Music Diversity at NYUAD

After a long time, I attended a NYU Abu Dhabi music event tonight. These have always been "different", and this one was, well, no different.

In this special performance, five specialist musicians from very diverse schools and cultures shared the stage: (left to right) American-based Peruvian computer musician Jaime Oliver, Ghanian traditional percussionist Gideon Alorwoyie, Indian traditional instrumental and vocal percussionist Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, British saxophonist Barak Schmool, and French computer-assisted composer/mixer Gérard Assayag. 

Each performed solos -- occasionally leading collaboration acts -- in turn, before a closing performance as an eclectic quintet.

As someone who works with computers, I was fascinated at a technical level by Mr Oliver's setup, which created electronic sounds based on the movements and shapes he made with his hands. Mr Anantapadmanabhan's traditional Indian percussion (top) was also very impressive, especially his vocal percussion.

And being both a jazz fan and a general performing arts fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the moves and chords in Mr School's act (bottom), in which he played saxophone to a backing track while synchronized video slides of him casually dancing to elements of the track were projected overhead.

Whatever the individual tastes for their styles of music, though, I understood, from overheard reviews on the way out, that many fellow attendees thought the final collaborative quintet performance was amazing -- an assessment with which I heartily agreed.

Hitting the sacks at Raw Coffee Company

A cafe in a coffee warehouse? You'd have to get on a ship to Colombia to get any closer to the source. That's what Raw Coffee Company does with the front of its Al Quoz space, from where it also distributes its signature brand of fresh, organic, ethically-traded coffee.

Tucked into a narrow lane leading into one of the warehouse compounds at 4A/7A near Noor Islamic Bank metro station, it takes a little effort to find, especially for those unfamiliar with the community; a sign at the outer end of said lane would be great. Art fans might have come across it, though, since a few galleries dot the area around it. Inside is a bustling cafe right up against stored sacks of raw coffee and a working roastery, which infuse the air with a rich aroma. Definitely a great ambiance.

The experience here is centered on the die-hard coffee lover, with the edible portion of the menu limited to a few varieties of cake and cupcake (but good ones, I should add). The coffee menu is also fairly simple: Arabica, available in the standard range of concentrations and milk options from a sharp ristretto (top left) to a creamy latte (bottom right), along with hot chocolate for kids, and a cold brew option (top center). For those who want to be a bit more involved, there's also the list of six brewing options from which to choose, the mild and delicious Chemex (right) among them.

Mind Your Hashtags at The Space Abu Dhabi

This weekend, I paid a quick visit to the twofour54 building in Abu Dhabi City's Al Muntazah, taking the opportunity of the opening night of Henosis' month-long multi-artist exhibition, Mind Your Hashtags, to check out this space called, well, The Space.

Unlike its Dubai counterparts (at least the ones to which I've been), The Space is one long, continuous hall. The configuration at the time of my visit had a long table running almost all of its length, with a cluster of privacy seats at one end, and a work table and cinema at the other. A window cafe sits in the middle, and  few walls have shelves to hold assorted books and magazines.

Mind Your Hashtags, featuring the works of numerous expat artists from around the world, consists mainly of the 2D, although there were a few video and object pieces, such as this interesting one by Deislava Dare (top left). Some particularly striking variations on technique and/or medium could be seen, like those of Nissa Riyas (bottom left) and Sarah Amer (right).

I especially liked the drawing pieces on display, appreciating some sharp and artistically distinctive samples of work by (clockwise from top left) Michael Turda, Haafiza Sayed, and Sumanta Dahda.

Roaring rhythms with The Swing Revue and Lindy Hop

I went down to Jazz Pizza Express this Wednesday to watch Dubai's latest manifestation of the vintage invasion: The Swing Revue. The 5-piece swing band and the vocalist together played several hits from the Age of Swing, as well as swing-paced covers of jazz standards by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald. The band -- playing trumpet, drum, piano, double bass, and guitar -- had a great swing rhythm, and its members also did well as backup singers during the call-and-response sequences. Their rendition of the rebel anthem "Momma Don't Allow" was especially fun.

