Check out a summary of the workshops and performances on the U.S. Embassy Website.
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CARNAVAL RECIFE, BRAZIL 2009
February 2008
Chick Corea new trio CD
Chick Corea new trio CD
"5 Trios" box set is Richie's first recording with the piano icon.
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Biography
Percussionist Richie Barshay, most noted as a member of the Herbie Hancock Quartet since 2003, has established himself as a prominent musical voice of his generation. Regarded as "a player to watch" by JazzTimes magazine, he maintains a busy international schedule with some of today's top artists including Hancock, The Klezmatics, Kenny Werner and Chick Corea among others. In September of 2004 he was named an American Musical Envoy by the U.S. State Department, along with the renowned Latin-Jazz ensemble Insight. Now based in New York City after 5 years on the Boston music scene, Richie began playing Jazz and Afro-Latin music during his youth and has expanded his focus to Indian rhythmic concepts and tabla, inspiring his 2005 recording debut "Homework" and the launching of his new band, The Richie Barshay Project.
Genre-defying Drummer/Bandleader Richie Barshay Comes to Earth on His Thrilling Debut, Homework
Release Date: February 6, 2007As a young New York City based musician 24-year-old Richie Barshay holds down the drum chair for an incredibly diverse roster of bands. Barshay has played with Herbie Hancock’s Quartet since 2003 (beginning with the Gershwin’s World project), is a member of the U.S. State Department sponsored Afro-Caribbean group, Insight, works regularly with Argentine vocalist Sofia Koutsovitis, and has recently added tradition exploding ensemble, The Klezmatics to his list of employers. Straight-ahead, Afro Cuban, pop and Klezmer would be enough for most any ambitious musician, but Barshay is anything but typical. And like the great drummers who have influenced him – Tony Williams, Roy Haynes, Jack DeJohnette – Barshay brings something entirely new, fresh and inspiring to bear in what can loosely be called a jazz recording. Homework erases borders, creates new paradigms, and poses new questions. By merging various traditional styles -- both rhythmic and melodic -- under the umbrella of North Indian compositional tradition, Barshay bridges the past and present with his own version/vision of future.
“I felt that this was bringing something pretty original to the table,” Barshay says. “The writing is all Indian, it is not jazz with a little bit of flavor. And the instruments and the improvising are all American jazz. It is fusion, but somehow it is different. Instead of using the mother tongue of Jazz as the foundation, we’re putting the foreign influence first – like playing a solo with a complex tukra (Indian syllabic pattern) in your head. This opens the door to a place where style cannot be defined, there’s something in the rhythmic approach that is completely new.”
Homework is a stunning record coming from any artist, not to mention one only 23 years old. Joined by saxophonist Daniel Blake, bassist Jorge Roeder, percussionist Reinaldo de Jesus, sitarist Josh Feinberg, and featuring special guest pianist Herbie Hancock, Barshay makes a statement of intent that cannot be ignored. Starting with his surprising drum set, which merges a standard western kit with Indian hand drums and percussion, Barshay extends his reach into the compositional realm, using the ancient Indian system of Bols and Tals to permeate standard arrangements. Original material (and a cover of Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle”) is expressed through improvisation and interplay, but what appear as odd meter arrangements are really the deceptive result of Barshay’s intensive studies into the North Indian percussion language.
“I became introduced to these rhythms [while attending the New England Conservatory, where he also came under the considerable and important tutelage of Danilo Perez] and I realized that there were possibilities,” Barshay recalls. “These songs are odd meter infused pieces but they are very long rhythmic cycles, not just ‘let’s play a tune in five or seven.’ It was more ‘let’s take this composition that lasts 32 or 64 beats and you have a bar of 4, a bar of 5, or 7 within it, there are some odd feeling meters but they are very organic. Most of these rhythms take a very long time for the cycle to come around, and they serve a bigger picture. That is the Indian influence, and it’s predominant on the record.”
