Fire Over Heaven Season Finale
Fire Over Heaven "Season Finale"! This will be the last installment of the series before we take our summer break. To celebrate all the incredible music we've had the pleasure of hosting this past year, we've programmed a very special bill featuring Hindustani singer Dada Tapan Kanti Baidya with violinist Leyna Marika Papach, a solo acoustic guitar set from Guerilla Toss' Arian Shafiee, and the avant-blues collaboration of Suzanne Langille and Neel Murgai. This is music from multiple worlds/dimensions -- ancient traditions and avant-experiments colliding, cross-pollinating and sympathetically vibrating at the Outpost space.
Thursday, May 17th / doors 7:30pm / music 8:00pm
Dada Tapan Kanti Baidya w/ Leyna Marika Papach (violin)
Arian Shafiee
Suzanne Langille & Neel Murgai
Outpost Artist Resources
1665 Norman st. Ridgewood, NY (Queens)
$10 advanced tickets / $10-15 suggested donation at door.
All proceeds go to performers.
From Fire Over Heaven curator Che Chen:
I first heard Hindustani singer Dada Tapan Kanti Baidya at the Silent Barn in 2013 as part of Amirtha Kidambi's (sadly short-lived) experimental/Indian music crossover series, Tongues. I remember the opening sets -- one of free music and one of classical Indian/hybrid forms -- being good, but it was Baidya's performance that burned itself into my memory. I'd been to a handful of performances of Indian Classical music at that point but this was the first time I'd heard anyone sing the slow, smoldering dhrupad style in person. His voice was crystalline. He held tones for improbable lengths of time, fusing, ebbing and flowing with the tanpura drones and Leyna Marika Papach's violin to create an oceanic sense of motion and a suspended sense of time. When the drummer finally dropped (well into the first hour) Baidya's voice became as agile as it had been fluid, rising, falling, punctuating in tight, often odd counter rhythms to the mridangam. It was also the first time I'd encountered this music without it being framed by the pretensions and assumptions that often make "world music" concerts problematic or the relative conservatism of the "official" Indian Classical Music scene. The music seemed unmediated by the more anarchic context of the Silent Barn. He'd taken a risk in stepping into that world, and the audience seemed more than happy to meet him there that night...Arian Shafiee's reputation as the guitarist with the highly caffeinated (and celebrated) noise-punk band Guerilla Toss surely precedes him these days, but here he'll be trading electricity for the wooden resonances of the acoustic guitar and re-imagining the instrument through the use of eccentric tunings and extended techniques...Half of the downtown "improv-blues" band Haunted House (with Langille's partner Loren Connors and Saint Augustin guitarist, Andrew Burnes), in their duo singer Suzanne Langille and percussionist Neel Murgai have stripped away everything but the barest musical essentials: the voice and the drum. Drawing on traditional songs, old blues and Langille's own compositions, these are bone deep re-imaginings of what music is at it's very essence.
This is an incredible lineup and the last Fire Over Heaven til September, so don't sleep on this one!
C.C.
III
Dada Tapan Kanti Baidya
with violin accompaniment by
Leyna Marika Papach
Dada Tapan Kanti Baidya was born in Bangladesh. In 1976, he won the Gold Medal in the National Music Competition which enabled him to a full scholarship to study North Indian Classical Music at the Visva Bharati University in India. There he studied with various masters from different Gharana/schools such as Pt Prasun Kr Benergee, Smti Mamta Dasgupta (Patiala Gharana), Pt Nemai Chand Baral (Dagar Gharana Dhrupad), Ustad Eunus Hossain Khan (Khyal Agra/Atroli Gharana), Mohan Sing Khangura, and Pt Aloke Chattergee (kirana Gharana Khyal).
After earning his Masters in Music in 1982, he returned to Bangladesh where he served as a professor of North Indian Classical Vocal at the National music and arts academy in Dhaka and performed regularly in public as well as television as a Classical vocal performer. In 1986, he established his school, Sadarang Sangit Shamaroha (Sadarang School of Music) based on his own style and technique of vocal performance (Gharana).
In 1992, he was invited by the Bangladesh Cultural Center in New York to open a classical Music department. After his arrival to New York, he taught at the Bangladesh Cultural Center NY, Bangladesh society of new york and Bangladesh Association of New Jersey. Also during this time, he established an organization called the Bangla Institue of performing arts which supports artists and performers in all fields of Indian traditional music (Dhrupad, Dhamar, Khyal, Tarana and Thumri). As a performer, he has held concerts at venues such as UNESCO, Yale University, and John Hopkins University to name a few. He also performs and teaches at the National Music College, Dhaka on his yearly return to Bangladesh, and in 2002, he was invited to perform in India Habitat Center in New Delhi, India. Today, he continues to teach a large class of students through his school, Sadarang Music Center, established since 2007 in New York.
Leyna Marika Papach is a musician and interdisciplinary artist from Japan and the United States. Her compositions house the languages of dance, theater, sound, and image. Leyna’s performative work has been presented internationally in Europe, Japan, and the US. She has written and directed four evening-length dance-theater pieces alongside her work as a composer and violinist.
As a composer and violinist, she has worked with a wide range of artists, both as a collaborator and/or interpreter (Clarinda Mac Low, Taylor Mac, Eric Ting, J.G.Thirwell, Geraldind Fibbers and many others), performing in venues/festivals such as; Unlimited Festival (Austria), HAU (Berlin), International House (Japan), Dance Afrique Dance (Paris/Tunisia) All Tomorrow's Parties (US) and New York venues such as BAM, UNESCO, Beacon Theater, St.Anne’s Warehouse, The Stone and many others.
Leyna holds an MFA in interdisciplinary studies from Bard College, MA in Theater and Dance studies from DasArts (now DAS Theater), Amsterdam, and studied violin at the Prague Academy of Music and UMKC Conservatory of Music in Kansas City, where she received her Bachelor's degree. www.leynamarikapapach.com
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Arian Shafiee
Arian Shafiee is a Brooklyn based guitarist/improviser most known for his playing in the off-kilter dance punk band Guerilla Toss. Inspired by aspects of non-western tuning and extended techniques, he crafts moments of dense, shimmering harmony and aggressive gesture through a unique approach, hinging classical impressionism to no-wave and early minimal music. His forthcoming full length acoustic album will be released summer 2018 on VDSQ.
https://pioneerworks.org/video/pioneer-sessions-arian-shafiee/
www.hausumountain.bandcamp.com/album/beauty-tuning
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Suzanne Langille & Neel Murgai:
The Wire described lyricist Suzanne Langille’s vocals without describing her voice. Instead, it focused on Langille’s aesthetic, how she abandons ego to “throw herself at the feet of her material and let it speak through her.” Known for her work with guitarist Loren Connors and the band Haunted House, Langille has also performed with sitarist/percussionist Neel Murgai, the band San Agustin, violinist Laura Ortman and poet Yuko Otoma.
Composer/performer Neel Murgai has a passion for frame drums, including the Persian daf, learned from Soheil Zolfonun. He also specializes in sitar, having studied with Pundit Krishna Bhatt, and cofounded the Brooklyn Raga Massive. In addition to his work with Langille and the band Haunted House, Murgai has composed music for film and television, and has performed with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Cyndi Lauper, Sameer Chatterjee, and others.
