Music Previews: Hank Roberts Trio & New Andalucia

Hank Roberts Trio at The Owl Music Parlor

Friday, Jan 18, The Owl Music Parlor (497 Rogers Ave.), 7pm : Hank Roberts will be performing with his trio featuring Vinnie Sperrazza (drums) and Jacob Sacks (piano). If you’re not familiar with Roberts, he is one of the true iconoclasts of the cello, using it to invoke the heart of Americana folk with the openness of free improvisation.

Instrumental in the 80s “downtown” music scene, recording regularly with Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, and Marc Ribot, his compositions are thoroughly unclassifiable, and he has continually carved a unique place in the jazz idiom. In the mid-90s, Roberts retreated from heavy touring and recording. Though he continued with sporadic recordings, he relocated to Ithaca, NY. In the last few years, he has reemerged with a flurry of recordings, new bands, and new, exciting ideas. Roberts has reconnected with his old friends, releasing music with Frisell, Jim Black, Marc Ducret, but has been working with a slew of the younger generation of improvisers in New York, including Sacks and Sperrazza for this show.

New Andalucia at The Brooklyn Maqam Hang

Tuesday, Jan 29, Sisters, (900 Fulton St.), 8-11pm: New Andalucia will be the spotlighted band at the bi-monthly Brooklyn Maqam Hang, a series that cultivates, celebrates, and explores Arabic music, and music of the Middle East.  Each week they feature a guest band, followed by an open jam session, cultivating connections between the ancient and beautiful Maqam tradition, and modern, chaotic, urban New York City. Musicians from the Middle East, who have steeped themselves in the music their entire lives, jam with musicians coming from many other different traditions and backgrounds but who share a love and respect for the music. It’s truly one of those beautiful “only in New York” series that opens cultural currents and dialogue, rather than closing them. 

New Andalucia, the featured band for this show, explores the music of Andalucia, the southern tip of Spain, where, in 711 A.D., Arabs crossed the strait of Gibraltar and began eight centuries of cultural dialogue in that region.  A region of immigrants, cultural ambiguity, and musical dialogue. As New Andalucia themselves say, “Thirteen centuries later, six musicians and dancers, who have been working together for a decade, strive to recreate this era through their music as immigrants in New York City. Both the time and the place of this encounter are significant as New York becomes the New Andalucia with an evening of “convivencia” or “coexistence.”