is as a single uninterrupted file.
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“Singing The Long Now” — Concert Videos
The videos and sound recordings of the “Singing The Long Now” concert are now uploaded!
It was an extraordinary experience to prepare this material for performance, and to review it after the fact. Tufts University did a fine job with both audio and video, and I really enjoyed getting the pieces formatted and organized for this page. Please let me know your thoughts.
Needless to say, my most profound gratitude and love goes to the musicians:
Mimi Rabson — Violin, Voice
Helen Sherrah-Davies — Violin, Voice
Junko Fujiwara — ‘Cello, Voice
I’m presenting them all in order on this page, with some links to supplementary material as needed.
1. Hymn theme: “The Great Ocean Of Truth” / Raga Puriya Dhanashri: Alap, Khyal in 7 beats, Tarana in 12 beats.
Raga Puriya Dhanashri is usually meant for performance in the early evening. This suite of traditional Hindustani compositions is arranged for voice and string trio; the instrumental ensemble plays a redistribution of the standard accompaniment parts in support of vocal improvisation. The introductory alap is sung on open vowels and vocables, the medium-tempo khyal has a text in Braj (an archaic Hindi dialect) describing a scene from the life of Krishna, and the fast tarana is set entirely to non-lexical syllables.
2. A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall
Bob Dylan’s jeremiad is recomposed in Raga Mishra Dhani, the new melodic setting evoking both the apocalyptic surrealism of “Old Weird America” and the convoluted, polysemic language of the Urdu ghazal. The strings’ churning undercurrent hews to the basic 6-beat structure of the Hindustani Dadra taal, but can just as easily be heard as a group of rowdy country fiddlers.
3. “It’s Taken Me My Whole Life…”
This composition is built around the ritualized use of silence at different tempo levels. Every performer has a variety of pre-established melodic/rhythmic patterns, punctuated by extemporized “omissions” — this means that when (and how often) to be silent becomes the main focus of creative choice. Even segments of virtuoso free improvisation are built around the idea that the notes unplayed and unheard are the sweetest, the most expressive, the most crucial.
(Note: complete copies of the score and individual parts will be uploaded and posted within the next fortnight.)
4. Pete Seeger’s melodic setting of Malvina Reynolds’ lyrics (reflecting the words of the first astronauts to view our planet from space) is given a free rendering, with the strings providing a colotomic structure, timbrally aligned with the beautiful music of Sundanese tradition.
“From way up here, the Earth looks very small,
It’s just a little ball, of rock and sea and sand,
No bigger than my hand.
From way up here, the Earth looks very small,
They shouldn’t fight at all, down there,
Upon that little sphere.
Their time is short, a life is just a day,
You’d think they’d find a way,
You’d think they’d get along, and fill their sunlit days with song.
From way up here, the Earth is very small,
It’s just a little ball, so small,
So beautiful and dear.
Their time is short, a life is just a day,
Must be some better way,
To use the time that runs, among the distant suns.
From way up here.”
5. Man With Sign — For Speaking/Singing Voice and String Trio
A reading from my ongoing intersectional activism/performance project, now in its seventy-fourth week of rush hour mornings at Medford’s Roosevelt Circle.
6. “This Is A Composition Which Concerns Itself With Timescale”
Like Paris’ Centre Pompidou, this composition for intoning voices and instruments wears its infrastructure on the outside. To say anything more in these notes would be redundant, except to note that the complete texts of the spoken parts can be found here.
7. The Spider’s Web
E.B. White’s words, Pete Seeger’s melody — my arrangement of this love song is a kind of “folk minimalism,” using asynchronous repetition of simple melodic phrases to create background textures that allow the melodic line and its meaning to unfold.
“The spider dropping down from twig, unfolds a plan of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig, to use in rising.
And on this journey down through space, all cool descent and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place, from where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do, in spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you, for my returning.”
8. The great jazz innovator Ornette Coleman once remarked, “I wish people would play my tunes with different changes every time, so there would be all the more variety in the performance.” Whenever we approach Ornette’s music, we try to keep this in mind.
“What reason could I give to live?
Only that I love you.
How many times must I die for love?
Only when I’m without you.
Where will the world be, if not in the sky when I die?
What reason could I give to live?
Only that I love you.”
