Kiezsalon opening w/ Joe Rainey, Ka Baird and Zoh Amba

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

For the 2024 season opening, Kiezsalon returns to the Zionskirche for a full weekend program. Following Friday’s lineup of Blue Lake, Antonina Nowacka and C. Lavender, Saturday continues with Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey and saxophonist Zoh Amba making their Berlin debuts, plus visceral experimentalist Ka Baird.

Joe Rainey grew up in Red Lake Ojibwe, Minneapolis, a city with one of the largest and proudest Native American populations in the country. With his debut Niineta in 2022, Rainey has demonstrated a command of the Pow Wow music he grew up with, faithful to the indigenous tradition and bolstering it with widescreen, bass-heavy production. The album scored an 8.0 from Pitchfork, and its cut “bezhigo” made its way into their list of the 100 Best Songs of 2022, helping Joe hit the global radar.

The Guardian gave the album 4/5 stars, calling it “a brave endeavour that straddles the line between tradition and adaptation, […] allowing the uninitiated to experience and enjoy the enduring emotions of Pow Wow music without muting its ineffable power.”

Zoh Amba is a composer and instrumentalist with an avant-garde blend of folk melodies, mesmerising refrains, and repeated incantations. Born in Tennessee, she studied at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, the New England Conservatory and with David Murray in New York, her current home.

“Hearing Amba play, it’s clear that her passion comes from somewhere deep inside. In the first few minutes of a recent concert,” observes The New York Times in their profile on the 23-year old, “she erupted with low-register blasts, then worked her way up to the altissimo range of her tenor sax, her cheeks puffing as she summoned harsh multiphonic squeals.” Zoh’s debut album O, Sun was produced by John Zorn and released on his label Tzadik, followed by Bhakti in 2022.

Ka Baird is a New York City-based musician, composer and powerhouse performer. Their live sets include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and woodwind instruments, spanning structured conversations and improvisation. Ka’s ritualistic delivery aims for an extreme form release through physical exertion and psychic extension.

As Pitchfork put it, “This is heady music with a physical presence: an intensely private communion with some unnameable, unknowable other, translated into a force you can feel in your bones.” They have released albums on Drag City and RVNG Intl., the latter having issued their album Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos in March.

The Zionskirche, inaugurated in 1873 and renovated just last year, was built in a neo-Romanesque style on a 52-metre-high vineyard at one of the highest altitudes Berlin. Its 67-metre tower offers a panoramic view of the city, and its gardens are ideal for lingering before and after the concert with a glass of wine – especially on a warm spring evening.