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Kali Z. Fasteau

From a musical family, Kali. Z. Fasteau played piano, cello, flute, and sang since early childhood in Paris and New York. Specializing in spontaneous composition, she performs on nai, kaval and shakuhachi flutes, voice, piano, drum set, viola, mizmar, soprano sax, sanza, and cello. She studied the music of Asia, Africa, 20th Century Europe and Jazz, and traveled for 14 years, living in India (2 years), Turkey (1 year), Nepal, Morocco, Senegal, Congo, Italy, Holland (3 years), France (many years), Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Zimbabwe, Mali, Niger, Yugoslavia, Germany, Greece, Haiti and America, performing in music festivals, concerts, national radio, TV, and film soundtracks. Kali. Z recorded 20 albums as leader, 16 on FLYING NOTE Records.

Kali’s recording and performing associates include: Donald Rafael Garrett, Kidd Jordan, Archie Shepp, Beaver Harris, Rashied Ali, William Parker, Newman Baker, Warren Smith, Michael Wimberly, L. Mixashawn Rozie, Jeanne Lee, Marilyn Mazur, Joseph Jarman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Bobby Few, Noah Howard, Sabir Mateen, and many others. Kali’s ensembles played her original compositions at New York’s Town Hall, Lincoln Center & Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Museum Theatre in Chennai, India, Boston Center for the Arts, Vision Festival (NYC), Kerava Jazz Festival (Finland) , Uncool Festival (Switzerland), JVC Festival, Harare International Arts Festival (Zimbabwe), Pisa Jazz Festival, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Livorno Jazz Festival, Kiahkeya Festival, and hundreds more worldwide.

Kali. Z. taught people of all ages around the world to make and play bamboo flutes, and has conducted seminars on world music and improvisation at Friends World College, Pacifica Graduate Institute, The New School (NY), New York Open Center, and Berklee College of Music. She formulated her theory of spontaneous composition, entitled “The Tao of Music” in 1974, published in five languages in music journals internationally.

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3
Album Review

Kali. Z. Fasteau: Intuit

Read "Intuit" reviewed by Mark Corroto


To pigeonhole a musician is to ghettoize a music. But we all do it. Yes, Kali Z. Fasteau is a pianist, but also a drummer, a cellist and a flutist. From her twenty plus recordings she refuses to be fixed with a descriptor. She also performs on the nai, kaval and shakuhachi flutes, is a vocalist, plays viola, violin, mizmar, soprano sax, synthesizers, and sanza. Like a modern Rahsaan Roland Kirk, she just makes music. Her brand (another ...

7
Album Review

Kali. Z. Fasteau: Piano Rapture

Read "Piano Rapture" reviewed by John Ephland


What makes Piano Rapture so engaging has to do with a combination of moods, movements and magic. Pianist Kali Z. Fasteau takes you on a musical journey into both past and present, with sounds that can be lyrical and rambunctious, quiet and rowdy. Featuring some exquisite wailing and sailing from tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan, with healthy doses also coming from two other reed players--Lee Mixashawn Rozie on soprano and tenor along with a little flute here and there and some ...

296
Take Five With...

Take Five With Kali. Z. Fasteau

Read "Take Five With Kali. Z. Fasteau" reviewed by AAJ Staff


Meet Kali. Z. Fasteau: Kali. Z. Fasteau is from a musical family, playing piano, cello, flute, and voice since early childhood in Paris and New York. Her piano teacher, for eight years, was Olga Heifetz. She started improvising at age 14. She received post-grad degrees studying the music of Asia, Africa, 20th Century Europe and jazz. Then she traveled for more than 14 years, living in 18 countries: India (1981-83), Turkey (1976-77), Nepal, Morocco, Senegal, Congo, Italy, ...

146
Album Review

Kali Z. Fasteau/ Kidd Jordan: Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival

Read "Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival" reviewed by John Sharpe


Multi-instrumentalism is one of the enduring legacies of the '60s New Thing and Chicago's AACM, where everything was fair game in the hunt for unfettered expressionism. Few have taken it as far as Kali Z. Fasteau, who plays a different instrument on each of the nine tracks of this live recording from Finland's 2007 Kerava Jazz Festival. Perhaps surprisingly, this doesn't make for a smorgasbord of unrelated approaches, thanks to the unifying force of Kidd Jordan's tenor saxophone, featured on ...

465
Opinion

Words on World Jazz

Read "Words on World Jazz" reviewed by AAJ Staff


By Kali Z. Fasteau Let's take a dialectic approach to the subject of 'world jazz', looking at both the macro contours (the big picture) and the micro tones, like the Indian term 'sruti': the smallest audible difference of pitch. In response to questions about genre, I started using this term because it directly conveys the dynamic synthesis of world music and jazz. Some dislike the word 'jazz' because of its origin, but according to numerology, it is ...

173
Album Review

Kali Z. Fasteau / Kidd Jordan: People of the Ninth: New Orleans and the Hurricane 2005

Read "People of the Ninth: New Orleans and the Hurricane 2005" reviewed by Budd Kopman


In the waning days of September, 2005, the entire U.S. population watched as hurricane Katrina developed into a monster storm and seemed to take aim directly for New Orleans. Just at the last moment, the storm swerved a bit and weakened, allowing people to think that, once again, the bullet had been dodged. And then, as the storm passed, the levees broke and a tragic tale of loss, anguish, greed, stupidity, conspiracy theories and heroism began to ...

