Learn More About This Event Below

WaterWorks series is all about ENGAGIING AUDIENCES IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS.  As our signature series, the audience has an opportunity to participate in a number of ways unique to each project, artist and their creative process from inception to finished work.

Acclaimed pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and celebrated poet/performer Mike Ladd, with Iraq veteran and poet Maurice Decaul, launch a new work-in-progress of music and poetry commissioned by Harlem Stage’s WaterWorks program.  Continuing on the heels of their groundbreaking collaborations In What Language? (2003) and Still Life with Commentator (2006), Iyer and Ladd will collaborate directly with young American war veterans of color from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to create a new work with the working title Holding it Down.  After interviewing veterans of color specifically about their dreams - be they harrowing, surreal, or mundane- Iyer and Ladd will build an evening of music, poetry, and song around soldiers' dream narratives.

This project considers what it means for soldiers of color to move from a complex American landscape into the international context of war and imperialism – and then to return home, to widespread indifference, numbing bureaucracy, and an economic crisis that hits their communities especially hard.  How is this new generation of veterans suffering and surviving, and what are they able to dream about? How do they go about their irreversibly transformed lives, moving from the unspeakable back to the speakable?  And a still newer question: What is the relationship between soldiers of color and our first African American president?  How do they fit into a newly transformed American race dynamic?  Using the condensed, universal logic of dreams to express and affirm their essential humanity, Holding it Down pays tribute to young men and women returning home.

Featuring: 
Vijay Iyer - piano, laptop, compositions

Mike Ladd -  vocals, lyrics, sampler, analog synthesizer

Maurice Decaul - poet

Pamela Z - voice, live electronic processing

Guillermo Brown - voice, auxiliary electronics

Liberty Ellman - guitar

Okkyung Lee - cello

Kassa Overall - percussionist

Commissioned and presented by Harlem Stage WaterWorks program

Grateful acknowledgment to the Teatro Manzoni, Milan

 

Vijay Iyer

Vijay Iyer (VID-jay EYE-yer) is one of today’s most acclaimed young jazz pianists and composers. He has released thirteen albums, most recently Historicity, which was named #1 jazz album of 2009 by the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, and the annual Village Voice jazz critics poll. In recent years, Iyer won the Downbeat Magazine International Critics' Poll in the Rising Star Jazz Artist, Composer, and Pianist categories, was named Up & Coming Musician of the Year in the JJA Jazz Awards, and received the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions.  Iyer has composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical music. He has worked extensively with Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Butch Morris, Oliver Lake, dead prez, Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, Imani Uzuri, and DJ Spooky, among others. Holding it Down is Iyer’s third major collaboration with poet-performer Mike Ladd. Iyer teaches at New York University, The New School, and School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, JazzTimes, Wire, The Guardian, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation, Sound Unbound, and Arcana IV. He is a Steinway artist.

www.vijay-iyer.com

 

Mike Ladd

Writer and music producer Michael C. Ladd was born in Boston MA. He received a B.A. in Black expatriates in the nineteenth century from Hampshire College and an M.A. in poetry from Boston University. He is published in several literary magazines including Long Shot Review and Bostonia. Ladd’s work is also featured in the book Swing Low, Black Men Writing and several anthologies, including, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, In Defense of Mumia, Bum Rush The Page, Por La Victoire, Everything But the Burden, and Rip It Up, Essays on Black Rock in the U.S. Ladd is the writer and producer of ten albums, including Easy Listening For Armageddon (Scratchie/Mercury records), Negrophilia: The Album (Thirsty Ear), Father Divine (ROIR) and The Infesticons, Bedford Park (Big Dada). As a fellow at the Institute for Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, Ladd produced and directed Blood Black and Blue, an audio documentary/performance about Black police officers in the United States. At the Asia Society, Ladd worked with pianist Vijay Iyer on In What Language, a project about people of color in relation to globalization in the context of airports. Their following project, Still Life With Commentator had its New York premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also directed and produced, in collaboration with the Kitchen, Domestica, a crooked opera. Ladd continues to work extensively with youth in Parisian suburbs such as Nanterre, Aubervillers, Pantin and Saint Denis. Ladd currently lives in Paris with his wife and two children.

