Afro-Semitic Experience, Berkeley, CA, 22 Mar, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014 at 8:00 p.m.
Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse
2020 Addison St.
Berkeley, CA
Tickets $30 advance / $32 at the door
29th JMF Festival Pass applies
With its highly accessible ethnic world music mix and ability to get an audience on its feet, the Afro-Semitic Experience is redefining the jazz concert. This seven-piece band is beyond category. Whether playing gospel, klezmer, nigunim, spirituals or swing, the Afro-Semitic Experience rocks the room with its intricate, infectious melodies and solid grooves. It’s multi-cultural soul. Afro-Semitic Experience concerts are celebrations: the band plays great music, tells stories and offers a positive and meaningful message: unity in the community.
Co-founded by African-American jazz pianist Warren Byrd and Jewish-American jazz bassist David Chevan in 1998, the ASE has shared its music at concerts, workshops and worship services across the United States, Canada and Europe. Venues include the Amsterdam Festival of Jewish Music, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Detroit Festival of Jewish Music, Portland Jazz Festival, New York Noise Festival, Eldridge Street Synagogue and Paris Festival of Jewish Culture. The band has worked with outstanding artists from the jazz and klezmer worlds, including Frank London and Matt Darriau of the Klezmatics, as well as Cantors Alberto Mizrahi and Jack Mendelson.
The ASE features Will Bartlett on saxophone, Alvin Benjamin Carter, Jr., and Baba David Coleman on percussion, Stacy Phillips on resonator (slide) guitar and violin, and Saskia Laroo on trumpet.
“Never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire,” wrote critic Nat Hentoff in The Wall Street Journal.
Part of the 29th Jewish Music Festival
More info: www.jewishmusicfestival.org/events/ase