SUMMERSTAGE PREVIEW SHOWCASE feat. LAUTARI

Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/23/2016
7:30 PM

Doors at 6:30pm

Price
$15.00

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Members of the band Lautari met in 2000 and performed together until 2008, playing modern ethno-jazz rooted in the traditions of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe and Caucasus. During that time they produced two well-received albums: Azaran and Muzica Lautareasca Nova. Their latest release, in the summer of 2015, is the live recording Vol.67. Here, Lautari is reunited after several years to produce their first project fully dedicated to Polish folk music.

The name and the idea of Vol.67 refers to the monumental ethnographic compilation by the great 19th century Polish folklorist, Oskar Kolberg, entitled The folk: its customs, life, speech, tales, proverbs, rituals, superstitions, games, songs, music, and dances. Volume 67 of Kolberg’s work contains sheet music of folk tunes arranged for piano.

Today, just as in the time when Kolberg was compiling his work, there remain the same valid questions about the role of folk music in Polish national culture. There is also the question of how folk music can function – in the past, in European high societies, and today – in the international world music market.
The band’s most recent performances include the Philharmonics of Łódź and Szczecin, Jagillonian Fair in Lublin, Ethno Port Poznań Festival, Festival EtnoKraków, and OFF Festival in Katowice (Recorded by KEXP Seattle).

Lautari has long been dedicated to restoring the splendor of Polish folk music: from playing in crudo, to accompanying dancing as our rural predecessors did, to participation in avant-garde music projects. They have performed at barn dances, in jazz clubs, and in large concert halls in Poland and abroad. Firmly believing musical notation to be a totally inadequate means of recording folk music, they have made a point of learning their repertoire directly from village musicians. During this music adventure, they have often turned to the work of Oskar Kolberg – and not only to the mere tunes he collected, but also the wide cultural context of folk music that he depicts – to fill their contemporary interpretations with the emotions and imagination of earlier times.

Presented in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York