New York City, NY --- Regarded as the founding father of the modern frame drum movement, four-time Grammy Award-winning percussionist Glen Velez performs in a one-night only, double-header concert featuring two of today’s most evocative and well-respected world music ensembles - Glen Velez TA KA DI MI Project and Trio Globo.  The Center for Creative Resources presents this wide-ranging, virtuosic program of original music drawn from jazz, classical, blues and cultural traditional from around the globe.

 

The TA KA DI MI Project is comprised of percussion legend Glen Velez and rhythm voice master Lori Cotler performing original compositions derived from music of the Mid-East, Central Asia and the Mediterranean region. A multifarious array of frame drums, bird calls and exotic noisemakers blend with South Indian Konnakol drum language, soulful melodies and jazz-inflected scat, to deliver a unique program of pure rhythm and pulse. TA KA DI MI represents the primal rhythm cycle of four beats, which leads the mind from the mystical realm of numbers and into the sublime world of music and sound.  Velez and Colter are joined by percussionists Shane Shanahan (an original member of the award-winning Silk Road Ensemble) and Yousif Sheronick (a member of Ethos and a regular collaborator with the Lark Quartet).

 

The first half of the program will include Velez’s groundbreaking classic, Doctrine of Signatures, the first composition for frame drum ensemble of its kind that uses the Glen Velez Handance Method of stepping, vocalizing and drumming. While influenced by African, South Indian and Arabic drumming traditions, it is in essence a modern invocation of the tradition of frame drum ensemble playing from the ancient Mediterranean world. Influenced by John Cage, the pioneer of chance music, Doctrine echoes Composed Improvisation for One-Sided Drum with or without Jingles (1989), a work written by Cage exclusively for Velez.  

Trio Globo has been blending jazz and world music since 1993.  Having crafted a totally original voice in contemporary acoustic jazz, the group’s musicality has been cited as “inventive, instrument-stretching, genre-busting.” (Journal Sentinel)  Comprised of Grammy Award winning musicians including cellist Eugene Friesen (Paul Winter Consort), pianist and master harmonica player Howard Levy (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Kenny Loggins, Paquito d’Rivera), and percussionist Glen Velez (Paul Winter Consort, Steve Reich), the members of Trio Globo are true originals re-inventing their instruments in new music both personal and global. With roots in jazz, classical and sacred music, the ensemble’s rhythmic influences derived from travels in six continents.  Program highlights include tracks off of their new CD “Steering by the Stars”, their first full-length recorded album in almost 15 years.

 

 # # #