Ars Nova Workshop and Painted Bride Arts Center are pleased to present the Philadelphia premiere of Abu Sadiya, the world-jazz trio bringing together French-Tunisian saxophonist Yacine Boularès, French cellist Vincent Ségal, and American drummer Nasheet Waits.
As Abu Sadiya, Boularès, Ségal and Waits venture out on cultural explorations between the streets of Tunis and Manhattan, between traditional, jazz and free music, between history’s tragedies and modern-day resilience. The trio’s music re-appropriates the forgotten Stambeli repertoire, a healing trance music created by the descendants of Sub-Saharan slaves brought to Tunisia. The compositions form a series of variations on the legend of the hunter Abu Sadiya. In his wandering search for his enslaved daughter, Abu Sadiya danced and sang his sorrow in the streets of Tunis, thus becoming the first musician of Stambeli and personifying the memory of Sub-Saharan slaves in Tunisia.
French-Tunisian saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Vincent Boularès moved from France to New York to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, studying with the likes of Chris Cheek, Donny McCaslin and Reggie Workman. In addition to playing a diverse array of world musics, from Afrobeat to the Bikutsi rhythms of Cameroon to Haitian Kompa, Boularès has played alongside jazz vocalists Sheila Jordan, Theo Bleckman and Becca Stevens and with Japanese singer/songwriter Senri Oe. Cellist and bassist Vincent Ségal is known for his unusual and surprising collaborations, with artists as diverse as Elvis Costello, Sting, Blackalicious, Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, and Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko. A second generation jazz drummer, Waits is well known in the jazz community for his singular sound and his work in such ground-breaking ensembles as Jason Moran’s Bandwagon, the collective trio Tarbaby with Orrin Evans and Eric Revis, and bands led by Dave Douglas, Fred Hersch and David Murray, among countless others.
This engagement of Abu Sadiya is made possible through the French-American Jazz Exchange Tours program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts
