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Event
Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Behind the Music of Bustan & Ben Goldberg
JCC East Bay
1414 Walnut St, Berkeley
FREE
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Presentations by Ben Goldberg and Ben Brinner, previewing their featured projects of the 27th Jewish Music Festival.
JMF-commissioned composer Ben Goldberg shares his artistic process of creating a chamber-jazz suite Orphic Machine, inspired by the poetic writings of Allen Grossman. A Berkeley-based clarinetist, Ben was named #1 Rising Star Clarinet by the 2011 Downbeat Critics Poll. Orphic Machine will premiere March 4th in Berkeley featuring leading lights of contemporary improvisation, including Carla Kihlstedt, Rob Sudduth, Ches Smith, Myra Melford, Ron Miles, Kenny Wollesen, and Greg Cohen.
Professor Ben Brinner is the author of the award-winning book Playing Across a Divide: Israeli-Palestinian Musical Encounters, (Oxford, 2009). During his research, he worked closely with Bustan Avraham, which pioneered a new genre of music equally drawing on Western and Middle Eastern classical traditions among other influences. Members of the original group are now known as Bustan Quartet and include virtuosic players Taiseer Elias (oud); Zohar Fresco (percussion), Amir Milstein (flute), Emmanuel Mann (bass). The quartet will perform March 22 in Berkeley and March 25 in San Francisco.
Taiseer Elias is regularly cited as one of the foremost ‘ud players in the Middle East, Zohar Fresco is a leading hand percussionist on the world stage, and their virtuosity is matched by their partners Amir Milstein (flute) and Emmanuel Mann (electric bass). The quartet consists of core members of Bustan Abraham, the band that through mastery and innovative synthesis of music from the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas revolutionized the world music scene in Israel in the early 90s and brought a fresh voice from Israel to the world stage as it toured abroad annually from 1993 to 2003.
—Ben Brinner, ethnomusicologist, and chair of the Music Department, UC Berkeley
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