TABLE POUNDING RECORD’S PAST PROJECTS
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Breath & Hammer: The Ties that Bind Us is a fully immersive audio-visual surround-sound concert/art installation experience created by Krakauer & Tagg with visuals by video artist Jesse Gilbert.
The Ties that Bind Us is an immersive concert experience that envelops the audience in an array of sound and images. Originally designed for the Pierre Boulez Saal’s multi-level, in-the-round hall, Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us is a new incarnation of the Breath & Hammer Electric program transformed into a live videography, spatialized surround-sound multisensory concert experience.
The Breath & Hammer project is a passionate, eclectic and highly personal musical journey representing the confluence of many streams: the strong foundations of both performers as classical concert musicians, Krakauer’s years as a klezmer innovator, composer, band leader and avant-garde experimentalist, and Tagg’s multi-faceted career creating and performing for the stage and theater, as well as her skills as an arranger and producer. Krakauer & Tagg share a constant quest to redefine the sounds and roles of their instruments and push far outside the boundaries of the traditional clarinet and piano recital by including extended techniques, loops and samples (all generated from either the piano or the clarinet). In the words of Krakauer & Tagg: “Fundamentally, Breath & Hammer is about connections between people and a celebration of identity through music. The program is a mix of our own compositions along with our arrangements of song-form pieces gifted to us by our brilliant friends and collaborators from totally different backgrounds, genres and musical points of view.”
Clarinetist/composer David Krakauer and composer/pianist Kathleen Tagg come together in a passionate, eclectic and highly personal musical journey called Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us. Krakauer and Tagg share a constant quest to redefine the sounds and roles of their instruments and push far outside the boundaries of the traditional clarinet and piano recital by including extended techniques, loops and samples (all generated from either the piano or the clarinet) in a program of pieces by the duo and a host of performer-composers from around the globe.
The starting point of the program is made up of their arrangements of songs by composers who are friends and close associates. The program includes pieces by creators as diverse as New York-based visionary John Zorn, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez, as well as their own original compositions that contain influences ranging from interlocking drumming patterns and romantic symphonic music, to minimalism and klezmer.
Through the use of live cameras and videographer Jesse Gilbert’s original audio-reactive visual instrument, SpectralGL, the audience is invited to form a more immediate and intimate relationship with the performers and their creative process as it unfolds. The original video design, projected onto a translucent hexagon of scrims surrounding the performers, was custom-made for the in-the-round performance space of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal. However, Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us is able to adapt to the unique needs of each performance space and is equally at home in a proscenium or in-the-round hall.
The Breath & Hammer project is a passionate, eclectic and highly personal musical journey representing the confluence of many streams: the strong foundations of both performers as classical concert musicians, Krakauer’s years as a klezmer innovator, composer, band leader and avant-garde experimentalist, and Tagg’s multi-faceted career creating and performing for the stage and theater, as well as her skills as an arranger and producer. Krakauer & Tagg share a constant quest to redefine the sounds and roles of their instruments and push far outside the boundaries of the traditional clarinet and piano recital by including extended techniques, loops and samples (all generated from either the piano or the clarinet).
In the words of Krakauer & Tagg: “Fundamentally, Breath & Hammer is about connections between people and a celebration of identity through music.”
For this fully immersive show, Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us, Tagg created a brand new set of “tape piece” interludes that act as bridges between the different pieces on the program. These interludes travel throughout the space within the hall through a surround-sound speaker configuration, creating a sonic representation of musical offerings from one piece to the next as well as a nod to the ties that connect us to one another no matter how far apart we may seem. Some interludes begin with elements from the preceding piece that may be unrecognizable in their new context, and that then invite elements of the next piece to join them and lead into the next piece.
Through the use of live cameras and videographer Jesse Gilbert’s original audio-reactive visual instrument, SpectralGL, the audience is invited to form a more immediate and intimate relationship with the performers and their creative process as it unfolds. The original video design, projected onto a translucent hexagon of scrims surrounding the performers, was custom-made for the in-the-round performance space of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal. However, Breath & Hammer Immersive is able to adapt to the unique needs of each performance space and is equally at home in a proscenium or in-the-round hall.
SquarePeg Throwdown! is a touring project that was born in the midst of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Conceived and created by Grammy-nominated “ebullient clarinet wizard” (Time Out NY) David Krakauer and multi-instrumentalist/producer Kathleen Tagg, this project showcases a multi-generational/high-octane group of collaborators from very different backgrounds, hailing from the USA, Canada, Iran and South Africa.
Together they embrace the diversity of today’s America through their unique take on a multitude of traditional roots musics, bringing their enormous musical and cultural diversity to the project and collaborating to create powerful original material. Old forms are celebrated both by bringing them into a 21st century sound-world and expanding the context to make room for new stories.
