Feb 6 Ortine Cafe- duo with Nori Naraoka
Feb 9 Princeton Performance- KATACHI
Feb 13 Nakanaka with James Schlefer
Feb 20 Bella Gaia at the Vanderbilt Planetarium in Long Island
Feb 26 NakaNaka with Robert Dick/Sara Shoenbeck/Kaoru Watanabe

see below for details!

Feb 26th
NakaNaka presents: Breathing Over Time and Space
Improvisations by Robert Dick, Sara Shoenbeck and Kaoru Watanabe. Flutes of many types, taiko and bassoon fuse cultures and epochs.

9 to 11 pm
$10 in advance
$12 at the door
dromnyc.com
212-777-1157
85 Ave A (btwn 5th and 6th)

Robert Dick – soprano, alto, bass flutes, piccolo

With equally deep roots in classical music old and new and in free improvisation and new jazz, Robert Dick has established himself as an artist who has not only mastered, but redefined the flute. Known worldwide for creating revolutionary visions of the flute’s musical role, listening to Robert Dick play solo has been likened to the experience of hearing a full orchestra. His performances typically include flute (with his invention, the Glissando Headjoint®)piccolo, alto flute, and bass flutes in C and F. On special occasions, he’ll bring out the giant, stand-up contrabass flute.

Dick lives in New York City and is on the faculty of New York University. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.M. in composition from the Yale School of Music.

As a composer in the classical world, Robert Dick is one of only two Americans ever to be awarded both Composers Fellowships (twice) and a Solo Recitalist Grant by the N.E.A. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the city of Zurich, the Philharmonie in Cologne and many more.

As an improvisor, Dick has performed and recorded with New Winds, Tambastics, Oscura Luminosa, the Soldier String Quartet, the A.D.D. Trio, Paul Giger and Satoshi Takeishi, Jaron Lanier, Randy Raine-Reush and Barry Guy, Mari Kimura, Steve Gorn and many more of Europe and America’s finest improvisors. Over three decades of collaboration, musicians he has worked with include Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Georg Gräwe, Evan Parker, Malcolm Goldstein, Shelley Hirsch, Jöelle Leandre and John Zorn.

Sara Schoenbeck – bassoon

Sara Schoenbeck is a bassoonist who dedicates herself to expanding the sound and role of the bassoon in the worlds of contemporary notated and improvised music. The Wire places her in the “tiny club of bassoon pioneers” at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her “riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound.” From being a member of creative music ensembles, like Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet, Anthony Braxton’s 12+1tet and Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble to backing Mos Def in Dakah hip hop orchestra and backing Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder in the Mancini Orchestra, Sara continues to defy categorization as an artist. She has also also shared the stage in improvised music performances with Yusef Lateef, Fred Frith, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, Wadada Leo Smith and Nels Cline among many others. A recent transplant from Los Angeles, she spent a portion of her time there recording and also as adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Feature films she has worked on include the Matrix Trilogy, Spanglish and Dahmer. She performs regularly at jazz festivals and venues throughout North America and Europe, notably the Du Maurier Jazz Festival in Vancouver, B.C., the Improvised Music Fest in Antwerp, Belgium and the Berlin Jazz Festival. Sara has received grants from Meet the Composer and the Durfee foundation for outreach work and composition.

NakaNaka presents: Bamboo Madness

James Schlefer (shakuhachi) and Kaoru Watanabe (shinobue and taiko)
Two of NYC most dynamic performers of Japanese flutes team up for an evening of bamboo madness
with guest Nobuko Miyazaki (shinobue)

DROM
85 Ave A (between 5th and 6th st)
New York, NY
$10 in advance
$12 at the door
dromnyc.com
9 to 11 pm

James Nyoraku Schlefer is a leading performer and teacher of shakuhachi in New York City. In addition to performing and lecturing on traditional Japanese shakuhachi music, Schlefer performs contemporary music for the instrument and is an active composer. In the US he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Tanglewood, the Metropolitan, Brooklyn and Philadelphia Museums, and has toured internationally in Europe, Asia and South America. Schlefer has four solo recordings, Wind Heart (which was aboard the Space Station MIR for over one year) Solstice Spirit, Flare Up, and In The Moment, and his music was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. He received the Dai-Shi-Han (Grand Master’s Certificate) in 2001, and in 2007, he received a second Shi-Han license, from Kurahashi Yodo’s Mujuan Dojo in Kyoto. In Japan he has also studied with Aoki Reibo, Yokoyama Katsuya, Yoshinobu Taniguchi, and Mitsuhashi Kifu. He holds a Master’s degree in music from Queens College and is on the CUNY faculty where he teaches courses in Classical Music, World Music and Jazz. James is the Japanese Music Curator for the Arts at Tenri in NYC, presenting four concerts annually of traditional and contemporary music for Japanese instruments, and for ensembles of mixed Japanese and Western instruments. www.nyoraku.com

For almost 800 years, the haunting melodies of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) were the exclusive domain of Fuke Buddhist monks of the Samurai class. Playing and teaching this music was highly restricted – it belonged to the Buddhist temples of old Japan and the Zen pursuit of the one perfect sound that would bring enlightenment. Today, centuries later, thousands of miles from its origin and following an unbroken line of transmission, American Grand Master James Nyoraku Schlefer brings this timeless music to a contemporary temple of music – DROM.

Sat Feb. 6th

I’ll be playing some intimate duos with bass player Nori Naraoka at a neighborhood cafe Ortine.  Please come down for some warm food and drinks!

Starting around 8 pm
free!

Ortine Cafe
622 Washington Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11238
718-622-0026

4:30 to 6 pm
Location: Whitman College Auditorium
Sponsor: Department of Music Department of East Asian Studies
Charge: Free

KATACHI: The Shape of Sounds in Silence

Formerly of the internationally acclaimed Japanese taiko drum ensemble KODO, Kaoru Watanabe will be presenting a concert of music for Japanese taiko and bamboo flutes. Repertoire will range from arrangements of traditional hougagku (classical) and minzoku geino (folk) pieces to contemporary compositions and jazz influenced improvisations. He will be joined by Barbara Merjan, a percussionist active in the New York freelance scene who has been performing and studying taiko for five years.