CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Cassie Kinoshi
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City/Place:
London
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Country:
United Kingdom
Life
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Bio:
Cassie Kinoshi (b. 1993) is a Mercury Award nominated and Ivors Academy Award winning (formerly know as BASCA, British Composer Award) London-based composer, arranger and alto-saxophonist. She is currently working in theatre, film, contemporary dance and both the jazz and classical performance worlds.
Cassie is best known for her work with her large ensemble SEED alongside bands KOKOROKO and NÉRIJA. She was Mercury Musical Developments’ and Musical Theatre Network’s Cameron Mackintosh Resident Composer Scheme recipient at Dundee Rep Theatre from 2018-19 and was a part of the London Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Scheme 2018-19.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Theatre composition credits: Top Girls (National Theatre), The Little Prince adpated by Inua Ellams (Stratford Circus Arts Centre), All The Shit I Can’t Say To My Dad (This Is Black, Bunker Theatre), Teleportation (This is Black, Bunker Theatre), Blue Beneath My Skin (This Is Black, Bunker Theatre), SuperBlackMan (Battersea Arts Centre), Pagans (Old Vic Theatre, Old Vic 12), Exceptional Mercy (Old Vic Theatre, Old Vic 12), Hy Brasil (Old Vic Theatre, Old Vic 12) Feather by Feather (Old Vic Workrooms), Bobsleigh Team (Old Vic Workrooms)
Film & Advertising credits: "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”: Tour of the Old Vic (Old Vic Theatre/National Theatre)Undercurrent (London Short Film Festival Best Experimental Film Nominee 2018) ONES, On An Empty Stomach (ICA Best Experimental Short Film Award Nominee 2017)
Dance composition credits: Balletboyz: Bradley 4:18 (Deluxe Series, Sadlers Wells)
Awards and Nominations: Mercury Award Nominee 2019 (Driftglass, SEED Ensemble), Jazz FM UK Jazz Act of the Year Nominee 2020 (SEED Ensemble), Jazz FM Album of the Year Nominee 2020 (Driftglass, SEED Ensemble), Jazz FM Breakthrough Act of the Year Winner 2019, Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM Jazz Album of the Year Nominee 2019 (Driftglass, SEED Ensemble), Ivors Academy Award Winner 2018 (formerly known as British Composer Award, BASCA), Best Jazz Composition for Large Ensemble (Afronaut, SEED Ensemble), Parliamentary Jazz Award 2017 for Best Newcomer (Nérija), Jazz FM Breakthrough Act of the Year Nominee 2016 (Nérija), BBC Young Composer of the Year Nominee 2012
Outside of theatre, Cassie has worked as a curator for the Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room alongside Moses Boyd (Unstoppable Voices, 2018) as well as writing and arranging music for events such as Women of the World Festival 2017 (Royal Festival Hall). She also featured as a part of Soweto Kinch's BBC Four show Jazzology and is regularly invited as a radio and live panel guest to discuss politics, society and music. Cassie also works as an educator and workshop leader, her most recent work being at the EFG London Jazz Festival 2019 for Serious' Womxn Make Music performance at the Southbank Centre.
Formed in early 2016, SEED Ensemble is a Mercury Award nominated ten-piece band led by alto saxophonist and composer Cassie Kinoshi.
SEED Ensemble:
Combining jazz with inner-city London, West African and Caribbean influenced groove, SEED Ensemble explores a blend of genres through original compositions and improvisation. Their debut release Driftglass (Jazz Re:freshed, 2019) features the track Afronaut (feat. XANA) which won the Ivors Academy Award 2018 (formerly known as BASCA, British Composer Award) for Jazz Composition for Large Ensemble.
“…a wonderful reflection not simply of the best of London’s current improvisational music, but a strong perspective representing the city’s young Black creative class.”
- Afropunk
“Cassie Kinoshi is a striking instrumentalist, a musician able to reinterpret material on the fly, while injecting brave new elements in the process…a stunning work, full of daring musicality and spiritual depth.”
- The Clash
" A most fantastic and colourful approach to this piece. So very well done and I'm extremely proud of you all. Big thanks."
- Greg Osby
“…Driftglass is an untrammelled wrap-around delight.”
- All About Jazz
"The richness of the band’s melody, harmony and solo is something we can attest to and that got the crowd going. Band members cut across race and gender; and original compositions are inspired by the social issues of our times. So a night of music by the people for the people about the people? We like. "
- www.sqwzl.com
Clips (more may be added)
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 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.
"Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible."
The Matrix was built to open the world to Bahian musicians by opening the world to all creators.
In the Matrix you curate people (and entities) for what they do and where they do it. And they can curate you. A network is formed.
By the mathematical magic of the small-world phenomenon, everybody in the Matrix (as in human society) tends to within degrees of everybody else.
And by logical extension, the entire planet. All can (potentially) be found by everybody. QED
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"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...
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 for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
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.
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