Raz Mesinai

Raz Mesinai was born in Jerusalem in 1973. His first two decades were spent in frequent transit between Jerusalem and New York City, where he became immersed in both the worlds of traditional Middle Eastern music, and the dub and hip-hop scenes of the eighties and early nineties in New York City. He became involved in the avant-garde, downtown music scene of New York City, performing, improvising, and leading his own ensembles on percussion, piano and sampler.

Mesinai's electronic and electro-acoustic music exists at the crossroads of composition, sound design and modern studio production. His acclaimed recordings under the moniker Badawi, and as one half of the seminal duo Sub Dub (with John Ward), are difficult to classify, but have been called hybrid electronica/dub/percussion/avant-garde compositions. Since 1999, Mesinai has been releasing music under his own name as well, including three releases on John Zorn's "Tzadik" label. His work has been commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, the Jerome Foundation and the American Music Center. In 2001, "Soldier of Midian" (ROIR) received an award from the Ars Electronica festival. In 2002, Raz was a featured artist in the "Next, Next Wave" festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and opened for Nubian master musician Hamza El Din at Lincoln Center, a personal highlight. In 2004, following his developing interest in visual narrative and storytelling in music, Mesinai was a Fellow at the Sundance Composer's Lab where he had the opportunity to participate in workshops with such artists as John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov and Thomas Newman. He's currently scoring several films.

Adam Rudolph

Since the 1970’s Rudolph has been developing his unique syncretic approach to hand drums in creative collaborations with many masters of cross-cultural and improvised music such as Sam Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders, L. Shankar, and Fred Anderson. He is known especially for his innovative small group and duo collaborations with Don Cherry, Jon Hassel, Wadada Leo Smith, and Omar Sosa.In 2001 Rudolph founded Go: Organic Orchestra a 22-piece woodwind and percussion ensemble dedicated to developing his unique compositional and rhythm concepts in a large group format. In concert, Rudolph improvisationally conducts the ensemble using his own innovative process. Originally from Chicago, composer and handrummer/percussionist Adam Rudolph has, for the past three decades, appeared at festivals and concerts throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa, and Japan.

In 1988 Rudolph began his association with the legendary Yusef Lateef, which lasts to this day. He has recorded 14 albums with Dr. Lateef including their large ensemble collaborations: “The World at Peace” (1995), “Beyond the Sky” (2000) and 2003’s “In The Garden” with Rudolph conducting his Go: Organic Orchestra. He has performed worldwide with Dr. Lateef in ensembles ranging from their acclaimed duo concerts to appearing as guest soloist with Koln, Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras.

Adam Rudolph is known as one the early innovators in what is now called “World Music”. In 1977 he co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society with Gambian Kora Griot, Foday Musa Suso, one of the first bands to combine African and American music. In 1988, he recorded the first fusion of American and Gnawa (Moroccan) music with Sintir player and singer Hassan Hakmoun.

From 1998 to 2001 Rudolph performed at the Festival D’Essaouira in Morocco in collaboration with many leading Gnawa Maleems (masters). For 2 of those years he was artistic director and curator of “Calling Across the Water” an acoustic collaboration between American, Bambara and Gnawa musicians at that festival.