Andy Cohen Special Concert
-in honor of George Murray, Utah Phillips, and Doc Whiz
-The Mayfields. 8-9:30
-Jay Krasnow and Friends. 9:30-11:00pm

Friday, November 14, 4-7pm at the North Water Street Gallery, 257 N. Water St., Kent

CONTACT: 330-673-4970

About the Artists

Andy Cohen Bio

Andy Cohen grew up in a house with a piano and a lot of Dixieland Jazz
records, amplified after a while by a cornet that his dad got him. At
about fifteen, he got bitten by the Folk Music bug, and soon got to hear
records by Big Bill Broonzy and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, both of which
reminded him of the music he grew up to. At sixteen, he saw Rev. Gary
Davis, and his course was set. He knew he had it in him to follow,
study, perform and promote the music of the southeast quadrant,
America’s musical mother lode.

Born in Massachusetts but a Southern boy at heart, Mr. Cohen has been
playing music since before he was in kindergarten. As such, his whole
package©ˆis both entertaining and true to the bone. His repertoire is
largely borrowed from streetsinging geniuses across the South who spent
the first half of the last century cadging among passers-by for dimes.
And although he has published extensively on certain regional aspects of
guitar picking, it is
plain that he picks because it’s fun.

Mr. Cohen has traveled around the U.S. and Canada for a generation and a
half, collecting and playing these songs and tunes. Like his
instruments, and like himself, they show the patina of age. Nonetheless,
his repertoire is energetically presented, believing his advancing age.
If readers feel proof is needed, they are invited to his website,
www.andycohenmusic.net,
for a sample or two.

jay krasnow

multi-instrumentalist jay krasnow specializes in performing two very
distinct musical styles.

the first stylistic project may be called ‘organic arithmetic music’ or
‘organic acoustic art-rock’ (as mellower alternatives to what he
formerly called ‘progressive gypsy music’), krasnow will perform a
series of ‘composed improvisations’ and meditations in styles rooted in
numerous folk and art musics of the world.

among the instruments krasnow plays are 12-string guitar, cümbü_
(12-string turkish fretless banjo-lute), tiple (10-string andean
guitalele), baritone lap steel, and bass (utilizing a tapping technique
influenced by zimbabwean lamellaphone music).

he is often accompanied by a small rotating cast of percussionists and
other musicians, on anything from tikallalin (moroccan/berber ceramic
drums) to doira (xinjiang jingle frame drum), from file cajón (file
cabinet played in the style of the peruvo-spanish flamenco box drum) to
kaiambarambo (malagasy reed brush), from ganzitas (small, handmade
rectangular shakers) to khæn (hmong long-reed mouth organ).

the jingling of ghungru (indian ankle bells) and flamenco-like stomping
further punctuate the performances, the flamboyance of which may be
matched only by the stage attire.

a series of albums mixing studio and live performances is currently
being recorded with an eye to release by early 2010.

krasnow’s second stylistic project, quite distinct from the first save a
common ‘gypsy’-influence, is a series of solo recital performances of
rare late-period piano works by ferenc liszt and other hungarian
contemporaries from the 1860s onward—some for left-hand only!

a native of saint paul, minnesota, he has resided in cleveland, ohio
since 2004.