CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Andrew Finn Magill
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City/Place:
Asheville, North Carolina
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
For twenty years fiddler and composer Andrew Finn Magill (Finn) has been pursuing parallel careers in traditional Irish music, Brazilian choro, jazz and American fiddle, the result of many years living abroad and a childhood growing up at The Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina where he studied every summer with dozens of Irish, old-time, bluegrass and swing fiddle masters. His six albums constitute thousands of hours dedicated to each genre and the basis of Finn’s original music which is founded on the principle of collaboration. Over the last ten years he has performed with John Doyle, Rising Appalachia, Charm City Junction, Open the Door for Three, Greg Ruby, The Paul McKenna Band, and Peter Mawanga in venues that include Milwaukee Irish Fest, Celtic Connections, Olympia Hall in Paris, France, DisneyWorld, and Malawi’s Lake of Stars Festival.
In 2005 he debuted with Drive & Lift, an Irish fiddle album that has been featured on NPR and multiple official Spotify playlists. In 2009 Finn was awarded a Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship to spend a year in Malawi co-writing and co-producing a concept album about HIV/AIDS with Malawi pop icon Peter Mawanga. The result Stories of AIDS: Mau a Malawi is a soundscape of traditional Irish and Malawian sounds reimagined as Afro-pop with a riveting message of social justice. It was the inspiration for a multimedia show of the same name Finn wrote and co-directed with Jon Haas and Joseph Megel and debuted at the University of North Carolina’s Memorial Hall in October 2011.
In 2016, Finn released the two-part concept album Roots and Branches which spans from traditional Irish music to new acoustic jazz. Roots debuted at #46 on the Folk DJ charts and writes Grammy-winning Americana artist Tim O’Brien:
“He has learned from and now plays with the best in the genre. On Branches you can hear a new musical voice emerging. I’m gonna keep listening for Finn Magill.”
In 2014 Finn moved to Rio de Janeiro to study Brazilian choro music. He has been an ambassador of Brazilian violin ever since and has founded many Brazilian music groups including O Finno, Violino no Choro, Brazilian Strings Trio (with fellow American violinist Ted Falcon and Brazilian guitarist Nando Duarte) and Canta, Violino! the album of which was released on Ropeadope Records in 2018. Says Brazilian percussion legend Airto Moreira of Chick Corea and Miles Davis:
“Its nice to see fresh, young musicians carrying on the traditions of Brazilian music. Finn Magill displays a love and authenticity that can fool you into thinking he is from Brazil. His style is playful and light, yet soulful and passionate. Congratulations!”
Fascinated by the connections between the fiddling traditions of Ireland and Scotland and their musical cousins of oldtime and bluegrass, in 2018 Finn created the lecture series “The Evolution of Irish & Scottish Fiddle in our Appalachian Mountains” which is a musical presentation for adults that explores the connections between these styles through their fiddle tunes. This lecture series is part of a larger commitment to music education and Finn has taught traditional Irish music, bluegrass, choro, and old-time at over a dozen fiddle camps across the U.S, Scotland, Brazil, and France.
In 2019 Finn received a 2019 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship award to make an album of original music which will be recorded in 2020 and released sometime later that year. Finn currently tours with Dave Curley (of Slide & One for the Foxes), Alan Murray (The Colin Farrell Band), Seán Gray (formerly of The Paul McKenna Band), Brazilian group Canta, Violino!, as a solo artist and as a periodic sidemen with dozens of other artists in various genres.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"I’m gonna keep listening for Finn Magill." - Tim O’Brien
"Andrew Finn Magill is a leading fiddler in a new generation of musicians." - Martin Hayes
"Serene and incredibly soulful, North Carolina fiddler Andrew Finn Magill encounters the tradition in a manner reminiscent of Keith Jarrett on The Melody at Night With You." - Siobhan Long, The Irish Times
“Its nice to see fresh, young musicians carrying on the traditions of Brazilian music. Finn Magill displays a love and authenticity for Chorinho that can fool you into thinking he is from Brazil. His style is playful and light, yet soulful and passionate. Congratulations!” - Airto Moreira (Weather Report, Miles Davis, Chick Corea)
“Andrew Finn Magill is an extraordinary violin virtuoso who has taken a super deep dive into Brazilian music and culture. Check out his “muito calor” original tunes —they have all the energy and groove of Rio, with a healthy helping of American spin and improvisation! Meu Deus!!!!!" - Matt Glaser, Artistic Director American Roots Music Program Berklee College of Music
"A great depth and understanding of traditional Irish music" - Mairéad Ní Mhoanaigh (Altan)
“He is an innovator and composer with clearly his own signature.” – grammy nominee, Liz Carroll
"Sweet swinging fiddle playing with a deep understanding of the roots of this music, a very creative imagination and beautiful violin technique" - Mike Marshall
“He is very talented and hard working. He’s just an absolute natural” – Brian Conway (All-Ireland fiddle champion)
Clips (more may be added)
Most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other (see Wolfram below). To put the Bahians within reach of the whole world, include them in a small-world network.
Wolfram MathWorld
If God is a mathematician, the Matrix is a miracle.
There are certain countries the names of which fire the imagination. Brazil is one of them, an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics and complex rhythms... The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix — concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
Ground Zero for the project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a kilombo is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):

...theme music for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
Celebration of this Mass was prohibited by the Vatican and four songs on the recording were forbidden by Brazil's censors (the dictatorship was still in force).
Like a trick of the mind’s light, different places scattered across the face of the globe seem at times to almost exist in different universes, as if they were permeated throughout with something akin to 19th century luminiferous aether, unique, determined by that place's history. Standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo...the sertão — backlands — ranging beyond...and mindful of what happened in both, one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:

The Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible.
—founders
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
The Brazilian Matrix has been accessed from these places over the past month (a marker can represent multiple accesses):

I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL