Brooklyn, NY: Friday, November 11, 8pm, Barbez will be performing mainly new works from a forthcoming album for John Zorn's Tzadik label inspired by ancient Roman-Jewish melodies, the Nazi occupation of Rome, and Italian neorealist cinema. The group will also perform several new pieces from a separate album concerning the wars in the Middle East since 9/11. Finally, Barbez will present a short piece with dancer and choreographer Juliette Mapp. The work is an excerpt from their recent collaboration on Ms. Mapp´s "The Making of Americans," a Gertrude Stein-inspired dance presented last spring at Dance Theatre Workshop.
Barbez is a Brooklyn-based ensemble working at the cross-section of European-Jewish folk music, and experimental rock. The group was founded in 1997 by guitarist Dan Kaufman and has released four albums; most recently Force of Light (Tzadik), an homage to the Holocaust poet Paul Celan. The group has also collaborated with several dance and theatre pieces including The Making of Americans, choreographed by Bessie-award winner Juliette Mapp and presented at Dance Theatre Workshop, and One, also by Ms. Mapp, presented at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery. In addition, the group has created music for several episodes of the serial play Chang in a Void Moon, by experimental theatre director John Jesurun, a MacArthur genius grant winner.
