WHO’s WHO

Widely considered one of the greatest clarinetists on the planet, Grammy- and Juno-nominated soloist, band leader and composer David Krakauer has been praised internationally as a key innovator in modern klezmer as well as a major voice in classical music.

As a symphonic soloist of "astounding virtuosity and charisma" (Detroit Free Press), Krakauer frequently appears with the world’s finest orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Orchestre de Lyon, Dresdener Philharmonie, A Far Cry and the Seattle Symphony. Major collaborations with string quartets include the Kronos, Emerson, Tokyo, Orion, and Miro Quartets. Krakauer's bands Ancestral Groove and Abraham Inc (which he co-leads with Socalled and Fred Wesley) tour and appear at major festivals internationally. His latest project, "Breath and Hammer", with renowned South African pianist Kathleen Tagg, yet again re-contextualizes Krakauer’s sound in a completely different way by adding loops, samples and extended techniques to the acoustic duo of clarinet and piano.

Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important clarinet recordings of recent decades. Among them are The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet/Nonesuch), which received the Diapason D’Or in France, The Twelve Tribes (Label Bleu) which was designated album of the year in the jazz category for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition Tempest Fantasy (Naxos). He has also recorded with violinist Itzhak Perlman/The Klezmatics (Angel) and Dawn Upshaw/Osvaldo Golijov (Deutsche Grammophon). Other notable releases include his 2015 album Checkpoint with his band Ancestral Groove (Label Bleu), Paul Moravec’s Clarinet Concerto with The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP Sound), Klezmer NY (Tzadik), Tweet Tweet and Together We Stand with Abraham Inc. (Label Bleu) and Breath & Hammer on his own label, Table Pounding Records. His unique sound can be heard in Danny Elfman’s score for the Ang Lee film Taking Woodstock and throughout Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson.

Krakauer is currently co-composing a number of works with Kathleen Tagg including a clarinet concerto for the Santa Rosa Symphony with conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong to be premiered in 2021. The score for Minyan by filmmaker Eric Steel is their first feature film project, which was first screened at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival. www.davidkrakauer.com

Kathleen Tagg is a South African pianist, composer and producer, based since 2001 in New York. Her performances and numerous recordings range from classical to world music, musical theater to her own music mixing improvisation with fully realized scores. She has performed throughout North America, Europe, Southern Africa, China and India and her recordings have been featured in film and television. Her work has focused on identity, ideas of connection and sound exploration. She is equally at home in performing with an array of instrumentalists and singers in concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Symphony Space; in non-conventional spaces and clubs with her loops and samples; writing for her own projects and collaborations; completing commissions for artists or symphony orchestras; creating narrative immersive interdisciplinary performance works or writing for film and theater.

All of her projects reflect her strong desire to connect as a human being first and foremost, and to constantly engage with the world around her. She is co-artistic director of Table Pounding Music with David Krakauer, a platform for a wide range of projects, recordings and socially focused benefit events. She has performed on four continents, and is becoming known for her distinctive sound and unique language at the piano, made up of techniques she has developed and experimented with to expand the piano into a full electro-acoustic orchestra that mixes acoustic and electronic sounds, loops, samples and extended techniques, as well as for her innovative, quirky and deeply personal body of work.  www.kathleentagg.com

Canadian soul singer-songwriter Sarah MK strikes the balance between message and music with graceful mastery. Seamlessly alternating from slow-burning R&B to Jazz improvisation to full-blown MC, she has an impressive measure of versatility channeled by a fine tuned approach to sounds and lyrics. Sarah MK was born and raised in Montreal and is a recipient of a bachelor’s degree in Jazz vocals from the Université de Montreal. Her first album was released in 2011 and, although she has been on a resourcing hiatus about recording her own compositions since, she has been highly active as a solid collaborator and creator with Montreal’s finest artists. 

She was the singer for the legendary French hip hop group Dubmatique, sang in the choir for the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal’s production of ‘’Porgy and Bess’’, has recorded and scored music and vocal arrangements for RapKeb superstars Dead Obies, Brown, Joe Rocca and for the Hallmark movie “A Majestic Christmas”, has co-founded the all women musician supergroup Lotus Collective where she acts as keyboardist, booker and co-musical director, has toured North America and Europe with Haitian artist Vox Sambou and klezmer hip hop musician Socalled and so much more! She also released a single under her name in the summer of 2018 with production by virtuoso pianist Anomalie and works part-time as a music educator for the Evenko Foundation and for the Marguerite Bourgeoys school board. Her music was featured on CNN and CBC and she has performed numerous times at the Montreal International Jazz Fest, Francofolies, Pop Montreal and more. www.sarahmkmusic.ca

Yoshie Fruchter is a guitar, bass and oud player who has made his mark with a style of playing and composing all his own. The unique blend of rock, jazz, experimental and Jewish styles in his playing and composing is a defining characteristic of his music. His latest project, Sandcatchers (oud and lap steel), explores the sounds of the Middle East combined with the American South. He also released two albums on John Zorn’s Tzadik records with his band Pitom and played on several others. He is notable for his work in composing, performing, and interpreting Jewish music and has constantly forged new directions with his music, regardless of genre. Yoshie has toured the US and Europe with Sandcatchers, Pitom and other groups, playing the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, Saalfelden Jazz Festival in Austria, the Atlantique Jazz Festival in France and many others. www.yoshiefruchter.com

Jerome Harris has been widely acclaimed as one of the most versatile and accomplished stylists of his generation on both the guitar and the bass guitar. 