9. Ancient Light / Ab Hone Lagyo
A meditation on time, trees, and light — followed by a thumri composition in the morning raga Kalingda. Set to the slow 16-beat chachar tala, this song in Braj extols the beauty of the new morning light, the songs of birds, the effulgence of opening blossoms — a tender, optimistic meditation on possibility and the inevitability of rebirth.
10. The title of this piece references one famous quote from Isaac Newton, and the text is another equally well-known remark from the great scientist (here altered slightly in the interest of gender equity). The words are set to three different eleven-beat structures in medium, fast, and slow tempi.
“I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself I seem like a child playing on the seashore / diverting myself, now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell / while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
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Texts for “This Is A Composition Which Concerns Itself With Timescale”
These are the texts used in the February 5 performance of “This Is A Composition Which Concerns Itself With Timescale.”
Details of the performance structure will be posted in the next couple of weeks as I get materials uploaded.
LUCA, an acronym for the last universal common ancestor, probably dates to around 3.8 billion years ago. At that time, LUCA was bobbing around on ocean waves with neither worries nor neighbors. Our human ancestors differentiated from other living beings about one billion years ago. About four hundred million years ago, the earliest froglike beings developed joints on their pectoral and pelvic fins and slithered out of the sea onto land.
About 1.8 million years ago, our African ancestors moved North into the Caucasus and slowly spread out across what is now Europe and Asia. Roughly forty thousand years ago, people crossed what we call the Bering Sea into the great landmass of the Northern hemisphere. Almost one thousand years ago, Europeans built small boats and sailed across unknown oceans toward an unknown land.
Mary Pipher — The Green Boat pp 188-189
The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales. To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales. But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales. On a time scale of years, the unit is the individual. On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family. On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation. On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture. On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species. On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet. Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales. That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature. In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet. If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.
The earliest known trade routes in regular use crisscrossed eastern Europe about 30,000 years ago, distributing prefashioned blanks of flint from mines in Poland and Czechoslovakia over a wide area. It was in eastern Europe, too, that the oldest ceramic objects yet discovered were made, [including] models of animals and…a ceramic “Venus” — a stylized figurine of a woman…this European site, shared by more than a hundred people, affords the eariest evidence of a quantum jump in the sizes of human groups and the advent of the first communities larger than family bands.
Nigel Calder — Timescale, p. 159
A huge colony of the sea grass Posidonia oceanica in the Mediterranean Sea could be up to one hundred thousand years old.
(wikipedia)
An attosecond is 1 times 10- to-the-minus-eighteenth — one quintillionth — of a second.
It is the time it takes for light to travel the length of two hydrogen atoms.
An attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 billion years.
(wikipedia)
In hillside caves of southwestern Germany, archaeologists have uncovered the beginnings of music and art by early modern humans. .. New evidence shows that these oldest known musical instruments in the world, flutes made of bird bone and mammoth ivory, are even older than first thought.
Animal bones found with the flutes were 42 to 43,000 years old, [dating them to] around the time the first anatomically modern humans spread into Central Europe… along the Danube River valley.
If we imagine ourselves living in New England in the 1700s, and we then imagine ourselves looking from that vantage point into the future, does the rural landscape as we now know it seem unattractive because it no longer looks like it did when Queen Anne ruled the colonies? Would a longer step back to the 1500s make us protest the Spanish introduction of culture-changing horses to this continent? And would a step even farther back in time make us mourn the arrival of the first Stone Age humans who would slaughter the American mammoths and mastodons and thus leave our landscapes unnaturally silent — but much safer to walk in?
Curt Stager — Deep Future
Two-hundred and fifty million year-old bacteria, Bacillus permians, were revived from stasis after being found in sodium chloride crystals in a cavern in New Mexico.
Having survived for 250 million years, it is the oldest living thing ever recorded.
(wikipedia)
A visit to a Pleistocene cave in southern France reveals the past in subtle ways. Paintings on the cave walls and ceiling show a pack of wild horses galloping along a ledge, while vivid antlered reindeer leap toward the viewer from nearby walls. Bison scratched into stone show fine-line features of nostrils, eyes, and hair. Big- bellied horses lope toward us on short legs.
Some prehistoric master saw the essence of these animals embedded in the chance curves of the cave, [and] called them forth to the eye, using negative space in ways we do not witness again until the work of the sixteenth century.
