Philadelphia » Calendar » Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd’s Holding It Down at
Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd’s Holding It Down at
Courtesy of Mark Christman | Posted on April 1, 2016
When
Fri, April 22, 2016
8:00 pm
Save the date
Musicians
Vijay Iyer
pianoMike Ladd
synthesizerLiberty Ellman
guitarOkkyung Lee
celloKassa Overall
drumsGuillermo E. Brown
drum programmingAbout
Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to recommend the Kimmel Center's presentation of Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, the third installment in an ongoing collaboration between MacArthur Award-winning pianist Vijay Iyer and poet/emcee Mike Ladd about American life over a decade of war.
The duo’s working method engages the formal languages of modern jazz and avant-garde rap to frame narratives that detail the domestic psychological fallout of U.S. foreign policy, particularly among people of color.
2004’s song cycle In What Language? investigated pernicious notions of global identity through the lens of post-9/11 airport security. 2007’s Still Life with Commentator was an oratorio about 24-hour news media that “held up a fun-house mirror to our culture of information overload” (Nate Chinen, New York Times)....