Cellist Okkyung Lee and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar perform solo sets and their first collaborative duo at the ISSUE Project Room's 22 Boerum Place theater Sunday, February 28. These distinguished instrumentalists have developed formidable reputations for their exploratory performance techniques and genre-blurring approach to musical styles.
Okkyung Lee, a New York-based artist and South Korea native, has created a body of work blurring genre boundaries through collaborations and compositions while pushing the limitation of contemporary cello performance techniques. Her music draws from noise and extended techniques, jazz, Western classical, and Korean traditional and popular music.
Okkyung was rewarded with prestigious Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2015, was an ISSUE Project Room Artist-In-Residence in 2011, and received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2010.
Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of disparate musical styles and a singular approach to combining aspects of Middle Eastern music with American jazz, extending the boundaries of each tradition.
A skilled jazz trumpeter with a classical background, ElSaffar has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments that are idiomatic to Arabic music but are not typically heard on the trumpet.
Tickets for the Okkyung Lee & Amir ElSaffar collaborative debut at the ISSUE Project Room -- a nonprofit performance center, presenting projects by more than 200 interdisciplinary artists each year that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community -- more February 28, priced at $15 with memebrs paying only $12, have been made available online the venue's official website.
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