These signals across tens of millennia carry a heady sense of graceful intelligence. We know well enough what animals lived then, but only in such paintings can we delve into the cerebral wealth of our ancestors…These paintings… are the best sort of deep time messages, conveying wordless mastery and penetrating sensitivity across myriad millennia and staggeringly different cultures.
Gregory Benford — Deep Time, p. 202
The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Solar System to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Estimates of the length of one orbit range from 225 to 250 million terrestrial years.
(wikipedia)
Biologists track the extinction of whole genera, and in the random progressions of evolution feel the pace of change that looks beyond the level of mere species such as ours. Darwinism invokes cumulative changes that can act quickly on insects, while mammals take millions of decades to alter. Our own evolution has tuned our sense of probabilities to work within a narrow lifetime, blinding us to the slow sway of long biological time.
Gregory Benford — “Deep Time”
One day in the life of Brahma is called a Kalpa, and lasts 4.32 billion years. Every Kalpa, Brahma creates 14 Manus, who in turn manifest and regulate this world.
Each Manu perishes at the end of his life, and Brahma creates the next. The cycle continues until all fourteen Manus, and the Universe, perish at the end of Bramha’s day. Then Brahma sleeps for a period of 4.32 billion years. The next ‘morning’, Brahma creates fourteen Manus in sequence, just as he has done on the previous ‘day’.
This cycle continues for 100 ‘divine years’ at the end of which Brahma perishes and is regenerated. Brahma’s entire life equals 311 trillion, 40 billion years.
Once Brahma dies there is an equal period of unmanifestation for 311 trillion, 40 billion years, until the next Brahma is created.
(wikipedia)
Jiahu was a Neolithic settlement in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. Settled around 7000 BC, the site was flooded and abandoned around 5700 BC.
Among the discoveries at Jiahu were playable flutes made from the wing bones of the Red- Crowned crane, tuned to the pentatonic scale.
(source)
Consider…a coniferous forest. The hierarchy in scale of pine needle, tree crown, patch, stand, whole forest, and biome is also a time hierarchy. The needle changes within a year, the tree crown over several years, the patch over many decades, the stand over a couple of centuries, the forest over a thousand years, and the biome over ten thousand years. The range of what the needle may do is constrained by the tree crown, which is constrained by the patch and stand, which are controlled by the forest, which is controlled by the biome.
Stewart Brand — Clock Of The Long Now, p. 34
We are ever restless, we hominids. It is difficult to see what would finally still our ambitions — neither the stars, nor our individual deaths, would ultimately form a lasting barrier. The impulse to push further, to live longer, to hourney farther — and to leave messages for those who follow us, when we inevitably falter and fall — these will perhaps be our most enduring features.
Still we know that all our gestures at immortality — as individuals or even as a lordly species — shall at best persist for centuries or, with luck, a few millennia. But ultimately they shall fail.
Intelligence may even last to see the guttering out of the last smoldering red suns, many tens of billions of years hence. It may find a way to duddle closer to the dwindling sources of warmth in a iuniverse that now seems to be ever-expanding, and cooling as it goes. Whether intelligence can persist against this final challenge, fighting the ebb tide of creeping entropy, we do not know.
But humans will have vanished long before such a distant waning. That is our tragedy. Knowing this, still we try, in our long twilight struggles against the fall of night. That is our peculiar glory.
Gregory Benford — “Deep Time”
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World Music Against Climate Change — June 6, 2015
On Saturday, June 6, the eleventh “Playing For The Planet” benefit concert will showcase master musicians from three different musical traditions in a rare evening of pan-cultural improvisation, with all proceeds going to benefit the environmental advocacy group 350MA.org. The performers include the brilliant jazz of Charlie Kohlhase’s “Explorers’ Club”, Esthema’s contemporary take on Balkan and Middle-Eastern traditions, and the awe-inspiring Indian rhythm duet of Pravin Sitaram and Amit Kavthekar. The music begins at 7:00 pm, at The Community Church Of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (Copley Square), Boston. Admission is $20; $15 students & seniors. For information, please call 781-396-0734, or visit the event website at www.warrensenders.com.
Purchase tickets online from CCNOW:
Regular admission: $20
Student/Senior Admission: $15
Advance orders will be accepted until 3 pm on June 6.
