TABLACENTRIC @ HAMMER
Machine Residency @ the Hammer Museum | Los Angeles
April 5 – April 18, 2010
Hammer Museum | 10899 Wilshire Blvd | Los Angeles | 310.443.7000

Facebook Event Page:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=362641966626&ref=mf

www.machineproject.com/projects/hammer/

Curated by Robin Sukhadia & Jaeger Smith

Original Artwork by Ameet Mehta

A two week tabla interstitial at the epic Hammer Museum in Los Angeles from April 5 -18, 2010. Robin Sukhadia, in partnership with Machine Project, will bring a wide range of tabla workshops, events and Indian classical and non-classical tablacentric voices to the Hammer. Featured artists to include Walter Kitundu, Jaeger Smith, Mandeep Sethi, Sheela Bringi & Clinton Patterson, Debashish Chaudhuri, Randy Gloss, Christopher Votek, Sheila Govindarajan, TJ Troy and many more.

Open Tabla Workshops for beginners, Film Screenings, & Live Classical and Contemporary Indian Music performances

Monday 4/5: 7pm – Tablacentric Launch Party (At Machine Project) featuring PremaSoul and special guests Mandeep Sethi & Sheila Govindarajan; video clips of tabla masters presented by Jaeger Smith – FREE

Tuesday 4/6: 2 – 5 PM – At Hammer Museum Lobby (Beginning Tabla Workshop 2-3:30pm) plus special guests Randy Gloss @ 2:30pm, Christopher Votek @ 3:30pm (raga and cello demonstration) and Sheila Govindarajan @ 4pm.

Thursday 4/8: 2 – 5 PM – At Hammer Museum Lobby – FREE Museum Admission  (Beginning Tabla Workshop 2-3:30pm) plus special guests: Sheela Bringi @ 3:30pm – harmonium and Sanskrit chanting, @ 4pm Suman Laha performing on Veena.

Saturday 4/10: 1 – 4 PM – At Hammer Museum Lobby  (Beginning Tabla Workshop 1-2:30pm) with special guest performances 2:30 onwards with Sheela Bringi, Clinton Patterson, and Debashish Chaudhuri with Mike Robbins; (Tabla Workshop 3-4pm)

Monday 4/12: 7:30 PM – LA Indivisible Poetry Anthology Reading (at Machine Project) – FREE – featuring Tablapusher + Kitundu

Thursday 4/15: 5 – 9 PM – Tablapusher + Kitundu @ Hammer Museum – FREE Museum Admission  (Beginning Tabla Workshop 5-6:30pm)

Saturday 4/17: 4 – 7 PM – Tablapusher + Kitundu @ Hammer Museum with special guest Neelanjana Banerjee (Beginning Tabla Workshop 4-5:30pm)

Sunday 4/18: 4 – 7 PM – Tablacentric Closing Party – (at Machine Project) – FREE – featuring S A D U B A S, TJ Troy (Tabla Solo), Mike Robbins (Harmonium), Mandeep Sethi (MC) and Kirtan led by Sheela Bringi (bansuri) and featuring Jon Armstrong (bass), Colin Woodford (percussion), and Chris Payne (hand drums).

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T A B L A C E N T R I C is based on the even more epic Machine Project Tablacentric residency of 2008.

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Kids Music Class with Tabla (Indian Drums) on Peninsula

Join Robin Sukhadia and Neelanjana Banerjee for another fun oriented informal Tabla music workshop specially designed for young children between the ages of 2 1/2 – 6 years.   Robin will introduce children to traditional Indian rhythms and the percussive language of Tabla and sing along with kids to have them learn the rhythms, followed by a simple Tabla lesson during which each child will be able to play Tablas provided for the workshop participants.   Neelanjana will read a story and the children will bring the story to life and dramatize it by making different sounds on Tablas.  The workshop will end with dancing to Tabla rhythms.   Props such as scarves may be used to add in the fun!

Kids who love to bang would get a real ‘bang’ out of this class, be creative with different sounds, and have a unique musical experience!  No previous experience necessary.  Open to all music loving kids.   At least one parent should attend.

Two sessions, each lasting 50 minutes, will be offered.  The cost is $20 per child.

Saturday April 24, 2010 – Saturday

10am – 10:45am:  2 1/2 – 4 1/2 yrs old children (8 participants max)

11am – 11:45am: 4 1/2 – 6 yrs old children (8 participants max)

Location: Burlingame (close to Burlingame Ave, Cal train station, and Highway 101), CA

If you’re interested, please email Rachna at arachna@pacbell.net.  The spaces are filling up quickly.

