NEW YORK – On Saturday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m., Schimmel Center will welcome back the Ukrainian world-music quartet DakhaBrakha after a sold out performance in May of 2016.
The evening will showcase music from the group’s latest album, which has been titled “The Road,” and is dedicated to the people who have died for Ukrainian freedom. The album was released in December 2016.
DakhaBrakha was founded in 2004 by Vladyslav Troitskyi, an avant-garde theater director at the Kyiv Center of Contemporary Art (DAKH). The name means “give/take” in the old Ukrainian language. Theatre work has left its mark on the band’s performances as their shows have never been staged without scenic effects. The group has termed its sound “ethno-chaos.”
Having experimented with Ukrainian folk music, the band has added rhythms of the surrounding world into their music, thus creating bright, unique and unforgettable music. Accompanied by Indian, Arabic, African, Russian and Australian traditional instrumentation, the quartet’s astonishingly powerful and uncompromising vocal range creates a trans-national sound rooted in Ukrainian culture.
At the crossroads of Ukrainian folklore and theater, its musical spectrum is intimate then riotous, plumbing the depths of contemporary roots and rhythms, inspiring cultural and artistic liberation.
The four-person ensemble includes Marko Halanevych on vocals, darbuka, table and accordion; Iryna Kovalenko on vocals, djembe, bass drums, accordion, bugay, zgaleyka and piano; Olena Tsybulska on vocals, bass drums, percussion and garmoshka; and Nina Garenetska on vocals, cello and bass drum.
Schimmel Center is located in the heart of Downtown Manhattan at Pace University. Its address is 3 Spruce St. (near the new Fulton Center and just blocks from One World Trade Center).
The center’s mission to present internationally acclaimed artists in the fields of dance, cabaret, music, comedy, lecture, world music and dance and family programming. For more information, readers may visit SchimmelCenter.org or call 212-346-1715.