Featured on shows such as NPR's Morning Edition and Radio France International (RFI) Sessions Live, this project was created in response to the current climate of polarization that pervades our daily lives. In these uncertain times, it’s a chance to come together to celebrate our common humanity and foster joy, positivity and togetherness.
Their album, Mazel Tov Cocktail Party, has received rave reviews across North America and Europe: France’s Le Monde says: “a breath of fresh air, an incentive to dance…In the face of the overwhelming negativity and alarming rise of hatred and intolerance in today's world, let's breathe and dance together…More than a suggestion, an injunction”
Roots World says: “An informal cocktail party typically lasts a few hours, and this one ends all too soon. 5 stars”
They have performed at venues that include Paris’ famed 2000-seater Théâtre du Châtelet and Viena’s Porgy & Bess Club, and in venues large and small in France, Holland, Austria and the USA.
Krakauer’s klezmer-influenced clarinet leads the way along with Tagg’s quirky keys, electronics, electric cello & production; Martin Shamoonpour’s high-energy contributions on daf, riq, darbuka, jaw harp and flutes; Jerome Harris’ driving bass lines and vocals; rapper and singer Sarah MK’s evocative vocals in Québécois French and English; and Yoshie Fruchter’s wailing oud and electric guitar. In addition, electronic beats by Jeremy Flower, Socalled and Selwa Abd (aka Bergsonist) round out the sound for layering with the live performance.
The project was initially created in isolation, individually and remotely in living rooms and basements in New York, upstate NY and Canada- with band members meeting in person for the first time a year after the project was recorded and the music videos were made.
Their influences are global, but the sound they create collectively has produced something uniquely their own. Familiar dance forms such as Polka or Square Dance never sounded this way before, with hand drumming, propulsive electronic beats, lyrics calling for catharsis and positivity, deep grooves and Krakauer’s wailing clarinet crying out for us to join together, celebrate and feel the power in our aliveness.
An unprecedented collaboration between three cultural visionaries: DAVID KRAKAUER, champion of klezmer music and world-class clarinetist; legendary funk trombonist and arranger FRED WESLEY, celebrated for his work with James Brown and George Clinton; and hip-hop renegade and beat architect SOCALLED – Abraham Inc. heralds a time when boundaries are eroding, mutual respect is presumed, and musical traditions can hit with full force without concession or appropriation. Backed by a three-piece horn section led by Wesley, plus musicians who collaborate frequently with Krakauer and Socalled – and the result is an all-out klezmer-funk dance party!
Says Krakauer, “Ever since I formed Klezmer Madness! in the mid 1990's I've been exploring the possibilities of adding funk, jazz, and lately hip-hop influences to klezmer… These explorations logically led me to my collaboration with Socalled, a kindred spirit in the search for that magic place where these styles can find a commonality of ecstatic trance.
“In late 2005, Socalled and I were on tour somewhere in Europe when Klezmer Madness! drummer Michael Sarin mentioned to Socalled that a friend of his was playing with Fred Wesley. A lightbulb went off in our heads… I got in touch with Fred and we met up in New York - at the Carnegie Deli, where we had matzoh ball soup - and decided to try playing together… We booked a rehearsal studio, not quite sure what was going to happen. Fred and I improvised together on a beat by Socalled, and at the end of it we all said to each other, ‘Wow, this totally works!'”
Says Wesley, “I think we came up with a killer product. It is a pleasure doing something different with such dynamic musicians as Josh and David. Our talents were stretched to areas that we couldn't have imagined reaching alone. We all inspired one another.”
As Socalled sees it, Abraham Inc. is about “bringing people together with music, celebrating differences and commonalities… Cultural hybrid vigour in yo’face.”
Keepers of the Flame is a large multi-part work created around a rigorous structure that provides a combination of highly-notated music, multiple places for improvisation over the composed framework and places for the sharing of new ideas from the current participants. This residency piece is designed for a combination of musicians from different traditions, and may contain input and performances from musicians of different backgrounds and genres, and therefore in each new setting will yield a completely new piece.
In 2017, Krakauer & Tagg created Keepers of the Flame for the International Dialogue Center at the Borderlands Foundation in Sejny, Poland. Keepers of the Flame is intended as an artistic response to the challenges of the modern world, and demands a culture of solidarity in response to the threat of deepening social and cultural divisions.
The piece was designed to be transferred to multiple different settings, contexts, and communities, while dealing with the expansive ideas of bridge-building, listening, offering, and inclusion of ideas from each musician. Ideas from the original Keepers of the Flame project are merged with the perspectives and ideas of musicians living and working in a specific location, and will yield a completely new piece each time, depending on the locale and performers.