Please note: Rosie Langabeer/Josh Machiz/ Gregg Mervine/Tara Middleton Group will perform first, Medukha+Shiraz Ensemble second.

A fundraiser for us..

Our friend Rosie Langabeer is in Philadelphia for a short visit working on Pig Irons' up coming show Franklin’s Key and we are glad to be able to host her performance, while raising some much needed funds for our series! Rosie has assembled a great band for the occasion with Tara Middleton (Sun Ra Arkestra & Jupiter Blue), Josh Machiz (TJ Kong & the Atomic Bomb) & Gregg Mervine (West Philadelphia Orchestra). Don't miss this rare Philly appearance by Rosie!

Hailed by the New York Times for her ability to time bend, Rosie Langabeer is a rare combination of musical intelligence and practice along with irreverence and risk-taking. A multi-award winner as a composer and performer, her wonderfully honest voice can make you want to cry and then she’ll sprinkle in some robot bird monsters.

Langabeer’s work is collaborative and interdisciplinary, often combining live musicians onstage with physical theatre and dance. She is a hyperactive piano player and also plays accordion, sings her lungs out, plays trombone, ukulele, synthesizer/electronics, objects and more. Her love of participation and exchange are at the heart of her sound which is at once familiar and strange, beautiful and discordant, mysterious and absurd. She has performed throughout NZ and the USA as well as Mexico, the UK, France, Japan and Sri Lanka.

From 2010 to 2015 Langabeer lived in Philadelphia, USA where she became highly regarded for her work in the performing arts. Her collaboration with Philly’s experimental theatre giants Pig Iron Theatre Company earned her two Barrymore Awards in 2012 and she has an ongoing relationship with BalletX, Philadelphia’s premier contemporary ballet company with whom she has created three critically acclaimed works since 2011.

Currently based in Tamaki Makaurau, New Zealand her current projects include: a duo OUTER SPACE FOOD FIGHT with musical instrument inventor and Guggenheim Fellow Neil Feather, nervous system/flow state research with Lily Linton and producing experimental big band and marching band performances in Wellington called The Best Most Happiest Fun Sexy Cabaret Of Good Fortune and Prosperity and PARADEAMONIUM!

Medukha+Shiraz Ensemble:

Two great groups combine forces for this show to help us raise some funds - thanks friends!

Shiraz Ensemble is a contemporary music group that unites Iranian musicians performing traditional instruments in the United States. Built on the values of curiosity, innovation, open dialogue, and experimentation, Shiraz Ensemble is dedicated to creating new music and collaborating closely with composers, performers, and interdisciplinary artists. Our mission is to deconstruct and reconstruct the rich traditions of Iranian classical music, transforming them into new forms through contemporary composition techniques. We also aim to collaborate with artists from diverse cultures to create unique cross-cultural musical experiences, explore new artistic territories, and build bridges through music and art. We strive to blend innovation and tradition, pushing the boundaries of Iranian music while honoring its cultural heritage.

Medukha uses ethnographic recordings, tokens of our homelands, the languages we've grown up with, and the folk music conventions we've been exposed to as an emotive vehicle for interrogating the immigrant experience: a wedding song from Southeastern Poland with patriarchal undertones becomes a curbside conversation with a bird, a Ukrainian spring song is fractured into an unrecognizable ambient soundscape, a song with disputed origins becomes fertile ground for a new language.

accessibility: ramp into lobby, then 7 stairs into theater