Crosswinds - World Music Performance Art Project Kestutis Stanciauskas and Aldegunda

Mar 12 at 7p.  A musical journey featuring a smorgasbord of sounds -- Lithuanian music, American Jazz and Gospel, Afro-Cuban folk and Classical  This World Music Art Project also includes visual art and videography by Lithuanian artist Algis Zukas.

Tickets $40 - 630.677.5262

New York Times Article



03/12/11 - 03/12/11

7p - 11pm


 A musical journey featuring a smorgasbord of sounds -- Lithuanian music, American Jazz and Gospel, Afro-Cuban folk and Classical  This World Music Art Project also includes visual art and videography by Lithuanian artist Algis Zukas.     Tickets $40 - 630.677.5262

 

"A Swirling Musical Mash-Up, via Lithuania"  - Neil Tesser, New York Times 3/10/11. "If Kestutis Stanciauskas has done his job right, there should be at least some degree of discomfort Saturday night at the Chopin Theater in Wicker Park — both on stage and in the audience Mr. Stanciauskas, a Chicago-born jazz bassist and composer with Lithuanian roots, has concocted a program titled “Crosswinds” (“Skersvejai” in the language of his ancestors). It features an absurdly wide range of artists, even within the spectrum of cross-cultural influences that defines Chicago.


The concert will mix-and-match Streetdancer, the jazz-fusion quartet founded by Mr. Stanciauskas in the mid-’70s; Gabija, a band performing centuries-old Lithuanian folk music on period instruments, like zithers and panpipes; a gospel vocal quintet led by a young Chicagoan, Daniel Wearring; the Afro-Cuban folkloric ensemble Toque Chicago; and jazz vocalist Saalik Ziyad, who has attracted attention for his work with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Chicago avant-garde collective.


But wait, there’s more. The evening’s guest star is Ovidijus Vysniauskas, a Lithuanian singer-songwriter who rocketed to fame in Europe in the mid-’90s. Well-known in Chicago’s Lithuanian community, he’ll make his first local appearance in more than a dozen years. In addition, the festivities will incorporate two examples of Lithuanian dance: a classical duo and an abstract modernist troupe.

 

With all that going on, Mr. Stanciauskas described his work this week in terms of a film editor, shuffling the different performances to find the best flow for the evening.   The event also stars Mr. Stanciauskas’s wife and co-producer, Gaile A. Main, a Lithuania-born vocalist who sings under her professional name, Aldegunda. With a striking blond coif that accentuates her imposing presence, Aldegunda shares and perhaps exceeds her husband’s zeal in assembling a crazy-quilt lineup of disparate artists and styles.


“We want to put people in circumstances they’re not used to,” she said a few days before the first full rehearsal. She and Mr. Stanciauskas said they hoped to force the musicians outside of their comfort zones, in order to foster new connections.  


One such moment may occur when Aldegunda performs her own Lithuanian lyrics to the Percy Mayfield standard “Please Send Me Someone to Love,” backed by the gospel group. Another should come when Mr. Vysniauskas performs one of his tunes with Toque Chicago, which will provide more aggressive percussion than appeared on his original, lightly Latin recording.

“It might be sort of shocking to him,” Aldegunda said, anticipating the first run-through.   “The idea is to take them off their shelves and make them a little uncomfortable,” she added. She was referring to the musicians but added that the dissonance could extend to the audience. Mr. Stanciauskas — who conceived “Crosswinds” as a sort of mural on which to “paint with all these different colors and textures to form a composition” — expanded on the idea that listeners might be favorably jostled by the experience.


“Everyone who attends can bring away some realization about different cultures,” he said. “And it’s so important to present things from a broader perspective — especially now, because of the fragmentation caused by narrow agendas, both political and cultural.”


Mr. Stanciauskas has been crossing cultural boundaries in Chicago his entire life. During the 1970s, he was a musician coming of age when jazz-rock hybrids were popular, and he drew partly on the work of several Polish artists contributing to that movement. In the years since, especially as a composer, he has increasingly embraced his roots.
Geographically, he is well situated to make Lithuanian music a capstone of his trans-Atlantic fusion. Approximately 350,000 people of Lithuanian background live in the Chicago area, said Stanley Balzekas, founder of the city’s Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture (which is celebrating its 45th anniversary). That number would constitute the second-largest city in Lithuania.


“At one point Halsted Street, from 16th all the way to 47th, was almost all Lithuanian,” Mr. Stanciauskas said. That was in the late 19th century, when Mr. Stanciauskas’s forebears worked the stockyards of Chicago and the soft-coal mines of Illinois.


After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1990, another immigrant wave ensued; Aldegunda, who grew up in Kaunas (the second-largest city in Lithuania, after Vilnius), arrived in 1999 after spending her 20s in France, Germany and Sweden. “Different cultures interest me,” she said, but she remains emotionally tied to her native land.


She and Mr. Stanciauskas have produced several bicultural concerts leading up to “Crosswinds,” including a presentation for the 2009 “Day of Lithuania” in Daley Plaza (with members of the Joffrey Ballet) and a 2010 work, commissioned by the Orland Park Arts Commission, that incorporated the work of Brienn Perry, a jazz singer, and Billy Branch, a renowned blues harmonica player.


“It’s important to us both to introduce American audiences to Lithuanian art and heritage; that’s why we include the folkloric ensembles and dancers,” Mr. Stanciauskas said.


But he emphasized that the aim was to expand upon that by finding the commonalities among different musical cultures, even while highlighting the diversity of styles and genres.


That goal is shared by his partners in this venture, along with some trepidation. Mr. Ziyad, the jazz singer, explained: “The only thing I’m worried about is trying not to butcher the language when I sing in Lithuanian. I just want to do the music justice.”

 

 

 


Featured artists include:  

Aina. Contemporary Dance.


Aldegunda.  Lithuania's premier vocalist has a uniquely pure VOICE and stage presence that can sing, translate and Interpret a wide palette ranging from ancient Lithuanian folk songs to the blues.  

 
DanceDuo. Lithuanian Dance Movement.

 

Daniel Wearring Gospel Group.  Six person gospel ensemble will marry their vocal stylings along with Aldegunda & Ovidijus Vysniauskas in a unique collaboration.


Gabija. A Lithuanian Folk Music ensemble which uses original period instrumentation.


Ovidijus Vysniauskas.  A composer and vocalist whose songs have become part of Lithuanian’s cultural fabric including the song “Lietuva” written at the time of Lithuania’s tense struggle for freedom from the former Soviet Union.

 

Saalik Ziyad.  Saalik’s unique style ranges from jazz to classical has afforded him the  opportunity to perform worldwide and as a member of the Association Advancement of  Creative Musicians (AACM), has been able to explore all areas of creative music.    

Streetdancer.  Founded by Kestutis Stanciauskas, this World Jazz ensemble's fundamental goal is to play original compositions using improvisation as the foundation for creativity.


Toque Chicago.  Ensemble dedicated to exposure of Afro-Cuban Folkoric music.

Director
Kestutis Stanciauskas and Aldegunda

Performers
Aina, Aldegunda, DanceDkuo, Gabija, Daniel Waring Gospel Group, Ovidijus Vysniauskas, Saalik Ziyad, Streetdancer and Toque Chicago

Production
Sound by Glenn Odagawa

Tags: Music, New Europe, 2011