If you prefer to use PayPal, please use the link below:
“Playing For The Planet: World Music Against Climate Change” is the eleventh concert in an ongoing series of cross-cultural events produced by Boston-area musician and environmental activist Warren Senders. These concerts were conceived as a way for creative musicians to contribute to the urgent struggle against global warming. Their choice of beneficiary, 350MA.org, is focused on building global consensus on reduction of atmospheric CO2 levels — action which climatologists agree is necessary to avoid catastrophic outcomes.
“…Senders possesses a gift for assembling fascinating programs.”
— Andrew Gilbert, The Boston Globe —
Because the climate problem recognizes no national boundaries, the artists represent musical styles from three different parts of the globe, and share key musical values: listening, honesty, creativity, and respect. And, of course, they are all committed to raising awareness of the potentially devastating effects of global warming. It’ll be an incredible evening of powerful music — from some of the finest musicians in New England and the world.
“…pleasant surprises…an open-ended, floating, world music festival…” — Steve Elman, ArtsFuse —
====================================
About The Artists
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ESTHEMA
Esthema is a Boston-based ensemble of boundary-bending virtuosi who’ve been developing their unique sound since 2006, fusing progressive rock and jazz-fusion with the sounds of the traditional music of the Balkan region and the Near & Middle East. Andy Milas (guitar), Onur Dilisen (violin), Naseem Alatrash (cello), Mac Ritchey (oud & bouzouki), Tom Martin (bass), and George Lernis (drums & percussion) bring together both Western and Eastern influences, instruments, and concepts in a richly evocative musical tapestry.
Grant Moon of PROG Magazine says that Esthema’s “beautifully produced third album ‘Long Goodbye’ is a relentlessly classy and high-minded affair but with a knowing rock vibe,” while Skope Magazine’s Chris Marsh calls it “…a rich progressive rock record that harnesses classic and modern sounds.”
Esthema’s first CD, Apart From The Rest, was voted in the Top 25 independent recordings of 2008 at Indie-Music.com and in 2009. Joel Simches from Boston’s Noise Magazine stated, “this recording is nothing less than a true celebration of a number of different styles of world beat, jazz, rock, ethnic European and Middle Eastern traditional music” and John Collinge from Progression Magazine called it “a seamless blend of Eastern and Western motifs: Ethnic scales and meters intertwine delightfully with jazz-rock drums and bass beneath jazzy improv and winding melodies.”
Esthema released their second CD, The Hereness and Nowness of Things, in 2009. Lily Emeralde and Emma Dyllan of Phosphorescence Magazine called it “a world-class collaboration of the highest order,” and Barry Clevelend for Guitar Player wrote “the group plays at a truly world-class level, with authenticity, aplomb, and exuberance, resulting in a sumptuous blend.”
Since then, Esthema has been in the weekly Top 20 at Latch Fusion Radio alongside Fusion greats like Herbie Hancock, Return to Forever, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra; they have won the Top 25 of 2011 Award at Indie-Music.com, and their composition “Eastern Dance” went to number 4 on the Instrumental Charts at Indie-Music.com. In 2010 the International Association of Independent Recording Artists (“IAIRA”) certified Esthema’s “Eastern Dance” as an International Top 10. Compositions from all three releases are heard on radio programs and stations throughout the United States, Europe, and Turkey.
For information please visit www.esthema.com.
====================================
PRAVIN SITARAM & AMIT KAVTHEKAR
One of the most exciting forms of Indian classical music is the percussion duet. Blending passionate virtuosity with intricate mathematics and endlessly transforming rhythms, there is nothing remotely close to the power and ebullience two brilliant drummers bring when they interact. Boston is very lucky to have great artists like Pravin Sitaram and Amit Kavthekar to offer this experience to listeners.
Dr. Pravin Sitaram was introduced to mridangam at the age of 8, and has learnt this art from his Guru, Late Shri P. S. Parameswaran – a disciple of the legendary Palghat T. S. Mani Iyer. He was also fortunate to have advanced lessons with the Late Palghat R. Raghu.
Pravin’s sensitive and unobtrusive approach to mridangam accompaniment has been appreciated by outstanding artistes like Dr. R. K. Srikantan, Smt. R. Vedavalli & Madurai Shri T. N. Seshagopalan, Shri T. M. Krishna, Violin maestros – Shri G. J. R. Krishnan, Lalgudi Smt. Vijayalakshmi, and Shri Mysore Manjunath. Pravin has worked with many talents in the New England area and has participated in cross-cultural exchanges in music.
