Amirtha Kidambi & Elder Ones // Steve Lehman & Sélébéyone

Based in New York City, Amirtha Kidambi uses her studies of Carnatic music, Western classical music and jazz, her portable harmonium and her fellow members of Elder Ones to explore the possibilities inherent in a meeting between the musical languages of jazz and Carnatic music. The latter is the classical music of South India, whose modes and rhythms are very different from those of the more familiar Hindustani style. “The sound isn’t merely the product of well chosen reference points,” Seth Colter Walls wrote in “Pitchfork” magazine. “In its abstract way, it makes a unique argument for the virtue of cross-cultural curiosity”. Kidambi is also a member, with the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and the guitarist Mary Halvorson, of the group Code Girl. She has organized events and concerts around police brutality and collaborated, among others, with Matana Roberts and Peter Evans on meetings and concerts. In her new set of music, she’s addressing a wide range of themes in the field of political resistance.
www.amirthakidambi.com
www.mattnelsonsax.com
www.brandonlopez.nyc

After making a powerful impression with his octet at last year’s festival, Steve Lehman makes a swift return with a very different project, one that reflects his long-term involvement in hip-hop. Sélébéyone features two MCs. The first, HPrizm (a/k/a High Priest), raps in English, while the other, Gaston Bandimic, uses Wolof, the most widely spoken language of his native Senegal. Lehman’s introduction to the Senegalese hip-hop scene came from the saxophonist Maciek Lasserre, who studied with him and became a member of the band. Lehman and Lasserre provide the material for the septet, which also makes powerful use of electronics and a rhythm section that can switch with great fluency between jazz and hip-hop beats. “Sélébéyone” is a Wolof word meaning the dream-like territory where two entities meet and combine to become something previously unknown: a perfect definition of their music.
www.stevelehman.com/projects