Current Season at Merkin Concert Hall
Throughout the 2008–09 season, we'll look at the ongoing conversation between different kinds of music. While our Musically Speaking series is a central example of this theme, the dialogue carries through our other Kaufman Center presentations, including Tuesday Matinees, Broadway Close Up and the New York Festival of Song.
Visit our Explore section for more about this season in-depth. For a complete view of this season's events by date, visit our Season Calendar page, or visit our Performer and Event Index for an alphabetical listing of Merkin Concert Hall performers and events.
Up Next at Merkin:
Midwest meets Mideast
Saturday, January 10, 2009 8:00 pm
“Omer Avital is one of the leading composers of his generation”
-Downbeat
"[Cohan is] a potentially distinctive voice in jazz"
-The Chicago Tribune
Kaufman Center’s Chamber Jazz series opens with an adventurous synthesis of Midwest and Mideast that spans the globe. Israeli bassist Omer Avital’s Ensemble will offer a sharply different perspective—a jazz synthesis drawing on elements as diverse as the Jewish/Arabic music of Spain and the European classical tradition. He will be premiering Song of a Land, a Middle Eastern Afro-Jewish musical suite. Chicago-based pianist Ryan Cohan and his band will present a selection of his strikingly original compositions steeped in swing entitled One Sky: Tone Poems For Humanity.
- Ryan Cohan — piano, composer
- Bob Sheppard — saxophones, flute
- Geof Bradfield — saxophones, bass clarinet
- Tito Carrillo — trumpet, flugelhorn
- Lorin Cohen — acoustic bass
- Kobie Watkins — drums
