2nd Oud Summit

Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/24/2016
7:00 pm

Location
Barbes

Categories No Categories

Jenny will guest on vocals and percussion for Adam Good’s set at the 2nd Oud Summit.

2nd Oud Summit at Barbès in Brooklyn to Showcase the Oud, one of the most popular instruments of the middle east. Barbès 7pm, 376 9th st. Brooklyn, NY 10$
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On March 24th Barbès in Brooklyn, New York will host the second New York Oud Summit, a showcase of the varied performative iterations of the Middle-Eastern lute, oud. The oud and its music is analogous to a language with many regional vocabularies and accents. Oud Summit will showcase the talents of five North American oud players who have all developed a unique take on one of the oldest stringed instruments in the world. Adam Good, Mavrothi Kontanis, Kane Mathis, Gordon Grdina and Brian Prunka have two things in common, they all have pursued intense study of middle-eastern music, theory, and performance, and they have all created live performances that incorporate the unique personal, and regional inspirations that each musician has encountered throughout the course of his study. This concert is dedicated to the memory of the late Haig Manoukian. Haig was a loved and respected contributor to the New York Middle-Eastern music scene since the late 1970’s and was a huge inspiration to generations of oud players.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Adam Good’s specialty is the Turkish Oud, on which he brings new life to the traditional melodies of Ottoman and Balkan folk music. With a foundation in jazz guitar his interest in this music began around 1994, setting him on a path to study with Oud master Necati Celik. His compositions and knowledge of Turkish makam has made him a fixture in the NYC Balkan and Middle Eastern scenes, playing with ensembles Dolunay, Sherita, and Souren Baronian’s Taksim.

Brian Prunka spent his musically formative years immersed in the jazz community of New Orleans and for the past decade has been based in Brooklyn, composing and performing jazz and middle-eastern influenced music with his own projects (such as Nashaz and the Near East River Ensemble) as well as working with various other artists such as Simon Shaheen, Michael Bates, and Ravish Momin. Brian began his deep study of Arabic music over 15 years ago when he began playing the oud.

Mavrothi Kontanis is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and teacher born and raised in the US, but with roots in Halkidiki, Greece. Mavrothi’s main instrument is the oud, and he has studied and performed with many of the world’s top players of Greek and Near Eastern music, and is currently studying music education and composition at Montclair State University.

Kane Mathis began his study of the Oud in 1998 with Mutlu Torun of the I.T.U. conservatory in Istanbul, Turkey. He then pursued 5 years of private study with Munir Nürettin Beken. He tours internationally and has been a visiting artist at ethnomusicology departments in the U.S. and Europe. He is a recipient of a Chamber Music America grant and is widely commissioned to compose for modern dance and media. Kane is also known for his 17 year study of the the Mandinka harp, kora.
Juno award winner

Gordon Grdina is an accomplished Oud/Guitarist whose sound is a combination of his interests in mainstream jazz, free-form improvisation and Arabic classical music. Aside from the avant-garde leading Gord Grdina Trio, Gordon leads the Persian contemporary ensemble Qalandar and is half of the free-punk duo Peregrine Falls. Haram is Gordon’s main ensemble for the exploration of Arabic classical music. This ancient music is redefined by the arrangement and exploration of the pieces from a modern avant-garde perspective. Recently Gordon is working with a NYC quartet, Grdina/Houle/Loewen Collective and an Oud trio with Mark Helias and Hank Roberts.