Video: Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens, playing a cover from the band ‘Innocence Mission’ on the roof of Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall, the day of the MusicNOW Festival.
Irena Havlová & Vojtěch Havel
In more than fifteen years of their joint activity, Czech artists Irena Havlová and Vojtěch Havel have passed through several distinctive stages of development. They started to work together in the mid-80s, at the experimental Capella Antiqua e Moderna ensemble which won both public and critical acclaim.
The repertoire of that unique association of musicians of the same generation, well versed in music history, spanned various styles of European classical music, ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary music, which they performed with extraordinary facility yet very convincingly, and within it the Havels, a husband-and-wife duo, were able to develop what since the very beginning had been a very unorthodox approach to both historical and modern compositional techniques and interpretive procedures.
Besides appearing with that ensemble they were intensively collaborating with many other leading Czech and foreign artists since the late 1980s, gradually creating their typically unclassifiable, multi-style and multi-media sound and image collages. Their favourite partners included Jiří Stivín, Czech jazz multi-instrumentalist of world renown, avant-garde drummer Alan Vitouš, and impulsive guitarist Tony Ackerman, as well as dancers Karel Vaněk and Eva Černá, painter Radek Pilař, and others.
Learn more about Irena & Vojtech Havel at their website.
Amiina
Sólrún, María, Edda and Hildur, four Icelandic women in their mid twenties collectively known as amiina first decided they wanted to write music together in 2004. They gathered together every last instrument they could find and piled them into their car. They then filled every available bit of space with food.
This, they maintain, was a very, very important part of the process. But it was also very nearly the act that prevented the birth of amiina. Their overloaded car was unable to struggle up the steep mountainous incline to the studio they had chosen, and had a local farmer not towed them to their destination with his tractor amiina might never have come to be.
Learn more at the Amiina website.
David Cossin
David Cossin is a specialist in new and experimental music, Cossin has managed to stretch the boundaries of percussion performance by incorporating new media across a broad spectrum of musical and artistic forms.
David Cossin has recorded and performed internationally with composers and ensembles including Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich and Musicians, Philip Glass, Yo-yo Ma, Meredith Monk, Tan Dun, Cecil Taylor, Don Byron, Talujon Percussion Quartet, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Bo Didley.. Numerous theater projects include collaborations with Blue Man Group, Mabou Mines, and the director, Peter Sellars. David was featured as the percussion soloist in Tan Dun’s Grammy and Oscar winning score to Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
David has performed as a soloist with orchestras through out the world including, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Radio France, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sao Paulo State Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, Hong Kong Symphony, and the Singapore Symphony.
Through composition, inventing new instruments, and music production David has ventured into other art forms creating sonic installations that have been presented in the US, Germany, and Italy. This summer, he was invited to be the curator for the Sound Res Festival in southern Italy.
Learn more about David, listen to samples, and find out about upcoming performances at his website: DavidCossin.com
Video: The 50th Take Away Show
It’s the 50th Take Away Show, and to celebrate this, we offer you an exceptionnal one : A 30′ movie, filmed at the MusicNOW Festival in Cincinnati.
With : Havlovi, Sufjan Stevens, David Cossin, Pedro Soler, Glogs & Shara Wordan, Osso Quartet et Amiina.
My Brightest Diamond
My Brightest Diamond is a band fronted by Shara Worden, who has also performed as a vocalist with Sufjan Stevens’s band. The band’s first album, Bring Me the Workhorse, was released in 2006.Mixing elements of opera, cabaret, chamber music, and rock, My Brightest Diamond was the project of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden. The daughter of a National Accordion Champion-winning father and a mother who was an organist for their Pentecostal church, Worden grew up in Ypsilanti, MI, listening to gospel, jazz, and classical music and performing in the church choir. She studied opera at the University of North Texas’ music program, and after graduation, moved to New York City to continue her vocal studies. In N.Y.C., she became as involved in the world of underground rock as she was in the realms of classical music, becoming inspired by the likes of Antony and the Johnsons and Nina Nastasia and their intimate performances at venues such as Tonic, the Living Room, and the Knitting Factory. Worden began writing her own material, which had one foot in her classical training and the other in the avant rock she was discovering.
She began performing and recording as Awry, gathering a supporting group of musicians playing everything from wine glasses to wind chimes, and eventually added a string quartet after studying and collaborating with Australian composer Padma Newsome. She released The Orange Album and Quiet B-Sides in 2001, and a remix album in 2003. After meeting fellow transplanted Michigander Sufjan Stevens, she became one of his Illinoisemakers and took a hiatus from her own work to perform on his Illinois tour as cheerleading captain. When the tour was over, Worden renamed her project My Brightest Diamond and set to work on two albums: A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, a collection of songs performed with a string quartet, and Bring Me the Workhorse, a more rock-oriented set that was released on Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty in summer 2006. My Brightest Diamond toured with Stevens that fall in support of the album.
In early 2007 My Brightest Diamond toured in support of The Decemberists, as part of the latter’s “Twilight in The Fearful Forest” Tour.
My Brightest Diamond contributed a cover of Radiohead’s “Lucky” to the 2007 Stereogum tribute album OKX. My Brightest Diamond has referred to Radiohead as “our favorite band of all time.”
Clogs
Clogs are a mostly instrumental project led by Bryce Dessner and Australia’s Padma Newsome, both men familiar from their membership in the acclaimed rock band, The National. Their existence predates The National, and Clogs have released four widely acclaimed albums on Brassland Records — Thom’s Night Out (2001), Lullaby For Sue (2003), Stick Music (2004), and 2006’s Lantern.
When Clogs formed they were an oddball classical ensemble in indie rock clothing. Today, however, they’re at the forefront of a scene including friends in groups The Books, Rachel’s, and Bell Orchestre.
The band members met in the late-90s while studying at the Yale School of Music. Newsome started his career as a concert violinist in the Sydney Symphony, before a six-year detour took him to an ashram in the remote region of New South Wales. He began composing in the 90s at the University of Adelaide, when he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that brought him to America. Dessner is an established soloist, and veteran of groups including Bang on a Can All-Stars, which has given him in contact with major figures like Philip Glass and Terry Riley. Elliott is a proud Vermonter and active freelance musician. Kozumplik is a master percussionist familiar with most any style.
Clogs’ “classical” music is the result of a peculiar writing process more akin to a rock band or a jazz quartet. The members come to rehearsals with basic ideas that the group riffs on and develops in jam sessions and live performance. Newsome later arranges these ideas into elegant and complex musical narratives that meld and extend the ideas of minimalist, modernist, and romantic composers, adding sounds and melodies drawn from the folk music of India, the Jewish Diaspora, and everywhere else.
Listen to clips, learn about upcoming performances and more at Clogsmusic.com
Music Now Festival 2007
APRIL 5-7, 2007
MEMORIAL HALL - 1225 ELM ST - CINCINNATI, OHIO
Featuring:
Pedro Soler
Clogs
David Cossin
Amiina
My Brightest Diamond
Irena & Vojtech Havel
Sufjan Stevens
Pedro Soler
Born in 1938, Pedro Soler began playing guitar with exiled refugees from Andalusia who came to Toulouse after the Spanish Civil War. He performed in flamenco companies, studied with masters, and later accompanied celebrated flamenco singers and dancers. As a recording artist of over 50 years, Soler is one of the most honored flamenco artists. Pedro makes his US debut at Music Now and will open the festival with his exceptional solo performance.
