The Squid's Ear Magazine


Zerang, Michael: Assyrian Caesarean [VINYL] (Holidays Records)

His first solo album in a career spanning back to 1976, Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang presents a diverse set of improvisations demonstrating the wealth of approaches he has developed over the year, including the use of vibrating drumhead surfaces, expressive friction passages, multiple timbre percussion, and straight up trap-set drumming; absolutely impressive.
 

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Michael Zerang-percussion


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Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.

UPC: 769791974173

Label: Holidays Records
Catalog ID: HOL 122LP
Squidco Product Code: 27849

Format: LP
Condition: New
Released: 2019
Country: Italy
Packaging: LP
Recorded at Outside Inside Studio, in Montebelluna, Italy, on February 19th and 20th, 2018, by Matt Bodin.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Chicago-based percussionist Michael Zerang presents his first solo recording after a long career as an exploratory musician and composer. Recorded and mixed by Matt Bordin in the woods at (the new) Outside Inside Studio, the album features a range of approaches to percussion that Zerang has developed over the years, including the use of vibrating drumhead surfaces, expressive friction passages, multiple timbre percussion, and straight up trap-set drumming - all infused with a rich sense of melodic, rhythmic and textural innovation.

Zerang has performed and recorded with some of the most adventurous artists of his era, including a fourteen-year stint with The Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III, and an extended collaboration with drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake. Frequent collaborators also include cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, pianist and synthesist Jim Baker, bassist Kent Kessler, trumpeter Axel Dorner, along with an ever-widening pool of international improvisors. He also recently began performing with the experimental Middle-Eastern super group Karkhana - with Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui, Maurice Louca, Tony Elieh, Sam Shalabi and Umut Çağlar."-Holiday Records


Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.

Artist Biographies

"Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.

Michael has collaborated with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000.

As a percussionist and composer, Michael has over eighty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 34 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators.

Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. Michael has been a Board Member of Links Hall Since 1989. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005.

Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer/Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House.

Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique.

-Michael Zerang Website (http://www.michaelzerang.com/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



SIDE A



1. Chicago Flyaway 5:04

2. The Djinn Of Nineveh 3:58

3. Assyrian Caesarean 4:02

4. Capitalism's Last Shred 3:33

SIDE B



1. The Swift And Sordid Purification Of Jimi Jihad 5:00

2. Song For Mourners 7:28

3. Threnody For A Desert Storm 6:07

Related Categories of Interest:


Vinyl Recordings
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Percussion & Drums
Solo Artist Recordings
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Holidays Records.


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