Antonio Lizana, a voice in Jazz and Flamenco

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Home, Jazz, Latin Jazz, On Music

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Antonio Lizana, saxophonist and cantaor
Photo by Ana Solinis

This piece was posted by Artburst Miami on January, 2017

Flamenco and jazz have had a fitful relationship. The early, tentative approaches — such as the notable Sketches of Spain (1960) by Miles Davis and Gil Evans or Jazz Flamenco (1967) by Spanish saxophonist Pedro Iturralde and a young flamenco guitarist called Paco De Lucia — didn’t really bear fruit until decades later, when the emergence of musically bilingual musicians and a much more fluid contact helped produce albums such as Friday Night in San Francisco (1981) by the Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin and de Lucia trio and Flamenco Big Band (2008) by saxophonist Perico Sambeat.

Now the work of saxophonist and cantaor Antonio Lizana, appearing with his flamenco trio at the Spanish Cultural Center of Miami (Centro Cultural Español) Thursday, offers yet another twist to that fusion. Born and raised in Cádiz, in Andalucía, Lizana´s music is a truly organic blend of jazz and flamenco elements. A sax melody may give way, without missing a beat, to a moment of cante in true flamenco style – before going back to the jagged sax line of a post-bop improvisation. The surprise is not the juxtaposition but how natural it sounds.

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Dranoff 2 + Nu Deco Ensemble, to Zappa and Bach in one afternoon

19 Thursday Jan 2017

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Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, which calls itself “a 21st century chamber orchestra,” mixes new classical composers with Radiohead, Daft Punk and, this January, Frank Zappa

This piece was posted on the Knight Foundation blog  in January 2017

At the Dranoff 2 and Nu Deco Ensemble concert at New World Center in Miami Beach on Sunday, solemnity lasted a few bars — just enough for the orchestra to unpack the famous theme of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor,” and turn the piece into “Tocatta y Fuga en Re Minor,” as the program titled it. The arrangement by composer Sam Hyken, co-founder and co-artistic director of Nu Deco, quickly put Bach in the Caribbean, swaying in clave and leaving room for congas and a timbales solo — and off we were.

The collaboration between the 29-year-old Dranoff International 2 Piano Foundation and the upstart Nu Deco Ensemble, a Knight Arts Challenge winner, could not have begun much better. The evening featured terrific performances by the piano duo Yoo + Kim (Jackie Jaekyung Yoo and Yoon-Jee Kim), winners of the 2013 Dranoff International 2 Piano competition in Miami, including the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances” and the premiere of “Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra” by Swedish composer Fredrik Sixten, who was in attendance. The program also featured the ensemble at its best, playing music by Steve Reich, Jessie Montgomery, Radiohead, Bach and Frank Zappa. Better yet, it all played before an enthusiastic and diverse sold-out audience.

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Art as social practice — and vice versa

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Home, In Other Words

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An image of Teresita Fernández´s “Fata Morgana” at Madison Square Park, New York City.

This piece was posted on the Knight Foundation  blog in October 2016

It was perhaps fitting that an event titled “Artists As Citizens” took place on the same evening of the final presidential debate of this election season. But the conversation, held Wednesday at the headquarters of the National YoungArts Foundation in Miami as part of its Salon Series, was not about partisan politics but art, activism and social practice, beauty and community engagement.

In fact, the talk, featuring artists Teresita Fernández, Mel Chin and Chat Travieso, was “the beginning of a dialogue here in Miami about social practice and how artists want to engage in this kind of work that we need to model better, “ said host Carolina García Jayaram, president and CEO of the National YoungArts Foundation, in her introduction. By the end of evening, the extraordinary work and the broad range of approaches discussed spoke of the importance and enormous potential of social practice.

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