Pravin is a well-known teacher in the Boston area, teaching mridangam to many students over the past several years, several of whom are now performing for concerts in the New England area. He has been a faculty member at the Learnquest Academy of Music since 2003. His students have participated and won prizes in competitions held in North America.
Amit Kavthekar, a formally-recognized disciple of the tabla master Ustad Alla Rakha, has rhythm running in his veins. At the early age of six, he began learning the art of tabla playing, and he has performed with legends of Indian classical music as well as fusion and experimental projects. His dexterity and virtuosity have elicited applause and admiration all over the world.
Amit teaches Tabla in the American School of Bombay (ASB), in New England School of Music, and as the director of the World Music Ensemble at Salem State University for the World Music Ensemble.
====================================
CHARLIE KOHLHASE and
the EXPLORERS’ CLUB
“As a mainstay in Boston’s jazz scene, saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase has helped cultivate the city as one of America’s most fertile hotbeds for creative music.”
(John Murph, Jazz Times Magazine)
Alto and baritone saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase has been a part of Boston’s jazz scene for more than thirty years. After private studies with Stan Strickland and Roswell Rudd, Kohlhase moved to Boston from his native New Hampshire in 1980. In 1989 he formed the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet, a band that worked around Boston and toured nationally for a dozen years.
Kohlhase has recently been leading two ensembles: the Explorers’ Club, a septet with two reeds, trombone, guitar, bass and two drummers and the Saxophone Support Group, a woodwind octet playing saxophone-oriented compositions by Julius Hemphill, Steve Lacy, John Tchicai and Kohlhase. 2009 saw the release of the Explorers Club CD “Adventures” on Vermont’s Boxholder label. Kohlhase also co-led groups with the late, great Danish/ Congolese saxophonist John Tchicai for New England tours in 1993, 1997, 1998, 2003 and 2006. Charlie was a member of Boston’s Either/ Orchestra from 1987 to 2001, playing throughout North America, Europe and Russia. Recent sideman activities have included work with the Makanda Project, an Octet dedicated to performing unrecorded compositions by the late woodwind player/composer Makanda Ken McIntyre, bassist Kit Demos’ Flame-Tet and trumpeter Daniel Rosenthal’s Quintet.
Charlie, along with Dave Douglas and Roswell Rudd, was an artist-in-residence at Harvard for Spring 2003. In May 2003 Kohlhase recorded with Anthony Braxton’s Genome Project and in June worked with violinist/composer Leroy Jenkins at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Charlie rejoined the Either/Orchestra in 2008 and has worked with them along with Ethio-Jazz greats Mahmoud Ahmed, Mulatu Astatke, Alemayhu Eschete and Teshome Mitiku in venues ranging from Chicago to London, Toronto to Germany and Holland to Ethiopia.
Charlie has also been active in jazz radio for many years, most recently hosting “Research & Development” Monday afternoons from 2 to 4 PM on WMBR-FM in Cambridge. He directs the Modern American Music Repertory Ensemble at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.
“Kohlhase’s own themes are as action-packed as a comic book and as spontaneous in feel as graffiti.”
(Nate Dorward, Squid’s Ear)
=============================================
About www.350.org and the number 350:
Co-founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, 350.org is the hub of a worldwide network of over two hundred environmental organizations, all with a common target: persuading the world’s countries to unite in an effort to reduce global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million or less. Climatologist Dr. James Hansen says, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” (Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue.) Activists involved in the 350 movement include Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Vandana Shiva (world-renowned environmental leader and thinker), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights), Van Jones, Bianca Jagger, Dr. James Hansen, Barbara Kingsolver and many more.
350MA.org is the Massachusetts Chapter of this worldwide advocacy group, and the hub for the Better Future Project.
=============================================
The Community Church of Boston is a free community united for the study and practice of universal religion, seeking to apply ethical ideals to individual life and the democratic and cooperative principle to all forms of social and economic life. We invite you to read on to discover more about us, join us one Sunday for a thought-provoking and joyful time, or contact the church to find out more about our community: info@communitychurchofboston.org.
=============================================
Warren Senders is the contact person for “World Music Against Climate Change.” He is one of thousands of concerned global citizens hoping to trigger positive change through social action and the arts. He can be reached at warvij@verizon.net or by telephone at 781-396-0734.
