October 13 Show, at Culture Hub in NYC, Will Debut Goetze’s
Mande Symphony, A Multi-Media Event Featuring String Quartet, drummer Richie
Barshay, and Visualist Joshue Ott
Duo, Performing Music from Sira, Will Also Appear at the
Dalai Lama’s Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles
Sira, the first recorded collaboration from German-born and
NY-based trumpeter Volker Goetze and Senegalese kora player and
singer/griot Ablaye Cissoko, earned the exceptional duo a spate of critical acclaim and soared to the #2 position
on the CMJ World Music chart. In
the three years since Sira’s 2008 release, Gotze and Cissoko have continued to
mine the rich possibilities offered by their distinctive blend of jazz and
world music.
With a new CD set to be released in 2012, Goetze and Cissoko
will embark on a series of performances that will take them from the east to
the west coast, and then to German and France before the end of this year.
The tour will begin on October 1 in New Paltz, NY at the
Unison Arts Center, will continue on to Boston for a show at the Beehive on
October 2.
On October 13,
Goetze and Cissoko will appear at
Culturehub in NYC, in the debut performance of their Mande Symphony, a
multi-media event that will feature the duo along with a string quartet, the
much lauded Richie Barshay (Chick Corea, Esperanza Spaulding) on drums, and computer-modulated
audio and video created by
visualist Joshue Ott.
The Mande Symphony tells the legendary story of a Mande
griot, Kimmintang CIssoko, from the time he prayed that he could help alleviate
the suffering of his people through his encounters with African spirits and
genies that ultimately led him to create the African kora.
Mandinka, the language of the Mande people, is a tonal
language, making it ideal for musical adaption. The tonal sound provides a base for notated, rhythmic sound
that provokes improvisational passages from the orchestra.
During the performance, sampled speech and music will be
sent to a computer, where Joshue Ott will modulate their effect on stunning
visuals from South Africa, in real time.
Ott creates a carefully crafted dialectic between the aural and visual
experience; his artistic intention is to evoke some sense of the powerful
African spirit underlying the Kimmitang story in a way that makes it accessible
and powerful to a Western audience.
Mande Symphony is made possible in part with public funds
from the NY State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts,
The Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Goetze’s New York Council on the Arts grant also made it
possible for him to complete his debut film, Griot, which will be pre-screened
in the Film Market at Womex, on October 27 in Copenhagen.
Following their performance of the Mande Symphony, Goetze
and Cissoko will travel to Los Angeles to appear at the Dalai Lama’s World Festivalof Sacred Music, where they’ll perform music from Sira. Their short US tour will conclude with
two more west coast dates – October 15 at Café Culture in Chico, CA and October
16 at the Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center, in Berkeley, CA.
From November 2 through November 6, the two will perform in
Germany and France. Complete tour information is available at www.volkergoetze.com