In addition, the space just off stage left was cleared for use by the Dubai-based enthusiasts of swing dancing, Lindy Hop Dubai, who drop in an hour early for dance lessons before the weekly gig. Between two and three couples would hit the floor at a time, swinging and jiving to the live music. The band would also occasionally step down and play right next to them, adding to the swing-era atmosphere of the place.

Congratulations also to the venue, Pizza Express JLT, for being declared the best-run in the Pizza Express restaurant family.

Corals and Crochet at NYUAD

To provide some context to its two-month-long exhibition of "crochet coral", beginning this week, NYU Abu Dhabi is hosting two panel discussions on crochet art, one of which I attended.

Each of the three crochet artists in the panel introduced their very different approaches to crocheting.

Shauna Richardson (left), spoke about her "crochetdermy" of animal forms with dense "skins" of crochet, including some inspired by public figures, and large outdoor projects like the three over-sized lions of Lionheart. As she confirmed, she does them in aggressive poses and natural colors, in order to avoid the toy look.

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam's (center) presentation drew many amused reactions from the audience, since her contrasting use of bright colors and playful shapes in huge, heavy-duty, netting-type crochet installations made them popular as jungle gyms for kids (and some adults), as many of her pictures showed. These and some of her less physically interactive works additionally employed interesting use of layering, as well as deliberate anchoring and weighting for dramatic surface contortion.

Finally, Christine Wertheim (right) began her segment with a fascination comparison of crochet to the ferrite core memory boards used in computers nearly half a century ago, pointing out that contemporary women's handicraft skills made them naturals when it came to weaving core memory boards, and supporting her opening statement that "crochet is a digital technology". She is also a co-founder of the Institute for Figuring and its Crochet Coral Reef project, assembling brightly colored, organic-looking hyperbolic crochet surfaces that bunch up into forms that resemble corals. She described how the artists' allowing variation in the crochet "formula" resulted in diversity akin to that found in nature due to genetic mutations, and how they preserved their plastic waste for years to weave them into the project's "toxic reefs".

After the event, I had a look around the reef exhibition. You had to go up close to see the use of various waste materials -- such as plastic piping, cable ties, and bags -- among the brightly-colored yarn coral bunches, balls and stalks, and even some full-blown crochet marine fauna. There was much variation in size and shape as well, and some also included beads and other effects. A beautiful exhibition, and worth checking out on the Saadiyat campus before it closes on December 4th.

Grassroots Revue Dubai

Dubai community theater The Courtyard Playhouse held another Grassroots Revue event this season to showcase local talent -- a mixed-form potpourri of performances, introducing audiences to arts and artists to which they might not otherwise have been exposed.

A double feature of poetry was on the bill, with Zeina Hashem Beck (left) reading from her new book, To Live in Autumn, and Frank Dullaghan reading his series of poignant poems about a missing child incident.

Comedy also took center-stage, with well-received performances from the likes of Luke Haecker (top left) and Sameer Abdul Rehman (top right), and local improv troupe Improv Anonymous (bottom) playing short-form scenes and games (including attempts at musical improv) across two slots.

Musicians galore too, as the programme was peppered with four acoustic guitar instrumental or singing performances -- including classical guitarist Valentin Spasov and David Beats Goliath frontman George Driscoll -- and closed on a violin note.

NYUAD Saadiyat Campus and Hamama screening

One of the first events of the NYUAD public programs season was a screening of the Emirati documentary film Hamama. I rarely pass up opportunities to watch a nice local film, so I signed up. Also, it would be a good opportunity to check out NYUAD's new campus on Saadiyat Island, to which its public events have been moved from various locations around Abu Dhabi city, and which also happens to be more conveniently located for me.

The campus is impressive: large, fitted well, decorated subtly and interesting architecturally, with broad paths, big courtyards, and spacious interiors. There is still some work going on in the area surrounding, but the inside seems about completed.

The film was introduced by a faculty member (top left) and screened (right) in a conference center auditorium, followed by Q&A with director/producer Nujoom al Ghanem and writer/researcher Khalid al Budoor (bottom left). While I think the POV shots detracted from the documentary style followed otherwise in the film (I'm sure blindness could have been conveyed in other ways, or established in a single fade shot), and some of the setups looked a little implausible (shayla on head with bare belly?), the film was overall a pleasant watch, with sharp cinematography, some interesting characters, a bit of humor, and good lighting, transitions and sound.