238
Album Review

Kali Z. Fasteau/Kidd Jordan: People of the Ninth: New Orleans and the Hurricane 2005

Read "People of the Ninth: New Orleans and the Hurricane 2005" reviewed by AAJ Staff


One of the great benefits of obscurity is the celebration of discovery. Throughout his career, saxophonist/teacher Kidd Jordan has been respected and hired by peers including Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and Ellis Marsalis, but only since the late '90s has the septuagenarian begun to garner prolific recording opportunities and jazz festival invites. Multi-instrumentalist Kali Z. Fasteau is the latest to share the time-tested and distinctive playing of Jordan. For People of the Ninth: New Orleans and the ...

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113

Recording

Kali Z. Fasteau with William Parker and Cindy Blackman (Flying Note 2011)

Kali Z. Fasteau with William Parker and Cindy Blackman (Flying Note 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland

You can tell from the beautiful prog-rockish cover that this is going to be a unique and exploratory record. Multi-instrumentalist Kali Z. Fasteau teams up with the extraordinary bassist William Parker and drummer Cindy Blackman to create a soundscape that is as unusual as it is fascinating. Playing cello, soprano saxophone and electric piano, Fasteau creates a fascinating, buzzing, swirling sound world, when combined with Parker's plucked and bowed bass and Blackman's ever-shifting drum rhythms and patterns, make for an ...

182

Recording

Kali. Z. Fasteau: New CD! "An Alternate Universe" With William Parker & Cindy Blackman

Kali. Z. Fasteau: New CD!  "An Alternate Universe" With William Parker & Cindy Blackman

Source: Kali. Z. Fasteau

AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE [FNCD 9015] KALI. Z. FASTEAU: Cello, Soprano Saxophone, Electric Piano; WILLIAM PARKER: Contrabass; CINDY BLACKMAN: Drums Flying Note Records proudly presents An Alternate Universe, a recording of three musicians with superlative and fascinating careers. The musical lineage of multi-instrumentalist and composer Kali. Z. stems from her musician grandparents hosting sessions with the Gershwin brothers and Kali's college and graduate studies of world music and jazz. Her musical trajectory then flows through her marriage ...

47

Radio

The Jazz Session #225: Kali Z. Fasteau

The Jazz Session #225: Kali Z. Fasteau

Source: AAJ Staff


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Recording

New CD! Kali. Z. Fasteau & Kidd Jordan - Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival: Finland

New CD! Kali. Z. Fasteau & Kidd Jordan - Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival: Finland

Source: All About Jazz

LIVE AT THE KERAVA JAZZ FESTIVAL: FINLAND (FNCD 9012) KALI. Z. FASTEAU / KIDD JORDAN NEWMAN TAYLOR BAKER FLYING NOTE Records proudly announces the release of LIVE at the Kerava Jazz Festival: Finland (FNCD 9012). Recorded and mixed by the Finnish radio on June 9, 2007, this CD documents for presenters and fans alike what they will hear when Kali. Z. performs LIVE in concert. In a riveting sequence of 9 compositions on 9 different instruments, Kali trance-ports the audience ...

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Performance / Tour

The Vision Club presents Gunter Hampel w/ Perry Robinson 10pm + 11pm Kali Z. Fasteau Saturday, March 26

The Vision Club presents Gunter Hampel w/ Perry Robinson 10pm + 11pm Kali Z. Fasteau Saturday, March 26

Source: All About Jazz

March 16, 2005 To: Listings/Critics/Features From: The Vision Festival / www.visionfestival.org PRESS Contact: Jim Eigo [email protected] / 845.986.1677 Non-press inquiries, call 212.696.6681 or send email to [email protected] A R T S F O R A R T 508 East 6th Street #3, NYC 10009 Saturday March 26, 2005 THE VISION CLUB presents 10pm Gunter Hampel w/ Perry Robinson Barry Altschul, Herschel Silverman 11pm Kali Z. Fasteau w/ Sabir Mateen, Lewis Barnes Michael Thompson At Clemente Soto Velez - LES Gallery ...

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Performance / Tour

Vision Club November 13th Tyshawn Sorey 8pm / Kali Z. Fasteau 10pm

Vision Club November 13th Tyshawn Sorey 8pm / Kali Z. Fasteau 10pm

Source: All About Jazz


A small sampling of Press Acclaim:

"I give this 5 stars. She’s got that microtonal thing happening. This is beautiful!" CASSANDRA WILSON, DOWNBEAT

"Part of New York's original free-jazz scene, Kali has a fierce dedication to music as pure, forceful, exploratory sound. She blends cultures and tones...it's world music as constant rapture." Ben Ratliff, The NEW YORK TIMES

"Fasteau's powerful free improvisations extend the legacy of John Coltrane, with her own distinct exploratory voice and luxurious sound. With ecstatic, but disciplined fervor, clarity of thought and freely flowing imagination, she packs a wealth of expression into a single utterance." Steve Holtje, JAZZIZ

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

INTUIT

Flying Note Records
2016

buy

Piano Rapture

Flying Note Records
2014

buy

An Alternate Universe

Flying Note Records
2011

buy

ANIMAL GRACE

Flying Note Records
2010

buy

Live at the Kerava...

Flying Note Records
2008

buy

People of the Ninth:...

Flying Note Records
2007

buy

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