Performances + Events
Contemporary Musical Arts Presents: Old Weird America – Diving into the Harry Smith Archives
Jordan Hall
This immersive concert experience reimagines folk, blues, ballads, Jewish music, and eccentric Americana captured in Smith’s archives, including the groundbreaking Anthology of American Folk Music, a collection that shaped generations of musicians and continues to haunt cultural imagination.
Following an artist residency of workshops and discussions, special guest Frank London, Grammy-winning trumpeter, composer, and founding member of the Klezmatics, renowned for his genre-crossing virtuosity and fearless imagination, joins CMA students and faculty for an evening of bold reinterpretations, spontaneous improvisation, and unexpected sonic alchemy as tradition collides with modern artistry.
You'll hear music from the Jewish Music Ensemble (led by Hankus Netsky), the Indie/Punk/Art Rock Ensemble (led by Lautaro Mantilla), and a special Cajun collaboration with Department Chair Eden MacAdam-Somer and West Coast fiddler Suzy Thompson, along with a Taiwanese/Old-time string band, a Hindustani tribute to Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a theramin duet, Anglo-American balladry, and more.
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Artist(s)
Harry Smith was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms.
Trumpeter/composer Frank London, a member of the Klezmatics and Hasidic New Wave, has performed with John Zorn, LL Cool J, Mel Torme, Lester Bowieπs Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, Ben Folds 5, Mark Ribot, Maurice El Medioni and Gal Costa, and is featured on over 100 recordings. He was music director for David Byrne and Robert Wilson’s “The Knee Plays,” collaborated with Palestinian violinist Simon Shaheen, taught Jewish music in Canada, Crimea and the Catskills, and produced recordings for Gypsy Legend Esma Redzepova and Algerian Pianist Maurice el Medioni. He has been featured on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” at the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and was a co-founder of Les Miserables Brass Band and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Suzy Thompson has an unusually deep mastery of the whole gamut of Southern old-time music, from prewar acoustic blues to Louisiana Cajun-Creole to old-time fiddle tunes, especially the kind that have a ragtime or blues feel. Over the past three decades, she has been a leading force in many influential roots music groups, including the California Cajun Orchestra (two award-winning CDs on the Arhoolie label), the Blue Flame String Band, Klezmorim, the all-woman Any Old Time String Band (featured on the Grammy-winning Arhoolie box set), and most recently, the Bluegrass Intentions (with banjo ace Bill Evans). She has also worked with Darol Anger, Laurie Lewis, Beausoleil, Peter Rowan, Maria Muldaur, Jody Stecher, Del Rey, Geoff Muldaur, Alice Gerrard, D.L. Menard, Jane Voss, Rinde Eckert, the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Sukay, and Frankie Armstrong, among others.
