CALENDAR

DOORS @ 7:30 / SHOWS @ 8PM, UNLESS POSTED OTHERWISE 

• Fri

  23

  Feb

  2024

  Leila Adu Trio • Oren 0'Blivion Feb 23

  7:30 Door 8:00 Show $12 suggested donation

    

   

  Grammy-nominated composer Leila Adu (piano & organ), Jon Toscano (bass), and David Frazier (drums) play an intimate show at The Owl in advance of the release of their Moonstone and Tar Sands vinyl album. Over the last decade, Leila has firmly carved her name into a space where electro-pop, avant-classical and singer-songwriter meet. The composer-performer, who hails from New Zealand and Ghana but was born in London, has performed her original songs and improvisations at festivals and concerts across Europe, the US, Russia, Ghana and Asia. A Leila Adu performance is an intensely visceral experience, leading WNYC John Schaefer to draw parallels with Nina Simone and Joanna Newsom and describe her as “a genuinely good singer, with a velvety, soulful voice.” Leila has performed solo for the BBC’s World Service and produced soundtracks for films and documentaries. Her five highly acclaimed albums between 2005 and 2017 include two recitals for Italian National Radio and Dark Joan (produced by multiple Grammy winner Steve Albini). Leila’s performance credits include the Ojai Music Festival, Bang on a Can, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and Late Night with David Letterman. In 2022, Leila Adu–Gilmore was awarded a Charles Ives Composer Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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  Oren 0’Blivion is a cofounder of Elysian Fields and TOMP among other long-term commitments.  His singing has been described as ‘increasingly effective’ in the Village Voice and he was Greil Marcus’s Artist Of The Year in 2000-something.  Since then Mr. Marcus has not replied to any emails so the impression apparently wasn’t actually that deep.  Over the decades Oren has recorded and toured extensively, often kind of at his own expense, but with substantial encouragement, like the guy who flew from Florida to San Francisco ‘to hear his favorite guitar player’ and the couple that drove eight hours in a blizzard to catch a show in Minneapolis, whom Oren, predictably, inadvertently insulted; one of possibly billions of blunders he lies awake regretting.  Tonight he’s shooting for comparatively pleasant memories to displace those ouchy ones.