So proud of these guys for keeping up all the momentum. This series is totally student run, and (trust me) it takes a ton of work.
www.yale.edu/jazzcollective
Hey folks, I spent the weekend recording some new material with Jack Renner in Rhode Island. Stay tuned!
“Your portraits are drawn without you/Yellowed without your age”
Newspeak is super excited to be traveling from Yale to LA and the SF Bay Area! We'll be performing a bunch of new arrangements and compositions, so check out some of our concerts:
3/15 9:30pm and 11:30pm: The Baked Potato in LA
Tickets: http://www.thebakedpotato.com/GiftShopPages/GiftShopAdvSalesYaleNewspeak.html
http://www.thebakedpotato.com/Calendars/03Mar/march16.html
http://www.thebakedpotato.com/home.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/501831690020311/
Join Newspeak (Alexander Dubovoy, Eli Brown, Griffin Brown, Hans Bilger) for our performance at the Baked Potato! This is the first big concert of our tour and is at a fun club in LA. We will be playing two sets, one at 9:30 and another at 11:30. Tickets available at the door or in advance: http://www.thebakedpotato.com/GiftShopPages/GiftShopAdvSalesYaleNewspeak.html
http://www.thebakedpotato.com/Calendars/03Mar/march16.html. Join us for either set!
3/16 7:30pm: Angelica’s in Redwood City
Tickets: http://angelicasllc.com/event.cfm?id=233752&cart
https://www.facebook.com/events/1080806355294425/
Join Newspeak (Alexander Dubovoy, Eli Brown, Griffin Brown, Hans Bilger) for our performance at Angelica's! It’s a great dinner venue and super accessible for people in the Peninsula. Tickets will be sold at the door and online at:http://angelicasllc.com/event.cfm?id=233752&cart. Concert begins at 7:30 and dinner seatings begin at 6.
3/20 8:00pm: Birdland in Oakland
http://birdlandjazz.org/
https://www.facebook.com/events/195240600839346/
Join Newspeak (Alexander Dubovoy, Eli Brown, Griffin Brown, Hans Bilger) for our performance at the Birdland Jazzista Social Club! This is one of the best places to hear live jazz in the East Bay, and we are super excited. Tickets will be sold at the door. Concert begins at 8:00.
Learn More About Newspeak:
Newspeak was formed in the fall of 2012 by a group of Yale undergraduates, united by our passion for jazz. Since then, we have brought our music to audiences across the world. In 2013, we recorded our album Machinery of Night with 11-time Grammy winner Jack Renner, which is available on Bandcamp. Over the summer, we traveled to Austria for a residency at the Hotel Pupik artist community. Most recently, we performed a series of commissioned pieces at the Yale University Art Gallery in response to its acclaimed ceramics exhibition (on Youtube).
Newspeak is a quartet of trumpet, bass, piano, and drums, as well as vocals. Our music originally draws from the jazz tradition but has expanded to include everything from Nirvana to Yiddish folk music. On this tour, we plan to feature a series of innovative original compositions which push the boundaries of the quartet format. As was said of our recent performance, “the group approaches composition like the artists approach clay: it experiments with a medium that is at once firmly established and malleable.”
Hope to see you there!
It's been far too long since I updated this blog, since I've been busy with a lot of music! I'll condense it all as much as I can.
I think where I left off was in Russia this summer. After that, I travelled to Austria to Hotel Pupik. Pupik is an artist community in the Austrian Alps near the ruins of a castle. Hans and Eli from Newspeak, Helen, Justine, and I all travelled together. Each was coming from a different place (Japan, Germany, England, Madagascar, and Russia respectively), but we met up to pick wild mushrooms and do a joint performance. While there, we were hugely impressed by the beautiful music and art that the Pupik family produces.
Hiking in the Austrian Alps
After that, I travelled back to the US after 15 weeks out of the country and returned to Yale. Newspeak (now peopled by Eli on trumpet, Hans on bass, Griffin on drums, and myself on piano) began this academic year with a mission: to compose music and develop a new sound.
To do so, we travelled to Vermont in October and stayed with friends from Pupik and Eli's family. We rehearsed for hours a day and jammed with many local musicians from the Middlebury area. Special thanks go to Ron, who provided us with a wonderful rehearsal space at his house and provided me with an organ to play :)
In addition to hiking and kayaking, we wrote a series of pieces and then performed them at a local restaurant. After playing through our new songs, we opened up to a free jam session with our hosts and other friends. I even played accordina!
Kayaks in Vermont
Then, in November, we performed these pieces at the Yale University Art Gallery. The concert, which was called "Gallery+ Newspeak" took place in the modern ceramics exhibition. We took the beautiful artwork (which included ceramic work by Ken Price and painting by Rothko) as a muse to construct musical forms based on visual art. We played all original compositions and improvisations, which included a piece I wrote inspired by Soviet history.
At the Yale University Art Gallery
Following the concert, we recorded two of these pieces (Outer Space and Softie) at Yale's Sprague studio. Special thanks to Ale for running the recording and mixing the tracks. Stay tuned for the final mixes!
I'm getting back into singing and writing lyrics, so stay tuned for some samples as well.
A few weeks ago, I gave a solo performance at Rakuya Label in Tokyo. The guiding impetus for the show was the life of Zenmaster Hakuin, who reformed Zen in the 18th Century. It was a fascinating experience learning about him and reflecting his thought musically. A particular highlight was combining recordings of Zen monks changing the Heart Sutra with a piano/voice meditation on the jazz standard My Foolish Heart. Check out some of the pictures, courtesy of Masaki Hitosugi, who was instrumental in organizing!
Playing in front of a visual representation of a Zen anecdote
Many of Masaki's friend and family came to join!
With Mashi, the club owner
Stay tuned for more gigs! They may not happen in Russia, since I am not sure my visa allows it, but they definitely will in Germany.
This is my view every night from my Khrushchev-era apartment as I practice my new instrument: the accordina (stay tuned)!
I am living and working in Moscow for much of the rest of the summer! Hoping to set up some gigs during that time. We'll see :) If not, you can hear me soon in Germany!
I am traveling through Japan May 7-June 6 and am greatly enjoying the country! I am very excited to be performing at Rakuya Label in Tokyo on June 4th. Check out this picture of me playing at Bb Jazz Club in Tokyo:
(photo: Ken Yanagisawa)
Hello all, so excited to launch this new website! In the future it will serve as the hub for a lot of exciting developments!