Tag Archives: Ornette Coleman

SoSaLa Performing At FlickerLab (NY)

Concert/Tour, News, , ,

Flickerlab LogoDate: September 25, 2014
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: FlickerLab (78 Crosby Street, Suite: #203, NY, NY 10012)
Tickets:  $10 (on line), $12 (door) – By tickets now (limited seats!) here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/register?orderid=337368864355&client_token=310cf3eb51b945ab84761cf94a5fced9&eid=12940024963

Harold Moss – founder of the award-winning transmedia animation and live action production for broadcast TV, feature film, & digital multi-platform FlickerLab – and his colleagues are moving out to Dumbo, Brooklyn after their 15 years in Soho, Manhattan. In celebration of this move and as a farewell, FlickerLab is sponsoring a one week multimedia art exhibition: Are We Already Gone? Artists on the Art of Leaving. Featuring many artists from around the world with their works, such as sculptures, paintings, music and short films.

The curator of the show, Negin Sharifzadeh, invited SoSaLa to perform in the spirit of  this exhibition’s title and theme and give some life to the art works at FlickerLab.

Photo courtsy of Baba Don
Photo courtsy of Baba Don

SoSaLa consists of Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi on tenor ans sopran sax plus vocals and Baba Don on djembe, congas and other percussion instruments. For Sohrab and Baba Don to play at this event is kind of a reunion.

Speaking of Baba Don:

For almost a quarter century, Baba Don, a percussionist very much in demand, has performed with many major American Dance Companies in the world’s greatest performing-arts venues. His recording career is as equally varied as it vast; the jazz idiom, rhythm and blues, and most African derived percussion styles are represented in his discography. He is a featured member of the esteemed Last Poets. He has long been acknowledged as one of New York City’s master teachers of African Drumming and the rhythms of the Diaspora in the Americas. Baba Don is presently on faculty at the Harlem school Of the Arts for over 25 years, teaching all ages from 4 years of age to adults.

He has performed and recorded with The Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, Maurice Hines, Gregory Hines, Andy Williams, and Chuck Davis Dance theatre, Pattie Labelle, philicia Reshard, Choreographers Frank Hatchet, Geoffrey Holder, Louis Johnson and many more.Baba Don  has recorded with many Jazz artist Donald Brown, Joe Henderson, Jason Linder, Tyrone Jefferson, James Spaulding, Ron Carter, Gorge Clinton, Pharaoh Sanders, and The Last Poets

Ornette Coleman, August 23, 2011

Sohrab explores (his) music under the guidance of Ornette Coleman!

Special Feature,

As you might know, Sohrab has been rehearsing and recording with Ornette Coleman for the last two years. During these two years with Ornette, Sohrab has found his voice on the sax or through the sax. Ornette has made him understand “that music is about, and only about emotion. Technique on the sax is only a tool to express emotion and is not something that is emotion.” He made him aware that his sax sound is very original, deep and emotional. Recently he said: “I have never heard anybody play the way you are playing.” Sohrab accepts these descriptions in a cool and realistic way without becoming arrogant. In fact he isn’t young enough to lose himself.

Speaking shortly of Ornette: he is a legend! He is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer, and was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s. His sax sound is easy to recognize: his keening, crying sound draws heavily on blues music. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Besides Salif Keita, Ornette is another important highlight in Sohrab’s music career. Every rehearsal or master class with Ornette teaches Sohrab what he is about. Ornette is like a mirror. His questions make Sohrab reflect upon his playing. Through Ornette he finds out about things which he already knew but couldn’t elaborate in words. Both musicians are mainly interested in exploring how to create and execute personal sounds. And how to move them properly in a musical way to achieve unison.

Everytime he learns something from Ornette, Sohrab goes to the subway or park and plays in public to see whether he can realize the idea or emotion he just found out at Ornette’s. The results are always amazing: people start crying or approaching him with emotional words resulting in some money donations.

Sohrab hopes the time will come very soon that Ornette and him can play in public, expressing their ideas and emotions in the moment, which would sound “human”, as Ornette would say.