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| Who Knows? At Yippie Café, NYC, on Oct. 22 On Saturday night October 22nd, Who Knows? appears at the newly renovated Yippie Café. The show features Who Knows? members, guitarist/vocalist Richie Nagan, clarinetist Perry Robinson, and saxophonist Mark Whitecage. They share the bill with Secret Army, a trio of Parliament-Funkadelic members including keyboardist/vocalist Danny Bedrosian, bass guitarist/vocalist Lige Curry, and drummer Rico Lewis. The Yippie Museum Café has a new manager and has been recently renovated. The loft that loomed over the cafe's cash register is gone, the flooring is new, and on the walls, the Yippie posters and psychedelic art that were there before are being restored. The menu is expanding - along with coffee, there are scones, sandwiches and salads. The menu features a wider variety of coffee drinks, natural sodas and 21 kinds of natural tea. The music of Who Knows? surges and eddies, taking surprising and sometimes sudden turns that can soften the sound to a whisper or raise it to a roar. Guitarist/vocalist Richie Nagan's songs originate from his long-time study and love of the Grateful Dead and Pete Seeger, while his many performances with George Clinton's Parliament- Funkadelic and Detroit drummer Muruga's more free-form bands add other dimensions. Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Mark Whitecage is a musician whose creativity, adventurous spirit and beautiful tone have led to a long career filled with fascinating people and projects. He has collaborated with just about every musician of note, including bassists Dominic Duval, Joe Fonda, Adam Lane and William Parker; pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, drummers John Betsch, Paul Motian, Ed Blackwell, Peter LeMaitre, Jay Rosen and Lou Grassi; multi-instrumentalists Anthony Braxton, Gunter Hampel and Sabir Mateen; trumpeters Dave Douglas and Roy Campbell, Jr.; trombonist Steve Swell, guitarist Dom Minasi, clarinetists Perry Robinson and Rozanne Levine; vocalists Nicki Mathis and Jeanne Lee; and choreographers Jean Erdman, Murray Louis and Nancy Allison. Along the way he has led and co-led an array of notable bands including Liquid Time, The Glass House Ensemble, No Respect, The Nu Band, the Bi-Coastal Orchestra, and Drunk Butterfly. He has recorded over 50 discs, many of them award winners, including BushWacked – A Spoken Opera, No Respect – Duval/Rosen/Whitecage, Fractured Standards & Fairy Tales, Moon Blue Boogie, Split Personality, and Mark Whitecage & Liquid Time. Clarinetist Perry Robinson is a master of the clarinet in jazz, folk and avant-garde music. He has worked with an incredible array of international musical artists, including the Brubeck Family, Gunter Hampel, Henry Grimes, Bill Dixon, Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden, Badal Roy, John Carter, Anthony Braxton, Mark Whitecage, Dr. Michael White, Pete Seeger and George Clinton. He has been a mainstay of pianist Burton Greene's Klezmokum and of drummer Lou Grassi's Po Band. The Perry Robinson Quartets and Trios, featuring pianist Christoph Adams, bassist Ed Schuller and drummer Ernst Bier, have released six CDs and toured extensively in Europe. Recently Perry has been playing with Wynne Paris and Groovananda, the pianist Nobu Stowe, the Israeli clarinetist Harold Rubin, the Israeli composer-pianist Anat Fort, and in clarinetist Rozanne Levine's Chakra Tuning ensemble. Secret Army has culled much of their live material from their self titled debut album, which was released in 2006. Secret Army is also currently performing material from Danny Bedrosian's first album, Som'n Fierce. Their third album, Sleaziest of the Greaze, has received much international attention, and has been recently incorporated into the band's repertoire. The band rounds out their set list with some P-Funk classics, as Bedrosian, Curry, and Lewis all come from Parliament-Funkadelic, which is one of the few bands to be placed among the upper echelon of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Secret Army just finished a third album, entitled Muzzle Moosick, containing both instrumental funk/fusion workouts and vocal-based R&B/Funk material, with some interesting world music and bebop jazz. Bedrosian and Curry also have played with the 420 Funk Mob, Drugs, and Cacophonic FM. Bedrosian and Lewis are founding members of Children of Production, and Curry was a founding member of Incorporated Thang Band, and Starr Cullars. All three men between them have many decades in the music business, touring all over the world, and appearing on hundreds of internationally distributed albums. Curry has been in the P-Funk camp for almost thirty years. write your comments about the article :: © 2011 Jazz News :: home page |