Harris’s first major professional performing experience came as bass guitarist with jazz master Sonny Rollins in 1978. From 1988 to 1994 he played guitar with Rollins, and has recorded and/or performed live worldwide with a range of renowned artists, including David Krakauer, Jack DeJohnette, Fred Wesley, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Amina Claudine Myers, Don Byron, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Ned Rothenberg, and Martha Redbone. His extensive international touring has included stints in Japan with Sonny Rollins, as well as U.S. State Department tours of southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

 Jerome Harris appears on over seventy recordings. His albums as a bandleader include Rendezvous, the first jazz recording produced by the audio magazine Stereophile. On Hidden In Plain View (New World),  his acoustic bass guitar is at the heart of an all-star group, creatively interpreting pieces by the challenging jazz master Eric Dolphy. Harris’s debut recording as a leader, Algorithms (Minor Music), garnered accolades from critics for his deeply personal guitar playing and original compositions. Among his recordings as a featured sideman are Abraham Inc.'s Together We Stand (Table Pounding/Label Bleu), Jack DeJohnette’s Oneness (ECM), Ray Anderson Lapis Lazuli Band’s Funkorific (Enja), and Roy Nathanson Sotto Voce’s Complicated Day (Enja Yellowbird), demonstrating his unusual expressive range, stylistic insight, and creativity. 

Harris served as arranger, rhythm guitarist and assistant to musical director Vernon Reid in the celebratory 1999 “Joni’s Jazz” concert in New York’s Central Park, where—with Joni Mitchell herself in attendance—he accompanied singers as wide-ranging as Chaka Khan, Jane Siberry and Duncan Sheik.

Jerome Harris’s formative musical experiences included singing and playing rural and urban blues, folk and gospel music, as well as a full range of American popular music genres. After studying psychology and social relations at Harvard University, he graduated with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music as a scholarship student in jazz guitar. www.jeromeharris.com

Martin Shamoonpour is an autodidactic multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, and visual artist from Tehran. As a teenager averse to school teachers, he began teaching himself daf, tombak, flute, and Iranian folk woodwind instruments, eventually performing in galleries and theaters throughout Iran as a young adult. To date, Shamoonpour has composed and performed music for close to thirty theater productions in The City Theater of Tehran, writing, directing and performing his own one-man-show, Qatinu the Hero, at Iran’s most prominent artistic theaters. Always looking to explore new avenues of creativity, Shamoonpour has released three experimental music albums on Iran’s Hermes Records, including 8-Bit (2014), which features 8-bit versions of Iranian folk music, and Tehransaranieh, (2010) which combines the “concrète” sounds of city life with ambient music and traditional instruments.  He has presented various audio art installations in the prestigious galleries such as  Parkingallery, Fravahrgallery, Tehran House Of Artists and Laleh Art Gallery. In 2015, Shamoonpour left Iran and now regularly tours the United States with Journey West, an eight-person music ensemble that performs traditional Eastern music at theaters and universities from New York City to Washington State. 

Shamoonpour began acting in Tehran’s active theater scene in his twenties, appearing in over twenty theater productions and rubbing elbows with some of Iran’s most notable thespians along the way.  His talent and humor led him to supporting actor roles in four feature-length films, including the award-winning Melbourne and Bending the Rules. In 2010, Shamoonpour relocated to Germany, where he acted in Berlin’s popular Charivari Circus. In December 2018, after moving to the United States, Shamoonpour did a two-month stay at New York’s St. Ann's Warehouse, in the Off-Broadway play “The Jungle,” with acclaimed director Stephen Daldry.

Martin Shamoonpour holds a degree in Graphic Design from Tehran’s University of Science and Culture and creates mixed-media artworks that reflect his experience as a musician with ties to his old home, and his new.  He also creates stop-motion animations, CD artwork, and acrylic paintings as an artist-for-hire, and as gifts for friends and family. www.martinshamoon.com

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM

Josh “Socalled” Dolgin is a pianist, singer, accordionist, producer, composer and rapper based in Montreal, Quebec. He has lectured and led master classes in music festivals around the world, from Moscow to Paris, from London to LA, and from Krakow to San Francisco, and has performed on every continent.

With 8 solo albums to his name, he has performed all over the world for more than 15 years, and his list of collaborators knows no generational, social, cultural or religious boundaries. Aside from countless festivals and venues around the world, Socalled has performed at Carnegie Hall (twice!), the Olympia in Paris, the Apollo theatre in Harlem and the Arsht centre in Miami. He has played with, produced for, featured, recorded and arranged for Gonzales, Itzhak Perlman, Lhasa, Fred Wesley, Andy Statman, Adam Cohen, Boban Markovic, the Mighty Sparrow, Roxanne Shante, Irving Fields, Killah Priest, Matisyahu, Ben Caplan, Theodore Bikel, Jack Stratton from Vulfpeck, Enrico Macias and Derrick Carter. Dolgin was the subject of The Socalled Movie, a 2010 feature documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada which features his video for “You Are Never Alone” which garnered over 3 million views on Youtube. HIs remix of the theme for CBC’s flagship news digest “As It Happens” plays 3 times a day across Canada. He tours with his full band Socalled and performs with string quartets around the world with a program of Yiddish songs.

He has written and presented 4 musical comedies, “Tales From Odessa”, a Yiddish gangster musical, as well as 3 of a projected 4 part magnum puppet opus called “The Season”, for which he also designed and built the puppets. Always active doing special projects, he created several podcast themesongs, film soundtracks, released an indie erotica film and created a special program using first world war archives at the Weimar festival of Yiddish culture. He was a professor in Concordia’s Theatre program. In December 2015, Socalled was presented with the “Adrienne Cooper Memorial Dreaming in Yiddish” award for his work disseminating and exploring Yiddish culture.

When he’s not in the studio or on the road, Socalled does magic tricks, makes cookbooks, draws cartoons, edits video and practices Kurt Weill on the piano. www.socalledmusic.com