what's new...?
on july 5th through the 7th, forecast platform that i'm taking part as a mentor in the filed titled your musical DNA will have its forum showcasing three amazing finalists i selected... if you are near berlin around that time, please come and join us at radialsystem where i'll be also premiering a new piece for cello and pre-recorded sounds...! for more info, please click here...
on august 16th, i'll be premiering a new composition titled "once upon a time, we used to share this same light..." at dimenna center in midtown new york, performed by chris corsano, ganavya doraiswamy, maeve gilchrist, sara serpa, ches smith and myself... this piece was commissioned for After Experimental Music at TIME:SPANS festival through the earle brown music foundation, curated by thomas fichter and ben piekut... this is the very first time i'm presenting such a piece in new york and i'm frightened and excited beyond you can imagine...!!!
unfortunately tzadik record was met with its probably the worst crisis in its history that the crowdfunding platform, named pledgemusic they used for the last 11 box cd set completely bailed on them without reimbursing them a penny even after every person who ordered the set received their copies... here's a bit of in depth story about what happened if you are curious... if you can find a way to show your support to this amazing label that's been helping out so many artists by actually giving them budgets to record and good distribution for more than 2 decades, on top of starting the stone more than 12 years ago...
here you can read an in depth article published on npr on what happened...
i was also met with a cynical responses from some people who have no clue how tzadik has operated in past decades... just to give you a short version of the story, all the royalties john zorn has made from his own releases which makes quite a big chunk of the entire label, go right back to tzadik to give other artists chances to make their albums... also at the stone, the artists takes 100% of the door while zorn raises all the rent and other maintenance by doing benefit concerts and releasing benefit albums for more than a decade while it was at its original space in the alphabet city... i was there when people got together to clean out the remnant of the previous establishment which was a burnt chinese take out join... it was quite something else in the beginning and it was never glamorous but provided a safe place for musicians to try things out without the pressure of having to sell alcohols or enough tickets... also he put up most of his macarther award money to start the stone which is probably not known to many people...
please go to this page to pre-order their LPs or spread the words...
photo by nigel bates