Friday December 8 * 7pm * TICKETS
Cal Folger Day is an artist based out of Baltimore/Dublin. She has composed several nonfiction verbatim musical shows and released them as albums also.
She is currently preparing a video series adaptation of Gráinne, a setting of a 1912 retelling by Lady Gregory of an ancient Irish myth about an unlucky princess.
Joining her will be Hannah Lee Thompson on banjo and Mickey Lusk on harp.
Kajwan Ziaoddini and Miead Nikfarjam are Iranian musicians in the Persian classical genre. Their performance consists of two pieces of the Iranian classical music repertoire along with improvised phrases that will emerge between the fixed sections. The well-elaborated frames of the musical tradition provide a common ground for Kajwan and Miead to predict each other’s phrases and make a musical dialogue within the defined characteristics of the genre.
Kajwan Ziaoddini started performing Santour in 1998. He earned his master’s degree in Iranian classical music at the University of Tehran. As a musician, he has collaborated with several Iranian ensembles such as “Eghbal,” “Ravian,” and “Hamnavazan,” and has contributed to five albums named “From the Saba’s Rose Garden,” “Hashtrud,” “Delkesh,” “Goshayesh,” and “Nowbang.” Kajwan is a faculty of the music department at the University of Kurdistan, Iran, and currently is a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland.
Miead Nikfarjam is a mechanical engineer and Daf (frame drum) player from Shahsavar, Iran. He started learning and playing Daf in 1999, and in 2006 attended the classes of Maestro Masoud Habibi to learn the fundamentals of rhythm and the modern method of playing Daf. After reaching the advanced level, he started training students. He also has performed in many local and international concerts with the “Fakhte”, “Rohaab”, and “Ghafele Salar” music ensembles. He is currently teaching Daf in the University of Maryland (free workshops) and the DC metro area.
John-Michael Bloomquist's first book Rocket Celestial (White Stag, 2023) explores a theme of space exploration, tracking the lives of the first rocket engineers, the Ukrainian Sergei Korolev who launched Sputnik and other space firsts, and the German/American Wernher Von Braun, the creator of the V2 and the Apollo mission. It also has parables from St. Francis who visits many of the animals that our scientist performed horrible experiments on to get their perspective on the space race. There is also a priest of/from the future, Fr. Nescio (which is latin for I don't know), who has hallucinatory visions of his past/our future. As well as homeric styled hymns to the planets.