=======================================================================
On Friday, December 5, the tenth “Playing For The Planet” benefit concert will showcase master musicians from three different musical traditions in a rare evening of pan-cultural improvisation, with all proceeds going to benefit the environmental advocacy group 350MA.org. The performers include Nima Janmohammadi, a contemporary master of Persian classical music; Triarky, a brilliant jazz “power trio” featuring violinist Mimi Rabson and the electric tuba of David Harris; and the Hindustani classical singing of Warren Senders, with George Ruckert & Amit Kavthekar. The music begins at 7:00 pm, at The Community Church Of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (Copley Square), Boston. Admission is $20; $15 students & seniors. For information, please call 781-396-0734, or visit the event website at www.warrensenders.com.
Purchase tickets online from CCNOW:
Regular admission: $20
Student/Senior Admission: $15
Advance Ticket Orders Are Accepted Until 3 pm on December 5. Tickets will be emailed directly to your inbox up to that time!
If you prefer to use PayPal, please use the link below:
“Playing For The Planet: Improvisors Against Climate Change” is the tenth concert in an ongoing series of cross-cultural events produced by Boston-area musician and environmental activist Warren Senders. These concerts were conceived as a way for creative musicians to contribute to the urgent struggle against global warming. Their choice of beneficiary, 350MA.org, is focused on building global consensus on reduction of atmospheric CO2 levels — action which climatologists agree is necessary to avoid catastrophic outcomes.
“…Senders possesses a gift for assembling fascinating programs.”
— Andrew Gilbert, The Boston Globe —
Because the climate problem recognizes no national boundaries, the artists represent musical styles from three different parts of the globe, and share key musical values: listening, honesty, creativity, and respect. And, of course, they are all committed to raising awareness of the potentially devastating effects of global warming. It’ll be an incredible evening of powerful music — from some of the finest musicians in New England and the world.
“…pleasant surprises…an open-ended, floating, world music festival…” — Steve Elman, ArtsFuse —
====================================
About The Artists
====================================
Nima Janmohammadi
Born in 1984, Iranian multi-instrumentalist and composer Nima Janmohammadi started playing Setar at the age of seven with Mehrdad Torabi. While his main focus has been in playing Setar, he also plays Oud, Robab, Kamanche, Gheychak and vocal repertoire of Persian music. He continued studying various styles of Persian music and completing his repertoire with masters such as Jalal Zolfunun and Massoud Shaari, and later with the legendary masters of Persian music: Mohammad-Reza Lotfi and Hossein Alizadeh. He also studied ethnomusicology and theory of Persian music with professor Dr. Mohsen Hajarian.
Finishing his bachelor’s degree in Persian music, he began his career as a professional teacher and performer in Iran. While getting his Master’s Degree and Graduate Diploma in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory of Music, Nima had the advantage of working with great musicians and composers including Hankus Netsky, Ran Blake, Anthony Coleman, Tanya Kalmanovich, Andreia Pinto-Correia and Katarina Miljkovic.
Nima teaches at New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He is an international performer and holds master classes all over the world.
====================================
TRIARKY
[
Low-brass master David Harris and virtuoso violinist Mimi Rabson collaborate with drummer Phil Neighbors in Triarky, a “power trio” performing all original music referencing rock, funk, ska, afro pop, middle eastern, and contemporary jazz. The music is full of driving grooves and heavy energy, busting out with rhythm, dissonance, and improvising.
David Harris has distinguished himself as a trombonist and composer/arranger in a multitude of musical styles. Originally from University City, MO., Mr. Harris associates with a wide variety of musicians performing jazz, R&B, rock, pop, and international folk music. As a jazz composer, he has twice won the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for music composition. On both tuba and trombone, David has been performing with the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble since 2010, and is longtime trombonist and composer/arranger for the Jazz Composers’ Alliance Orchestra, with which he performs and records. An associate-professor at Berklee College of Music, Mr. Harris has been featured on over 40 albums, in the soundtrack for Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry”, the klezmer soundtrack for the movie “Stranger Among Us”, the soundtrack for the movie “Opposite of Sex,” and various TV soundtracks and commercials as well. A leader in the klezmer revival, he was the founding trombonist for the Klezmer Conservatory Band, with whom he recorded and toured. Mr. Harris has performed around the world, including the Berlin Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, the Sauti za Busara in Zanzibar, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, with the Philadelphia Pops, at the Smithsonian Institute, and in jazz clubs such as the Blue Note, the Knitting Factory and Tonic.
