[SustainableTompkins] Bluesman Corey Harris on Crossing Borders Sat Oct 14th

[Patricia Haines]

The Saturday night Crossing Borders musical gatherings are wonderful - at the old Masonic Temple,
corner of Seneca and Cayuga (now Club Euphoria - 2 brothers have eased it for 10 years, plan a dance
club but also want the space used for community arts) - tickets $12 ahead, $15 at the door; BUT -
for $50 you can get a PASSPORT that covers the rest of the season - 12 shows, at less than $5 per
show - includes Corey Harris (below), a jazz series (3 performances), and the best of locals - one
of the great bargains in town!

Crossing Borders is the passion-child (eg totally volunteer) of Denice Karamardian, who has a vision
for folks understanding each other across cultural boundaries through music - check it out on WVBR
(live broadcast) at 8 pm on Saturdays, but better yet: come to the performance!

----- Forwarded Message -----

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Bluesman Corey Harris Featured on Crossing Borders - October 14th!

 

            Crossing Borders, a multi-cultural concert series, broadcast live on Saturday nights
at 8pm on WVBR, 93.5FM, continues the new LIVE fall season AND the Visiting Artist Series on
Saturday, October 14th, with blues artist, Corey Harris. The live concert broadcast will take
place at Club Euphoria, 115-117 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca. Advance tickets are priced at $12 ($15
at the door) and available at Ithaca Guitar Works, Volume Records, Small World Music and McNeil's
Music of Ithaca.  Admission is free to Crossing Borders Passport Subscription holders, and 2006
Passports are still available at the door for $50 (covers all remaining live performances in
2006).  

              Corey Harris has performed at many of the world's most prestigious venues,
including the Montreux Jazz Festival, London's Royal Albert Hall, New York's Lincoln Center,
Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium and Tennessee's Bonnaroo Music
and Arts Festival. As the star of Martin Scorsese's segment of the PBS series, The Blues, Harris
traveled to Mali to play with Ali Farka Toure, a voyage he repeated for his album of field
recordings called Mississippi to Mali, in which he explored the connections between African music
and the blues.

               Born in Denver, Colorado in 1969, Harris made two extended trips to Cameroon after
graduating from college.  As much as he loved looking outward, he came home from Africa
determined to make his way as a blues musician, while he taught French at a rural Louisiana
middle school. "Blues was what I understood deepest in myself," says Corey, "It wasn't a stretch
for me to understand what was going on, even though it took me a while to be able to play it."

               Corey shook up the blues scene with his 1995 debut release, Between Midnight and
Day, a masterpiece of rural blues exploration.  Ever since then, he's been finding ways to extend
the journey, composing new songs, reinventing old ones, following his instincts fearlessly
wherever they might lead.  He has performed and recorded solo and acoustic, with his band, and
with New Orleans pianist Henry Butler (on the album Vü Dü Menz in 2000).  Harris's Rounder
Records debut, Downhome Sophisticate (2002) found him stretching out as a songwriter, merging
blues, African pop, rock and electronica in one of the year's most brilliant and original
releases. This was followed by the brilliant juxtaposition of African music and the blues,
Mississippi to Mali (2004).

              The Denver export and reconstituted New Orleans resident went back to Africa
several times during and after the release of Scorsese's documentary The Blues in '03, and having
done the field-recording thing with the aptly-titled Mississippi To Mali, he came back home to
create what his press calls a "new sound" out of his recent experiences. His return to the studio
was also a return to his daring form and resulted in the 2005 release, Daily Bread.  At his core
Harris is a fusionist, a torchbearer of virtually every style of great black music, from country
blues to jug bands to reggae to jazz to hi-life to Caribbean island folk to rock and roll, and he
makes them all serve  the multi-dimensional sound of the release, his most personal and
wide-ranging recording to date. 

                "I've often talked about the blueprint of music," says Corey, "With Daily Bread,
we went back to the blueprint and put together a new sound." Most artists who take a spiritual
journey back to their homeland usually return with a somewhat bowdlerized version of their
ancestry-they may want to make the connection with their roots, but time and place and
circumstance often wear the authenticity away. Then again, most artists are not Corey Harris, who
has spent the last decade forging a strange yet highly rewarding alliance between all manners of
indigenous American music. His Crossing Borders solo performance journey on Saturday is the
perfect wrap of the program's Visiting Artist Series.

             A Crossing Borders Passport is a subscription to the remaining 2006 season is now
available for $50. This entitles the bearer free admission to ALL THE REMAINING SHOWS IN 2006. A
wonderful gift or a personal value, this small investment means so much to the continuance of the
program and while representing a 60% discount off admission to the bearer. It is a great way to
support live music, one's own musical education and thirst, and the existence of Crossing Borders
radio program at the same time. Two series and three specialty shows remain in the season:

I. the Crossing Borders Live Jazz Series livens up the early winter weekends with;

  1.. November 11th  Balkan Jazz Guitar favorite The Goran Ivanovic Group.
  2.. November 18th Dutch Jazz Vocalist The Aafye van Summeren Quartet
  3.. December 2nd  Trumpeter and Cornell Jazz Dept Director, The Paul Merrill Trio.
A series ticket is offered for the entire jazz series at $25 for three concerts. All individual
concerts are $10-12.

 

II. the Crossing Borders Cd Release Series offers up some Ithaca favorite musical ensembles in
celebration of new releases. This series kicked with the Sim Redmond Band on September 9th and
continues:

  1.. Patti Witten, special Friday Night presentation/party October 27th, recorded for later
broadcast
  2.. The Burns Sisters special Sat October 21 at Castaways, recorded for later broadcast. 
  3.. The Katherine Aelias Band, LIVE on November 4th.
  4.. Steve Gollnick and Peter Glanville, LIVE on December 9th.
 

III. Additional shows include: Gonstermachers on October 21, Ti Ti Chickapea on October 28th, and
The Burns Sisters Annual Holiday Concert on December 16th. 

For more information, visit: www.crossingborderslive.org.

To volunteer or participate with Crossing Borders, please call 275-0021. ###


Tompkins County Center for Culture & the Performing Arts (TC3PA)

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the
political
blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a  lack of skill at 
dancing... - Moliere

--
This email was brought to you by Kaxy Mail http://www.kaxy.com/free_email_account.htm


Level Green Institute
- fostering social, economic and environmental sustainability through collaborative initiatives in
hospitality, education and the arts

--
This email was brought to you by Kaxy Mail http://www.kaxy.com/free_email_account.htm