Fall 2020
(Left to Right): David Krakauer, Kathleen Tagg, Jerome Harris, Sarah MK, Martin Shamoonpour, Yoshie Fruchter
Mazel Tov Cocktail Party
November 9 - 14, 2020
Join a group of six internationally acclaimed performers for a good vibes “explosion” that features an outside-the-box blend of musical influences and traditions from Eastern Europe, Iran, Canada/Ethiopia, South Africa and Brooklyn, NY!!!
For the past 25 years, David Krakauer has spearheaded projects that bring together multi-cultural strands in unexpected ways. He is considered to be one of the leading forces in terms of redefining and re-imagining the music of his Eastern European Jewish cultural heritage. In 2015 he joined forces with pianist, composer and producer Kathleen Tagg in the project “Breath & Hammer” which moves between Syrian, Jewish, Cuban, Brazilian and African influences. Krakauer and Tagg use these traditions as points of departure, and their treatment of each one transforms the material in a way that reflects our own personal sound world without literally copying the devices of any particular genre. For Mazel Tov Cocktail Party, Iranian tour-de-force performer Martin Shamoonpour, Ethiopian-Quebecquois rapper and soul-jazz singer Sarah MK, guitar, bass and oud player Yoshie Fruchter, and deeply respected jazz and roots music bassist and guitarist Jerome Harris bring their enormous musical and cultural diversity to the project, and will collaborate to create both original material as well as unique re-imaginings of material from around the world.
The entire undertaking reflects the larger context toward which all of their projects strive: the alchemical transformation of many genres and cultural expressions into one composite, respectful, non-appropriative, musical identity that speaks to an ever-growing cultural community.
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, and the Seattle Symphony. Major collaborations with string quartets include the Lydian, 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, including The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet/Nonesuch - received the Diapason D'Or in France); The Twelve Tribes (Label Bleu - designated jazz album of the year 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). Upcoming releases in '18-'19 will be concerti written for Krakauer by composers Wlad Marhulets and Mathew Rosenblum. An esteemed educator, David Krakauer teaches clarinet and chamber music at the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music (New School), The Bard Conservatory, and NYU. 
Kathleen Tagg is a South African pianist, composer and producer who has been based in New York since 2001. A 2014 South African Music Awards nominee for best classical album, she has performed on four continents with a host of leading musicians, and the breadth of her collaborations defines her multifaceted career.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.