Awaz Trio Colorado Premiere Featuring New Compositions By Aakash Mittal

trio

I am excited to bring my latest project, Awaz Trio, to my Colorado community. The conception for Nocturne began nine years ago during my undergrad at CU Boulder. I was inspired by the Indian concept of rasa, the literal evocation of emotion through music and dance, and time theory, the idea that certain ragas communicate specific times of day or night. I knew then that I didn’t have the skills or knowledge to even begin such a project. I predicted that I wouldn’t start until I was at least thirty.

Right now I am twenty nine so I guess the prediction was accurate. My recent year long fellowship in India gave me the opportunity to have an authentic experience with Hindustani raga music and the space to explore this idea for the first time. This is also my first project to incorporate traditional Indian percussion in creative improvised and composed music. In many ways I feel I am only just beginning to sculpt this idea into sound.

The musicians I am collaborating with have cultivated their own original voices stemming from a diversity of traditions. Matt Fuller is a Brooklyn based guitarist whose sound emanates the western slope and jazz language. Rajna Swaminathanalso hails from New York City and is doing ground breaking work creating a space for the south Indian hand drum, called Mridungam, in improvised music.

Please join us for a night of creative music. The sounds of West Bengal will collide with Carnatic ragas and New York City beats to create music that is at once steeped in tradition and distinctly modern.

Aakash Mittal

Awaz Trio
Colorado Premiere of Nocturne by Aakash Mittal
When: Saturday, September 6th
Where: Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge
Time: 7 and 9pm sets
Price: $20 General Admission/$15 Students with ID

Jayme Stone & The Other Side of the Air

Jayme Stone (banjo) | Ron Miles (trumpet) | Jean-Luc Davis (bass) | Marc Dalio (drums)

Two-time Juno Award winning banjoist, composer and instigator Jayme Stone makes music inspired by sounds from around the world. His brand new album, The Other Side of the Air, is a travelogue of imaginary landscapes and faraway lands. The album traverses the Cinnamon Route through Persia and India and revisits and reinvents melodies Stone collected in West Africa. In concert, you’ll also catch them playing a Bach fugue, a Trinidadian Calypso, Bulgarian mountain dance and Stone’s own tiny symphonies.

“The Yo-Yo Ma of the banjo.”
GLOBE AND MAIL

“I take back what I said about Jayme Stone.”
STEVE MARTIN

“This is what the future of the banjo sounds like.”
SONGLINES

“Delicate, imaginative and unusual music.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK

“Fantastic new album…carrying the banjo far from the bluegrass context.”
DOWNBEAT

“This music sounds like nothing else on earth.”
TORONTO STAR

“Stone’s airs evoke the sensation of simply being in the world, alive and aware.”
WASHINGTON POST

YORK STREET JAZZ, AUGUST 30TH: THE GERSHWIN/ERHARDT/DAVIS TRIO

So, had I before seen a performance like the one presented by Tom Gershwin, Eric Erhardt, and Jean-Luc Davis at York Street Jazz on August 30th? I’m going to venture that I hadn’t, nor had anyone else present – provided there wasn’t an old regular from some of New York’s more avant-garde clubs in attendance…
The term “Jazz Trio” will in nearly every mind conjure a piano-bass-drums configuration a la Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, or maybe Brad Mehldau or the Bad Plus. Some might envision an organ-drums-and either guitar or sax ensemble, like those of Jimmy Smith. Among the more modern-minded, a few may recall Sonny Rollins’ Freedom Suite trio of tenor sax, bass and drums – but trumpet, reeds and bass? That one’s kind of strange: Intriguing, but admittedly pretty strange. If I hadn’t received an advance program for the evening, I’d have thought – as the other concertgoers must have – that the drummer must be somewhere stuck in traffic! In terms of this unusual instrumentation, the closest historical organization to which I could point as precedence might be the Jimmy Giuffre Three of 1958, which numbered Giuffre himself on clarinet and saxophones, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall on guitar – but even Giuffre in this group and other permutations of the Three relied upon a chordal instrument for harmonic support, whether Hall’s guitar or Paul Bley’s piano in later configurations. These three contemporary players: trumpeter Tom Gershwin, saxophonist/clarinetist Eric Erhardt and bassist Jean-Luc Davis were pretty much butt-naked musically speaking and exposed to every conceivable element, whether withering icy glares or gale-force yawns from the forty-something strong audience. But they wound up not needing to worry about such things – the boys dug down deep and came up each with fistfuls of buried jewelry. Continue reading