Vienna Live with Simeon Morrow Simeon Morrow

CAJAMARCA, PERU: We Westerners tend to value feats of architecture more than the human activities they were so carefully erected to provide for. Take Peru, for example. We consider the ruins of Machu Picchu as evidence of Incan cultural superiority. But what about the celebrations of the people who carved those stones – carved them so precisely, that in comparison, modern European masonry still looks childish? With that in mind, Professor Julio Mendívil, Chair of Ethnomusicology at University of Vienna, will take us to Peru’s northern Cajamarca region. There, three distinct cultural elements - the Amazonian Chuncho, Incan and Spanish - form a musical tradition that is as modern as it is ancient. One such music is the “Dance of the Chunchos”, which, at once, celebrates the Chunchos having fought off every Incan attempt at invasion, the Catholic celebration of the Virgin Mary and the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from Iberia. Yes, we will see impressive architecture, and yes, we feel the power of the human spirit transcending time and space. Come welcome Professor Mendívil to Vienna Live!

Today, who’s still hungry? Ever since biologist Norman Borlaug led the Green Revolution, matters of food security left the realm of the divine and were placed squarely in man’s hands: humans, not God, were now responsible when someone went hungry. This is especially true in the West, where starvation is now inconceivable and our “post-material” sensibilities are more concerned about food quality than food quantity. Yet hunger still abounds and the Future Food Institute is there to respond to it in all its forms. Sara Roversi, President of the Future Food Institute, will introduce us to this extraordinary global organization and show us how great food culture is at the center of a great society. Today, who’s still hungry? All of us! Come welcome Sara Roversi, President of the Future Food Institute, to Vienna Live!

BERKS JAZZ FEST: while Tucson-born, Los Angeles-based Brian Bromberg has been equally conversant and downright virtuosic on both electric and upright basses, he sticks strictly to the latter on his latest offering, LaFaro. A tribute to the legendary jazz bassist whose revolutionary contributions to the classic Bill Evans Trio still reverberate to this day, Bromberg’s 28th as a leader shows him in an unadulterated swinging trio setting in the company of pianist Tom Zink and drummer Charles Ruggiero. LaFaro will be released on April 5 in CD, LP and digital formats on Bromberg’s own Be Squared Productions label.

Come welcome Brian Bromberg to Vienna Live!

HAVANA, CUBA: In order to fully appreciate the magnitude of Sosa’s artistry, it is important to know the cultural and musical environment that nurtured it. Born on April 10, 1965 in Camagũey, Cuba, conservatory-trained Sosa grew up in a musical culture where folkloric, classical and jazz music co-existed, but not on equal terms. Pianistically, Sosa is the latest in a long line of incredible Cuban pianists, from Bebo and Chucho Valdés, to Emiliano Salvador and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, to name a very select few. But unlike those aforementioned masters, who primarily play Latin jazz extensions of the mambo, cha-cha rumba and the danzón, Sosa set forth to adapt those Afro-Cuban genres to the far-flung African-derived music, dances and instruments of the Black Diaspora, dispersed throughout the infamous Middle Passage, creating a true “world music” with black, brown and beige tinges. -Eugene Holley, Jr. – Contributor, DownBeat

Come welcome Omar Sosa to Vienna Live!

NEW YORK CITY: Trumpet legend Eddie Henderson was in the room when it happened. “My first trumpet teacher, way back in 1949, was Louis Armstrong,” recalls Henderson, who met the trumpet icon through his mother, a dancer at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. “From that point on, I witnessed the evolution in music through Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Woody Shaw, John Coltrane, up to the present. I lived through the turmoil of the ’60s and ’70s and the rise of Black Power in this country. I was also fortunate to come into contact with people like Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, and Willie Mays. So, I have been a witness to history, and inevitably that rubbed off on me musically.” In his newest album, Witness to History, Eddie Henderson nods to the jazz traditions of the past as he celebrates jazz today and tomorrow. As Black History Month 2024 invites all of us to get to know the history of the United States of America, there’s no one better to tell us about its jazz than Eddie Henderson. Come welcome him to Vienna Live!

BERLIN: "One of Manfred Eicher’s skills as a producer is to find the right new voices for his ECM label. Last Decade contains song after luminous song in which Lackner postulates a crystalline idea and a rapt mood and Eick deepens both. The title track and “Open Minds Lost” are especially strong examples of this band’s pure, searching lyricism. ECM released some fine albums in 2022, but few are more beautiful."
- Thomas Conrad, Stereophile

Come welcome jazz pianist Benjamin Lackner to Vienna Live to discuss his first ECM Records album, Last Decade!