Mimi Rabson is one of Boston’s most creative and versatile musicians. A first-prize winner of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in composition, her compositions and arrangements are published by StringLetter Press (distributed by Hal Leonard), and include many original pieces along with arrangements of music by Duke Ellington, James Brown and Cole Porter. Ms. Rabson created the Really Eclectic String Quartet, and was a founding member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Ms. Rabson appeared with Itzhak Perlman on the recording called “In the Fiddler’s House” and on “The Late Show with David Letterman”. She was featured in a documentary about Klezmer music called “A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden”. Ms. Rabson served as musical director to academy award winner, Joel Grey in his production of “Borschtcapades ‘94”. Her composition “Klezzified” was featured on Saturday Night Live. Other performance credits include the premiere of “Fresh Faust” by Leroy Jenkins, soundtrack for “Sensorium”- the award winning film by Karen Aqua, with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Meatloaf, Kristin Chenoweth, the Boston Gay Men’s Choir, the Boston Camarata, the New England Ragtime Ensemble, the Klezmatics, Deborah Henson-Conant, the Pablo Ablanedo Octet, and XLCR. She has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion twice, at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Wolf Trap, the Mann Center, the Place des Arts in Montreal and other world class venues.
Phil Neighbors is originally from Cincinnati, and has lived in Boston since 1995. He has performed and/or recorded with groups as diverse as: The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, Dave Birkin’s Hot Shots, the Sam Davis group, The Coots, the Jeff Robinson Trio, and the Funky White Honkies, Agachiko, and Triarky.
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Warren Senders and The Raga Ensemble
One of the world’s great improvisational song forms is khyal, the richly ornamented classical singing of North Indian tradition. Accompanied by the harmonium of George Ruckert and the tabla of Amit Kavthekar, Warren Senders weaves a hypnotic tapestry of sound in his renditions of traditional ragas. Acclaimed as the foremost non-Indian performer of this beautiful idiom, Senders lived in India for many years, learning the khyal style from master teacher Pt. S.G. Devasthali. He has performed throughout the world, enrapturing audiences and critics with a unique combination of authenticity and originality. His most recent CD release, “The Beauty of Khyal,” features mesmerizing renditions of five evening and night ragas.
“…an amazing man, an amazing artist.”
Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, interviewed in Little India, September 2002
Mr. Senders has received grants and fellowships including the Indo-American Fellowship, the Jon B. Higgins Memorial Scholarship for Indian Music, a Senior Research Fellowship and a Performing Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, support for music composition from Meet the Composer, and travel awards from the Fund for U.S. Artists. His writings on music have been published by Rhythm Magazine, Bansuri, the New England Conservatory Journal for Learning Through Music, and World Rhythm. Also a jazz musician, his original instrumental music can be heard on cds by “Antigravity” and the Jazz Composers’ Alliance Orchestra.
”Warren’s talent of keeping listeners engrossed by his delightful singing…comes from this same attitude of heartily enjoying the process of musical discovery.”
— Chaitanya Kunte, Tarun Bharat, Pune, India —
An internationally recognized educator and a faculty member of Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music, Mr. Senders has given hundreds of lecture-demonstrations, master-classes and clinics, for interested learners from kindergartners to elders. He has developed extensive course material on the structure and aesthetics of Hindustani music, and has introduced students students at colleges and universities all over the United States, Canada and India to aspects of Indian music.
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About www.350.org and the number 350:
Co-founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, 350.org is the hub of a worldwide network of over two hundred environmental organizations, all with a common target: persuading the world’s countries to unite in an effort to reduce global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million or less. Climatologist Dr. James Hansen says, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” (Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue.) Activists involved in the 350 movement include Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Vandana Shiva (world-renowned environmental leader and thinker), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights), Van Jones, Bianca Jagger, Dr. James Hansen, Barbara Kingsolver and many more.
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Warren Senders is the contact person for “Voices Against Climate Change.” He is one of thousands of concerned global citizens hoping to trigger positive change through social action and the arts. He can be reached at warvij@verizon.net or by telephone at 781-396-0734.
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Making It Happen!
The Beauty of Khyal — A Recital of Night Ragas
I’m as happy with this recording as I’ve ever been. The recording session we did on August 16 of this year was wonderfully productive, and this CD represents the first installment of the raga performances Milind Pote, Chaitanya Kunte, and I laid down that night.