www.myspace.com/mikeladd

Maurice Decaul

Poet Maurice Decaul emigrated from the island of St. Vincent in 1985. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1998. Decaul served in the Marines from 1998 to 2002 and again during the spring of 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom. He now attends Columbia University and is majorning in creative writing.

http://3.ly/bcZ

 

Pamela Z

Pamela Z is a San Francisco based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing and sampling technology. Processing her live voice through "MAX MSP" software on a PowerBook, she creates solo works that combine operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken-word, and sampled concrète sounds. These sounds are often triggered via custom MIDI controllers such as Ed Severinghaus' BodySynth™ or Donald Swearingen's Light SensePod, both of which allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. Pamela Z's performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large scale multimedia works in flexible black box venues and proscenium halls. In addition to her performance work, she has a growing body of intermedia works including multi-channel sound and video installations, some solo, and some involving visual collaborators.

www.pamelaz.com

Guillermo E. Brown

Drummer Guillermo E. Brown emerged as a result of his association with David S. Ware and other free jazz musicians from New York. As a solo artist and in his work with artists such as Spring Heel Jack and Matthew Shipp, he has attempted to combine free and traditional jazz playing with electronic music, hip-hop, and ethnic music. Brown grew up around jazz, hip-hop and rock and became involved with ambient and techno after hearing DJ Spooky. In 2001, Brown also played on Rob Reddy's Seeing By the Light of My Own Candle and Roy Campbell's It's Krunch Time as well as on Masses (an album that featured many New York free jazz musicians improvising over backing tracks created by the electronic duo Spring Heel Jack). In 2002, Brown appeared on DJ Spooky's Optometry; Shipp's jazz/hip-hop album Nu Bop; and he played with William Parker's big band, the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. Brown also released his solo debut, Soul at the Hands of the Machine, an album even more eclectic than those on which he had previously appeared.

www.myspace.com/guillermoebrown

 

Liberty Ellman

Guitarist Liberty Ellman’s improvisational and interpretive flexibility has allowed him to contribute to the creative jazz ensembles of Henry Threadgill, Greg Osby, Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer, and Rudresh Mahanthappa’s and Steve Lehman’s project, Dual Identity.  Ellman also works in a variety of other circles; collaborating with DJ Joe Claussell and stand out vocal artists like Ledisi and Somi.  As a composer and bandleader, Ellman has produced 3 critically acclaimed CDs: Orthodoxy (Red Giant Records, 1998), Tactiles (Pi Recordings, 2003) and Ophiuchus Butterfly (Pi Recordings, 2006).  His compositional style has been described as "At once, highly controlled and recklessly inventive.”

 

Okkyung Lee

A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee incorporates jazz, Korean traditional and pop music into her own unique blend of music. She has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Lawrence D, "Butch" Morris, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith and John Zorn. Okkyung has released the following albums: Nihm on Tzadik; a duo recording with Christian Marclay, “Rubbings” on My Cat is an Alien/a Silent Place; a solo cello album I saw the Ghost of an Unknown Soul and it Said... on Ecstatic Peace!; a trio album with Steve Beresford and Peter Evans, Check for Monsters on Emanem. Currently she is working on her follow up album for Tzadik, limited LPs of duo with Phil Minton for Dancing Wayang Recorde and another duo with Adam Linson for Psi Records.  She has received a composer commission from New York State Council on the Arts in 2007 and Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in 2010.

 

Kassa Overall

Kassa Overall, percussionist, composer, producer, and educator, is a rising star on today's music scene.  Encompassing all styles and traditions of music, he works with artists ranging from jazz to hip-hop, indie-pop to avante-garde.  Overall has been an integral part of Geri Allen's Timeline band which tours extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe for the past two years.  He is also making an impact on the avante-pop scene with Gordon Voidwell and Guillermo Brown, who both use laptops and sequencers to create a groundbreaking and genre defying sound pallet. Utilizing the capabilities of laptops and samplers on stage is a key element to Overall’s signature sound. He has also toured extensively with his own band, fusing his jazz and instrumental training with his contemporary electronic passion. Overall received his Bachelor's of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied under jazz drum legend Billy Hart. His mentors have also included the late Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins and Tutti Heath.  Overall has also shared the stage with an array of jazz masters including Donald Byrd, Slide Hampton, Billy Hart and Russell Malone.