Stay tuned for details on our summer season coming soon!

Not your mother’s marching band

I’ve seen some street bands, but never one as good as the Asphalt Orchestra.

An iconoclastic 12 piece marching band… part parade spectacle, part halftime show and part cutting-edge contemporary music concert. The playing was coolly brilliant and infectious. And what a scene!

]]> http://asphaltorchestra.com/2009/08/212/feed/ 0 http://asphaltorchestra.com/2009/01/yuri-yamashita/ http://asphaltorchestra.com/2009/01/yuri-yamashita/#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:13:02 +0000 squarecandy http://asphaltorchestra.com/?p=141

Percussionist Yuri Yamashita has worked across a wide variety of musical and artistic forms  in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Yuri has played with many new music groups including Wordless Music Orchestra, VisionIntoArt, Newspeak, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, collaborating with numerous composers. She has been working closely with the composer Tan Dun performing with orchestras throughout the world such as the Metropolitan Opera, the Munich Philharmonic, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Santa Fe Opera, Teatro Carlo Felice, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. This fall, she will appear as a soloist to play percussion concerto with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. On Broadway, Yuri has been performing in The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, and has performed in Monty’s Python’s Spamalot. In addition to playing percussion, Yuri has a passion for singing Brazilian music: as a singer-percussionist, she enjoys performing combining the beauty of its language and the richness of Brazilian rhythms. A native of Kobe, Japan, Yuri graduated from the Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, and Kobe College.

Born in Charleston, SC, Nick Jenkins is a percussionist and composer with an extensive musical presence along the East Coast.  A graduate of the College of Charleston, Nick plays an integral role in driving the pulse of the Charleston music scene, co-founding, recording and touring genre-blending bands such as Morimoto, Run Dan Run, Leah Suarez’s Toca Toca, Lindsay Holler’s Western Polaroids, Short Shorts, and Jack of Knives, among others. Nick is a recent recipient of the New Music Collective’s “New Works Program” Commission Award (Summer 2009).  He also volunteers with Charleston’s Jazz Artists of Charleston. Reaching outside of SC, Mr. Jenkins took his first international tour with Toca Toca playing alongside former Duke Ellington drummer, Emmanuel Abdul Rahim. http://paperjenkins-music.blogspot.com/

Voted as a rising star percussionist in the 2011 Downbeat magazine critics poll, Sunny Jain is a highly respected drummer, dhol player and composer.  He leads the pioneering 9-piece Brooklyn Bhangra Funk party band, Red Baraat, and his Sunny Jain Collective has been touted as a lead voice for the burgeoning Indo Jazz.  Recently, Sunny recorded “Open Your Eyes” by Salman Ahmad of the famed Pakistani rock group Junoon, featuring Peter Gabriel.  In 2010, his Taboo and Chaal Baby CD’s were chosen by critics as top jazz and world music releases.  Sunny has received commissions by the Aaron Copland Music Fund and Chamber Music America and was a recipient of the Arts International Award in both 2005 and 2003.   He played dhol in the first ever Indian Broadway show, Bombay Dreams (2004) and made his Hollywood debut playing dhol in the movie, Accidental Husband, starring Uma Thurman, Colin Firth, and Isabella Rossellini.  Sunny was designated a Jazz Ambassador by the U.S. Department of State and The Kennedy Center in 2002.  He is also the author of 2 instructional drum books for Alfred Publishing (The Total Jazz Drummer and Drum Atlas: India).  http://www.sunnyjain.com/

Kenneth Bentley was born in Round Rock, Texas on August 26, 1976.  He graduated in the spring of 1999 with a Bachelor’s degree in Orchestral Performance from The University of Texas at Austin.  During his summers at UT Austin, he worked for the Walt Disney Company at the theme parks in California, Paris and Tokyo.  In the fall of 1999, Kenneth moved from Texas to New York where he completed a Master’s degree in Classical Music from the Manhattan School of Music in 2001.  Kenneth joined the Young Blood Brass Band in 2004 and toured America and Europe with Young Blood from 2004-2006 and 2009.  Currently, Kenneth resides in New York City where he freelances on Tuba and Electric Bass and plays sousaphone with the SugarTone Brass Band and the Asphalt Orchestra.

