Name: Arooj Aftab and the Vulture Prince Ensemble and Yasmin Williams
Start: 2021-09-03T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Pioneer Works

Arooj Aftab and the Vulture Prince Ensemble and Yasmin Williams

Pioneer Works

On September 3, join Arooj Aftab and the Vulture Prince Ensemble at Pioneer Works.

Arooj Aftab

Beginning on September 3, in accordance with the New York City mandate, Key to NYC, visitors (age 12+) must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter Pioneer Works. Be prepared to show your proof of vaccination upon arrival at Pioneer Works. Please review our updated Health and Safety Policy <a href="https://www.pioneerworks.org/visit" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.Arooj Aftab is a music composer, vocalist and producer who works mainly in the minimalist, jazz, and neo-Sufi idioms.The Vulture Prince Ensemble will feature Arooj Aftab performing live with Maeve Gilchrest, Shahzad Ismaily, Gyan Riley, Darian Donovan Thomas, Greg Fox, and Kenji Herbert. Guitarist Yasmin Williams will also be joining us to kick off the night.Raised in Pakistan, Arooj Aftab taught herself to play the guitar and started developing her voice through deep listening to various musicians such as Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Billie Holiday, and Mariah Carey. In the early 2000s, Aftab was one of the first musicians to use the internet to promote her music in Pakistan —her renditions of &quot;Hallelujah&quot; and &quot;Mera Pyaar&quot; went viral and largely inaugurated the Pakistani indie scene.Aftab moved to the United States in 2005, earned a degree in Music Production and Engineering and Jazz Composition at the Berklee College of Music. She moved to New York in 2009 and has lived there ever since.The composer-performer’s third studio album, Vulture Prince, was released in April 2021 with New Amsterdam Records. Vulture Prince tells the stories of people, relationships, and moments lost, and the album is dedicated to the memory of her younger brother, Maher. The album has received praise from notable and leading music publications such as NPR Music, BBC Radio, Pitchfork &#x27;s Best New Music, and The New York Times.Yasmin Williams sits on her leather couch, her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time. With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.A native of northern Virginia, Williams, now 24, began playing electric guitar in 8th grade, after she beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on expert level. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and other shredders she was familiar with through the game, she quickly moved on to acoustic guitar, finding that it allowed her to combine fingerstyle techniques with the lap-tapping she had developed through Guitar Hero, as well as perform as a solo artist. By 10th grade, she had released an EP of songs of her own composition. Deriving no lineage from “American primitive” and rejecting the problematic connotations of the term, Williams’ influences include the smooth jazz and R&amp;B she listened to growing up, Hendrix and Nirvana, go-go and hip-hop. Her love for the band Earth, Wind and Fire prompted her to incorporate the kalimba into her songwriting, and more recently, she’s drawn inspiration from other Black women guitarists such as Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Algia Mae Hinton. On Urban Driftwood, Williams references the music of West African griots through the inclusion of kora (which she recently learned) and by featuring the hand drumming of 150th generation djeli of the Kouyate family, Amadou Kouyate, on the title track.Since its release in January 2021, Urban Driftwood has been praised by numerous publications such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Wasington Post, NPR Music, No Depression, Paste Magazine, and many others. Williams will be touring in support of Urban Driftwood throughout 2021. TicketsAdvanced: $20Day-of: $25Beginning on September 3, in accordance with the New York City mandate, <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccines-keytonyc.page" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Key to NYC</a>, visitors (age 12+) must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter Pioneer Works. Be prepared to show your proof of vaccination upon arrival at Pioneer Works. Please review our updated Health and Safety Policy <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/visit/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.

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Arooj Aftab and the Vulture Prince Ensemble and Yasmin Williams

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