This is all about word of mouth. Words delivered with vocal abandon, echoing through the galleries as they skitter off fragile images in flight; delivered live and full-bodied by artists, poets, and mediamakers who have an allegiance to cinema, but enjoy the skirmish between the anxious utterance and the fleeting image. Los Angeles–based media artist Jordan Biren brings us All That Passes Before You, Already in Ruin, a spectral film that suggests “the illusory promise of narrative” but finds it manifest not in his projected ghostly landscapes but in his recitation of “bodily words.” Local curator and artist Konrad Steiner has repurposed the Japanese tradition of benshi performance—oral narration for silent cinema—as “a cabaret of poetry, satire, and homage.” Poets and other provocateurs render mute sequences from extant cinema while firing a fusillade of verbal mash-ups and hacked critiques. For this performance, Steiner has enlisted Jaime Cortez, Jennifer Nellis, Erika Staiti, Anuj Vaidya, and the tag team of Robin Sukhadia and Neelanjana Banerjee.

Preceded at 6 p.m. by one of our favorite KALX DJs spinning in the lobby, where wine and beer are available for purchase.

Friday, Mar 26 7:30p to 9:00p

I am thrilled to be joining Oliver Rajamani and his seven piece ensemble for a series of concerts in San Francisco and Tracy, California. Oliver Rajamani, born and raised in Tamil Nadu, India, is a renowned world music artist who is credited for keeping alive vanishing Tamil folk music and the nomadic and devotional musical styles of India. Music critics have distinguished Rajamani as an “artist who has redefined Gypsy Music by taking it back to India (homeland of the Roma Gypsy) to its original roots” and “literally destroying borders.”

Click here for concert venues, times and details.

3 shows:

Thursday March 4 – SF, CA – 8pm – Cafe Du Nord (Upstairs at the Swedish American Center) – $20

Saturday March 7 – Tracy, CA – 7pm – Grand Theater

Sunday March 8 – Tracy, CA – 4pm – Grand Theater

Changing the World with a Tabla Drum
Hagerty Lounge – Saint Mary’s College

2:15 – 4:30pm
(facilitated by Robin Sukhadia from Project Ahimsa)

Robin uses the tabla to build bridges between children of different religious backgrounds, to introduce possibilities to homeless and struggling youth in places ranging from the San Francisco tenderloin district, to detention facilities to the slums of Kolkata, India. In this session, Robin will lead participants through a hands-on experience of how to create music with the tabla and more importantly, how to think outside the box when forming partnerships and alliances between men and women.

Jason Parmar, David Yovino and I are deep in the midst of developing a tabla duet in Jhaptaal, the meditative cycle of 10 beats. We are presenting peskhar, kaida, kaida rela, gats, tuchras and chakradhar all in one of my favorite cycles of time. Don’t miss this year’s performance at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, CA.

March 20, 2010 – 7pm $15

Ali Akbar College of Music Winter Concert Series

www.aacm.org |  215 West End Avenue, San Rafael CA

Special Tabla Trio performance featuring Jason Parmar, David Yovino and Tablapusher. Performance followed by sitar concert by Arjun Verma with Nilan Chaudhuri on tabla and sarode concert by Mallar Bhattacharya with Nilan Chaudhuri on tabla.

Kids Music Class with Tabla (Indian Drums) in the East Bay

Join Robin Sukhadia for another fun oriented informal Tabla music workshop specially designed for young children between the ages of 2 1/2 – 4 years.   Robin will introduce children to traditional Indian rhythms and the percussive language of Tabla and sing along with kids to have them learn the rhythms, followed by a simple Tabla lesson during which each child will be able to play Tablas provided for the workshop participants. A story will be read to the children while they bring the story to life and dramatize it by making different sounds on Tablas.  The workshop will end with dancing to Tabla rhythms.   Props such as scarves may be used to add in the fun!

Kids who love to bang would get a real ‘bang’ out of this class, be creative with different sounds, and have a unique musical experience!  No previous experience necessary.  Open to all music loving kids.   At least one parent should attend.

The cost is $20 per child.

March 21, 2010 – Sunday

11am – 11:50am:  2 1/2 – 4 1/2 yrs old children (8 participants max)

Location: Berkeley Hills

If you’re interested, please email Sandeep at sandeep@monsoonco.com.  The spaces are filling up quickly.

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Join Southern Exposure for an examination of the music and impact of Sholay, considered by many as one of the most revolutionary films in Bollywood History. Presented by Robin Sukhadia, the lecture focuses on RD Burman, the brilliant film composer of the film, who integrated western musical influences with classical Indian sounds to create the atmosphere for this “Curry Western” film. “Kitne Aadmee The!”

The lecture will be followed by a classical tabla (north Indian drums) performance in the meditative cycle of jhaptaal (10 beats) featuring Jason Parmar and Robin Sukhadia.