Trombonist Jen Baker is a new music specialist who is interested in redefining the role of the performer in experimental music.  She has commissioned/performed numerous solo and chamber works, including a collaborative theater piece (for trombonist, soprano, and dancer) recently premiered at Princeton.  As a soloist, she performs and tours Lyrical Vibrations, which is a combination of compositions and improvisations based on the use of multiphonics.  Her album Blue Dreams is a collection of some of these pieces.  She has also recorded for Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, David Byrne, and the Mountain Goats.  Baker has performed and collaborated with Stuart Dempster, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Cecil Taylor, William Winant, Joelle Leandre, and Alvin Curran.  She has toured with the witty theater/rock opera Beowulf, A Thousand Years of Baggage, and has also performed in many international festivals.  She freelances in New York City and received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College.  www.baker7jenz.com

A nine-year veteran of the New York scene, Tim Vaughn has performed and recorded with various ensembles encompassing a broad range of musical styles including Balkan, Afro-Cuban, Latin-American, pop, rock, avant-garde and straight-ahead jazz at venues including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the main stage at the Montreal Jazz Festival. In 2009, Tim received a master’s degree in jazz from the Manhattan School of Music. He is now a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music’s pre-college division, and also teaches through the New York Pops orchestra’s musical outreach program, conducting master classes at various schools in the region. Tim is currently a member of Slavic Soul Party, Gato Loco, Sugartone Brass Band, and Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra, and has performed with Bobby Sanabria’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Asphalt Orchestra, Folklore Urbano, and various big bands in the city. Tim’s freelance career has continued to propel his technique and approach through immersion in various styles of world music and improvisation.

An emerging bright talent to the world of new and improvised music, New York-based trumpeter and composer Stephanie Richards has illuminated stages from Carnegie to Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center to international broadcasts with GRAMMY® winner Kanye West and hip-hop icon Common. Stephanie’s theatrical tendencies often explore collaborations of sight, sound or movement, recently working with artists Yoko Ono, David Byrne and St. Vincent with Asphalt Orchestra and with comedian Denis Leary and the Enablers.  She is winner of the International Trumpet Guild Young Artist Award and earned first prize in the National CMC Competition.  Championing new and improvised music, Stephanie has premiered works across North America and the UK, held residencies at Stanford University, University of San Diego and has performed throughout North America, Mexico, France, Sweden, and the UK.  Stephanie appears as an upcoming artist in “Das Trompeter-Taschenbuch”; a compilation of trumpet players of the world published by Schott-publishing house.  www.stephrichards.com

When not playing with Asphalt Orchestra, trumpeter Ben Holmes leads the Ben Holmes Quartet, which plays new jazz music inspired by his study of music from many different times, places and people. He also co-leads Tarras Band (a klezmer group in the classic mid-20th century American style, dedicated to the repertoire of the great Yiddish-American clarinetist Dave Tarras), and a folk/classical/pop/improv duo with the accordionist Patrick Farrell. As a side person, he has amassed considerable experience in the contemporary Jazz and World Music scenes, having recorded and/or performed with Slavic Soul Party!, Justin Mullens’ Delphian Jazz Orchestra, Banda de los Muertos, Brooklyn Qawaali Party, the Frank Carlberg/Nicholas Urie City Band, One Ring Zero, Gogol Bordello, Balkan Beat Box, Vampire Weekend and many others.  www.ben-holmes.com

Peter Hess has lived in Brooklyn since 1997 as a composer and performer (clarinets, saxophones, flutes and percussion).  He is a member of Balkan Beat Box (Crammed Disk), Barbez (Tzadik Records), Slavic Soul Party, World/Inferno Friendship Society, and has toured extensively in the US, Europe, Mexico, Japan, and South America.  Leader of avant-balkan quartet Guignol, Peter also co-leads Collide saxophone quartet and is a founding member/composer of Anti-Social Music.  He has also appeared with Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Darmstadt Ensemble, and James Jabbo Ware (AACM).  Peter is an active session player and arranger for numerous indie rock bands including TV on the Radio, the Hold Steady, Son Volt, the Virgins, Songs:Ohia, Hem, and many others, appearing on over 80 records and film scores.  His arrangements for woodwinds and strings can be heard on Bored to Death (HBO) and Make ‘em Laugh (PBS).  He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (96).  http://www.myspace.com/29839703