The Brain Cloud via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from The Brain Cloud:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: The Brain Cloud
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
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Bio:
The Brain Cloud is the brain-child of multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman and vocalist Tamar Korn. Regarding the diverse influences in their sound, which could loosely be described as western swing, says Lichtman, “Western swing is a quintessentially American music – a meeting point of all American musics that had come before it – jazz (from ragtime through swing), bluegrass, Appalachian old-time fiddling, Tin Pan Alley popular songs, early country, Mississippi Delta blues, western cowboy songs...”
The Brain Cloud draws its inspiration from this fearless smashing-together of genres. Live shows are where the band excels. Tamar’s voice is reminiscent of an old 78 rpm record, and she brings lively spirit and improvisational freedom to each song – not to mention her jaw-dropping “muted trumpet” and “violin” vocal solos. And Lichtman, equally at home on mandolin, fiddle, and clarinet, leads the band’s arrangements in a way that keeps the audience (and the band) excited to see what’s coming next. That is, if the audience hasn’t already left their seats to crowd the dance floor.
The band’s third full-length album, Live at Barbès (released April 2017) was recorded at the legendary and intimate Brooklyn venue where the band has held court every Monday night since 2011.
In early 2010, Lichtman joined forces with Tamar Korn, whom he had known for two years as bandmates in the now-defunct, old-timey jazz outfit the Cangelosi Cards. Their mutual love of a wide variety of American roots music led them to form The Brain Cloud initially as a side project to the Cangelosi Cards. Since then, the Brain Cloud has performed at Lincoln Center, major jazz festivals on both coasts and in Canada, and has found success among the thriving swing dance scene in New York and elsewhere.
DENNIS LICHTMAN - clarinet, mandolin, fiddle
TAMAR KORN - vocals
RAPHAEL MCGREGOR - lap steel guitar
SKIP KREVENS - electric guitar
KEVIN DORN - drums
ANDREW HALL - upright bass
Contact Information
- Email: info@braincloudwesternswing.com
- Telephone: 917-733-1724
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Twitter: BrainCloudBand
- ▶ Website: http://www.braincloudmusic.com
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCgocqvMYW-jLjE5ig_pgHMA
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/5jW3NHz1lFSpNgDBRGKhmt
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/1TelLbG3krxavd4Qd6w0LN
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/7chY63bzazO3L0bVRhey6b
Clips (more may be added)
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
