Join us for PANGEA JAZZ FEST - the first festival in America devoted exclusively to jazz informed by the spirit of world music.
2:00 pm - Arki Sound
3:00 pm - Prasanna - All Terrain Guitar
4:00 pm - New York Gypsy All-Stars with special guest Michal Urbaniak
5:00 pm - Stephane Wrembel Band
6:00 pm - Gregorio Uribe Big Band with special guest Sofia Rei
The world jazz celebration of the year will take place at DROM with live music for 12 hours from 10 bands as well as special guest artists. Celebrating world jazz with rising stars and legendary performers the fest will showcase the best talent of New York world jazz scene and beyond with the music spanning five continents. Dancing is encouraged an inevitably iresistable. An exhilarating afterparty will follow the 2nd half of the festival event.
1st Half
STEPHANE WREMBEL BAND - Rolling Stone Magazine has called him “a revelation”. Woody Allen recruited him to score the theme for the smash film “Midnight in Paris”, and he performed the irresistibly catchy original song, “Bistro Fada”, live during the 2012 Academy Awards. He has headlined at Lincoln Center, played major festivals, recorded with mandolin legend David Grisman, toured with master violinist Mark O’Connor and shared stages with everyone from Elvis Costello to Patti Smith to The Roots.
GREGORIO URIBE BIG BAND - Born in Bogotá and educated at Berklee School of Music in Boston, Gregorio Uribe is now based in New York, where he leads The Gregorio Uribe Big Band: a 16-piece jazz orchestra made up of musicians from six different countries that blends cumbia and other danceable Colombian rhythms with jazz, funk and powerful big band arranging. In October 2015 the band released their debut album, Cumbia Universal (Zoho Music)
SOFIA REI - Award winning vocalist, songwriter and producer Sofia Rei is considered one of the most passionate, and inventive musicians on the current New York music scene. Her music explores connections between the various traditions of South American folklore, jazz, world music and electronic sounds. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sofia ties together diverse influences in a program full of rhythmic complexity, and a melodic purity that haunts even as it uplifts.
PRASANNA - ALL TERRAIN GUITAR - Prasanna is the quintessential Indian Renaissance man. An internationally acclaimed guitarist in contemporary Jazz, and Blues, a composer for award winning films and pioneer in performing Carnatic music on the guitar among many other accomplishments. Prasanna’s prolific body of work include 16 albums as leader. The latest album, All Terrain Guitar, featuring jazz luminaries such as Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Dave Douglas among others, has just been released. This is the project Prasanna will be presenting at the festival.
NEW YORK GYPSY ALL-STARS - The New York Gypsy All-Stars sprang the moment virtuosic clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, scion of a revered musical family in Macedonia and a versatile Athens-born jazz bassist Panagiotis Andreou, both of whom were raised on the lush sounds of Macedonian, Greek, Turkish, and American roots, met. Tearing through the tollgates separating the region’s interlocking roots, the duo with composerly ears and a madcap relish for ill and crunky sounds, has expanded into a world jazz quintet of crack musicians with Lumanovski and Andreou eventually being joined by Turkish roots maverick Tamer Pinarbasi, who had long experimented with the kanun (traditional zither), throwing out his plectrums in favor of bare fingernails and kneading together microtonal makam scales with Western harmonies; and Australia-born, Turkey-raised jazz-loving classically trained percussionist Engin Gunyadin.
MICHAL URBANIAK - Polish jazz violin powerhouse, Michal Urbaniak, has over the years performed with the jazz greats such is Miles Davis, George Benson, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Larry Coryell, Kenny Garret, Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Eumir Deodato, Stephane Grappelli, Oliver Nelson, Lenny White, Larry Young, John Hendricks, Joe Williams, Elvin Jones, Buster Williams, Joe Henderson, Johny Griffin, Ted Curson, Astor Piazzolla, Freddy Hubbard, Tom Browne, Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson, Victor Bailey, Omar Hakim, Bernard Wright, Marcus Miller and many others. Though Michal is known mainly for his fusion and acid jazz output he has infused his work with Polish folkloric ideas - a distinct sound he calls Polish jazz.
ARKI SOUND - Formed in NYC in 2009 by an electric bass player Samson Kebede Arki Sound is a New York City based collective interpreting the "Golden Age" of Ethiopian jazz from the 1960s and 1970s. Just as the Ethiopian scene incorporated various influences, both indigenous as well as from American R&B, jazz and pop, so does Arki Sound bring their own backgrounds - from jazz to punk funk to free improv - to create their own flavor of Ethiopian groove. In Amharic, አርኪ [Arki] translates as "quencher" or "satisfier"; Arki Sound endeavors to serve its listeners and dancers the finest in spontaneous Ethiopian flavored groove.
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