Join composer-pianist Martin Graff (Trips for Piano) and singer-songwriter Taisha Estrada (Nostalgia Ajena) for a luminescent evening of original music made to move your soul and light your imagination…
$10
Advance tickets: https://www.nvfaa.org/events/solo-lights
Facebook event link: https://fb.me/e/BmB4ZUpX
HEADLINER: MARTIN GRAFF – TRIPS FOR PIANO
Martin Graff is an Arlington, Virginia composer-pianist and finalist for Best Classical Artist in the 2022 DC Wammie Awards. At four, his family inherited an old, anonymous piano, and Marty surged with an uncontainable energy to climb onto the bench and dig his hands into those eight-eight bits of clay, instinctually molding them into little, aural landscapes. Crude and square at first; at last, faceted gems after a lifetime of practice, polish, and love.
Trips for Piano is the resulting collection of evocative pieces made to move the soul and light the imagination with soaring melodies, affecting harmonies, and impassioned playing that conjures rainbows from keys of black and white. In Graff’s words, “Making this music is the opposite of death, like the centrifugal force around the sharpest bend of the greatest roller coaster. A reharmonizing of my most tumultuous internal cacophonies and maybe yours. So, listen up as I bang on this gong from the Gods! As the resonance of these radiant compositions fill your ear and make their way to your heart.”
OPENER: TAISHA ESTRADA – NOSTALGIA AJENA
Rooted in the traditions of Latin and American jazz, with an innovative, contemporary, multi-genre sound, Puerto Rican born Taisha Estrada is a compelling songwriter and storyteller. Taisha engages audiences through her lyrics and dynamic stage performance. Her musical projects have been featured in the Washington Post and NPR’s Tiny Desk show, and she has performed at such venues as Blues Alley, Strathmore, Songbyrd and Union Stage.
Taisha is releasing her debut album of original songs, Nostalgia Ajena (Foreign Nostalgia) in April 2023, reflecting her roots in Latin and Caribbean jazz. The songs are influenced by her upbringing with grandparents who felt a strong devotion to la patria, their homeland and the sounds of bomba and plena which coursed through Estrada’s veins from a young age. Inspired by her own experiences and the stories of the women she grew up around, Estrada’s tone, though tinged with melancholy, evokes hope and strength. Having developed a deep appreciation for nature and the sensory experience of the Caribbean, Estrada’s music and lyrics are colored with imagery of the islands. Her work strives to explore life, love and the beautiful yet mystifying relationship between humanity and the earth.
For more: https://www.taishaestrada.com/