Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 7:30 pm

Listen to Venissa Santi! to Sonic Liberation Front!

Venissa Santi inherited her musical passion from her grandfather, Jacobo Ros Capablanca, who had been a composer in Cuba and left her his manuscripts. After moving to Philadelphia from her childhood home of Ithaca, New York to attend the University of the Arts, she asked an accomplished pianist to play his compositions for her and determined to sing his compositions some day. She studied classical and jazz vocal technique, began an intense listening regimen of early Celia Cruz, and has made four trips to Cuba (the first member of her family to return since the revolution) to study ocha (Afro-Cuban religious music) and rumba with master singers in Havana and Matanzas.

Back in Philadelphia, she has also studied piano with Orlando Fiol and percussion with Elizabeth Sayre in Philadelphia and teaches at the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos, a community music school in North Philadelphia. Santí has become an active participant in the Latin community and the Latin music scene of Philadelphia as a soloist in many world and jazz group’s concerts and recordings. Her first solo recording, Bienvenida, is a bilingual album of jazz and Cuban standards and Afro-Cuban folkloric songs, written and arranged by Santí. In 2008, she received a prestigious Pew Fellowship in folk and traditional arts.

Sonic Liberation Front is a band caught between worlds. Known for its iconoclastic combination of free-jazz passion and Afro- Cuban percussion excitement, the amorphous Philadelphia unit practically invents a new genre with each composition. Featuring a deeply talented pool of musicians trained in a variety of idioms gives the band the ability to incorporate so many genres while maintaining authenticity.

Led by percussionist Kevin Diehl, a protégé of free-jazz pioneer Sunny Murray, SLF connects his training in the post-bop tradition to his dedicated study of traditional Afro-Cuban Yoruba roots music that informs SLF’s colorful sound. Ambient electronics, innovative production techniques, and soulful vocals subtly embellish the compositions, carefully contextualizing the ancient traditional music into a new brilliant entity. While other musicians have incorporated bata drumming into jazz, none havedone it with the vigor or passion of SLF. The band members are true students of the Lukumi tradition under the guidance of percussionist/omo aña Chuckie Joseph, a lifelong Yoruba cultural scholar. It’s been said a million times that all music has its source in West Africa – and by returning the focus to its origins, SLF achieves a natural eclectism that serves as a fountain of ingenuity. Ancient to the future, indeed.

More information

Venissa Santi:http://www.myspace.com/venissasanti
Sonic Liberation Front: http://www.sonicliberationfront.com

Ticket pricing

Standard price: $10
Special Supporters: $15
Discount price: $5 (for students, seniors, or if you can’t afford to come otherwise)
Children under 12: $5

Crossroads events are priced on a sliding scale. We are a not-for-profit organization and want as many people as possible to be able to come. If you’re unable to come otherwise, please pay the discount price, and, if you can afford it, please consider paying the supporter price so we can continue this policy.