Hard to explain, and perhaps harder to understand, it all makes sense when you listen to Homework. Driven by Barshay’s elastic drumming, which at times recalls a young Tony Williams exploding over the tabla enunciations of Zakir Hussain, the accompanying music is equally fluid and transparent. But though approaching it with ears used to western rhythm and melody is rewarding, the mysterious rhythmic churning beneath the surface is what makes Homework special.
“I wanted to follow a Jazz approach with saxophone, bass, and drums,” Barshay explains, “but play some tunes that were written over these long tukras, which itself means composition. So you will hear a track like ‘Peacock,’ where we say the syllables, called Bols -- that is a long 64-beat composition. It is totally based on the Indian syllables, same thing with ‘Trinkle Tinkle,’ we put that over a tukra, a bunch of syllables, and we shaped the jazz melody over that.”
Homework’s highlights are many, but a few tracks deserve special comment from Barshay.
“Return Voyage” “That comes out of ‘Peacock,’ which ends in a 6/8 Afro Cuban thing, then I did a cross fade into the tambura drone sound with the sitar, a total fade into the world of India. That is like sailing on a ship with the strong sitar sound mixing with Western influences. It is really where I tried to stretch out on the idea of adding my tabla playing to the drumkit.”
“Trinkle Tinkle” “Dan Blake and I used to have a group called Tabla Underground; we regularly put jazz standards over tukras, these long Indian rhythmic compositions. And the Monk tune that fit the best with a tukra was ‘Trinkle Tinkle.’ That was really using the traditional instruments to explore a jazz context and really improvise and let loose.”
“Rucutucupla” “That is more of an interlude, a duo with Reinaldo de Jesus. It is pretty much a straight up combination of some Afro Caribbean rhythms with Indian compositions interwoven, but shorter ones, they are really tihais, not tukras. Small rhythmic chunks that always happen three times to come out as 4/4, or really a 16 beat cycle called Tintal. Afro Caribbean music has breaks, but all these breaks are taken from a series of tihais, these 1000 year old Indian compositions. There are five or six in a series, you will hear 16 bars of Mozambique, bomba, or guaguanco, but when it breaks in between it is the a tihai which will always repeat three times. These phrases of 3 are very unique to Indian rhythms, and I tried to explore tihais within an Afro Carribean context.
“Sim Shalom/Prayer for Peace (trad)” “That is based on a bulgar rhythm, the traditional 4/4 snare drum pattern in Klezmer music. It goes back and forth between tabla and kanjira, a south Indian drum. It goes back and forth between the traditional snare sound and more Indian percussion, with different Jewish folk instruments giving the color. Michael Winograd is featured on the clarinet. The use of a traditional Hebrew melody is an homage to my Jewish background.”
“I think it goes beyond a merging of cultures,” Barshay says in explaining his goal for Homework. “It’s about trying to take risks where you have no idea what the outcome will be. Some people base their fuel for making art and making music in schooling themselves in the tradition and studying hard and staying with one thing. Some become legendary for that. But I am more interested in always stretching; never staying content for too long. So always stretching these ideas and not being afraid to take a format that has very little historic background, like not having a walking bass or ride cymbal, and stretching it. "
“Homework is about exploring esthetics more than playing and blowing,” he continues. “I was going for more of a compositional thing, combining tabla and exploring esthetics, rethinking where it is all coming from. A lot of world fusion will take a traditional rhythm and a melody and merge them, but there are very few actual traditional rhythms on this album. As a drummer I am going for something brand new with the rhythms. The rhythms on Homework are really improvised rhythms with a basic framework coming from North India; it is not me sitting down in a true jazz esthetic coming up with a completely new idea. It is more trying to sound original using old ideas.”
Release Date: February 6, 2007 For additional information or to arrange an artist interview please contact Diana Nazareth/DL MEDIA at 416-815-8883 or via email at dlmedia.canada@sympatico.ca Visit our official website at www.jazzpublicity.com