Please pitch in. You’ll love this music.
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Bandra Concert, August 21, 2013
The music this evening was just gorgeous. Mukta Raste’s beautiful theka was inspiring and supportive, and Ravindra Lomate played excellent sangat on harmonium. The Bandra Base is a once-in-a-lifetime room: small, sympathetic, filled with excellent resonance and history. Dee Wood, proprietor of the Base, made the farmaish for Malkauns. I’m glad he did; this performance came out with lots of bhaav.
Mora bolere – vilambit teentaal
Banwari mori manata nahin – drut teentaal
Tarana – drut teentaal
Warren Senders – voice
Mukta Raste – tabla
Ravindra Lomate – harmonium
August 21, 2013
The Bandra Base, Bandra, Mumbai, India
Peer na jaanire – vilambit ektaal
Man man ab to man – drut ektaal
tarana – drut teentaal
Warren Senders – voice
Mukta Raste – tabla
Ravindra Lomate – harmonium
August 21, 2013
The Bandra Base, Bandra, Mumbai, India
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Yes, No, Maybe? (Trombone Duet)
This trombone duet was composed out of a need to write more music for trombone, because trombones are awesome. I was very fortunate to have Bob Pilkington and Jim Messbauer doing this version of the piece. There’s another performance from a JCA concert with Pilkington and David Harris; I’m going to try and find that and upload it too, to facilitate side-by-side comparisons for all you trombone geeks out there.
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Horn Gamelan (1990)
Back in my college days, I began working on a piece which would employ my very rudimentary understanding of gamelan structure to a brass ensemble. I worked on “Horn Gamelan” for a long time, filling in hundreds of teeny-tiny notes on a big folder of score paper, then copying out all the parts by hand. There were five sections, all timbrally more or less identical. The piece was performed in 1981 at a concert I produced at Boston’s Studio Red Top, a performance space run by Cathy Lee. That evening was a sort of “graduation recital” for my final year at Campus-Free-College (Beacon College).
For a long time after that the score lay dormant. In 1990 I was awarded a little grant from Meet The Composer, and part of it allowed me to resurrect Horn Gamelan. I picked the two best movements, wrote a fanfare/introduction (which included a sitar improvisation by my wife Vijaya) and an interlude which evoked some of the timbres of Sundanese music, and had a nice performance that evening. Somewhere I have a videotape of it…wish I could find it!
Here is the recording of my revised “Horn Gamelan” from its 1990 performance. Hope you enjoy it!
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Interstices – String Quartet (composed 1984, performed 1993)
“Interstices” had its origin in a chart I wrote for the first incarnation of Antigravity, which included all the basic ingredients: a seven-beat vamp, a twisted melody in a Phrygian Maj7 scale, and the superimposition of 6-beat groups on the 7-beat structure to create a 42-beat cross-rhythm. But I feel that the full realization of these ideas was only made possible by the quartet format.
I composed the string quartet score of “Interstices” in 1984 on a visit to New Paltz, NY. The project was originally undertaken as a project for Mimi Rabson’s R.E.S.Q. (Really Eclectic String Quartet), which played it in a recording session before I left for India the first time in 1985.
The version for RESQ was through-composed for their unusual orchestration of 3 violins and bass. Their version sounded great and was the only recorded rendition for many years. In 1990 I assembled a “New Ensemble Music” concert and prepared the piece for performance by 2 violins, viola, and bass — but the woman who was to play 2nd violin disappeared 10 days before the concert and never returned, and it wound up being performed as a trio.
In 1993 I put together another “New Ensemble Music” concert, and this time I got lucky. John Styklunas was playing bass, and he brought his colleague Steve Garrett in on ‘cello; I rewrote the viola part for ‘cello, and I think it sounds great that way. Teresa Marrin and Tomoko Iwamoto did a great job on both violins. There is no distinction between first and second fiddles in terms of the complexity or ranking of the parts.
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The Web of Departure – Trombone, 2 Violins, ‘Cello, and Contrabass
The Web of Departure is a feature for the trombone artistry of Bob Pilkington, accompanied by the same string quartet that performs Interstices.
While the piece is built around a simple pentatonic structure with some modulations of tonic, it evokes a series of very pleasant moods, and Bob’s playing is exceptional.
Hope you enjoy this: