Teiku / Kutay Sezginel

About

Teiku is an ensemble co-founded by Chicago pianist Josh Harlow and Detroit percussionist Johnathan Barahal. The duo were inspired by the music traditions of their Jewish-Ukrainian upbringings, using Passover melodies as a base for sonic exploration. They interpret these ancestral sounds as liberation music, reworking it into a vehicle for protest and meditations on identity, politics and spiritual and cultural heritage. Alongside Harlow and Barahal, the quartet features bass clarinetist Jason Stein and bassist Jaribu Shahid. They utilize voice recordings, ritualistic chants, orally-passed down Passover songs and meditative free jazz improvisation to produce expressive and haunting electro-acoustic soundscapes. They perform tracks from their album Klang, released on June 5. Opening set from Kutay Sezginel, a Baltimore-based, Istanbul-born multi-instrumentalist most active on the neo-ethnic instruments of çağlama and electric cümbüş. previous listings for this show included Simone Baron, who no longer appears on the bill.