Journeys in Sound presents Isasa & Magic Tuber Stringband: Friday Night String Frolics
Suggested donation on a sliding scale of $15 to $20 based on your financial means to make a reservation, e-mail journeysinsoundpresents@gmail.com. Once a reservation is made, the address will be provided.
Isasa (born to Uruguayan parents in Madrid, Spain, 1977) is a guitarist and composer based in Madrid. He has been an active member of the city’s underground music scene since the early 90’s. He has performed throughout Spain, EU, USA and UK as a solo artist, as well as a member of the Spanish band A Room with a View (1997-2003).
Strongly inspired by the American Primitive guitarists – John Fahey, Glenn Jones and Jack Rose – Isasa plays acoustic guitar and weissenborn in an organic, serene and meditative style. His music is a relaxed and unhurried experience for the listener. It projects a spiritual and twilight beauty.
His third album “Insilio” was released on April 5th, 2019 via La Castanya.
Isasa has shared bills with performers including Glenn Jones, Daniel Bachman, Geoff Farina, Steve Gunn, Will Johnson (Centromatic), Sir Richard Bishop, Micah Blue Smaldone, Marisa Anderson, dbh, Laura Baird, Negro, Norberto Lobo, White Magic, House and Land and Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. Isasa last performed in the Boston area in 2017 and was one of 5 guitarists presented in a Journeys in Sound program titled "American Primitive & Experimental Guitar".
https://isasaguitarra.tumblr.com/ https://isasa.bandcamp.com/
Praise for Isasa's latest release “Insilio”:
With "Insilio", Isasa makes another jump, even deeper into his own personal language. It is full of unanticipated pleasures. Many of the songs have a very precise and lovely way of suggesting the future rather than the past. If you have an interest in new guitar music you’ll surely be gob-smacked by Insilio. Beautiful Stuff.
— Byron Coley
Isasa’s experience as a musician comes most readily into play in the way he leaves so much open space in most of the tracks on "Insilio". Outside of the rambling “Arquitecto tenista” and the lovely splay of the opening track “Homenaje a Cataluña,” the songs are marked with small or large pockets of silence where the notes from his guitar can linger and decay and the listener can let a moment sink in their system. On those tracks when that open air gives way to the dense finger-picked array, as with his two odes to the barrios of Montevideo, Uruguay, those moments feel like a warm, unexpected spring rain shower. The effect, which nicely sums up the album as a whole, is pleasant and whirling.
_ Robert Ham, Paste
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Magic Tuber Stringband is an experimental old-time-related duo from Durham, NC comprised of Courtney Werner on fiddle and Evan Morgan on guitar and banjo. The duo forges links between the dialects of traditional tunes and freak-folk improvisations. MTSB will release their debut record "Wayward Airs for Earthbound Vagrants" in July 2019 on Houston-based label Blue Hole Recordings. The record swings back and forth across the boundaries between traditional and exploratory song forms, often within the space of a song.
Past collaborations between Werner and Morgan include the experimental short film LOST CHILD REEL in which Werner appears playing the Stripling Brothers' "Lost Child" and the the 16mm multi-projector performance PERFORMANCE FOR FIDDLE AND PROJECTORS which imagines a new form of musicological documentary rooted in live performance.
Morgan's debut solo guitar record "Between the World and Small Things" was released on Blue Hole in 2018. Along with his solo work, Morgan has also performed with the old-time group The Fossil Lickers and also works within the world of experimental film. Werner has worked around the country and the world in the fields of wildlife rehabilitation and conservation.