Max ZT

“I broke a string!!” – continuing our September Santoor minutes.

A few more Santoor minutes on this September Saturday!

Alex Skolnick and Max ZT get into a trance during a jam for the development of the tune “Passage to Pranayama,” back in the fall of 2013.

See them and other musicians from the album at Planetary Coalition’s live performance on October 29, 2015, at Dayton University’s ArtsLIVE series: https://www.udayton.edu/artssciences/initiatives/artslive/events/event_3.php

Filmed by Maddy Samaddar — with Max ZT and Alex Skolnick.

Please use this direct link if clicking on the still below does not work: http://on.fb.me/1iFgNFU

A September Santoor minute

Check out Max ZT’s exquisite skill at the santoor (which he learned from the world’s most eminent classical santoor maestro – North India’s Shivkumar Sharma) in Planetary Coalition’s tracks “Island In the Sky,” “Passage to Pranayama,”Back to the Land” and “Sleeping Gypsy.”

You can catch him playing on Oct 29th at Dayton University’s ArtsLIVE series with Alex Skolnick and others for a Planetary Coalition live performance. See you there! https://www.udayton.edu/artssciences/initiatives/artslive/events/event_3.php

(Clip courtesy Maddy Samaddar)

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“Island In The Sky” live performance

On Earth Day, last Wednesday, we posted a video of the CD version of the track “Island in the Sky.”

For ‪#‎FlashbackFriday‬, here’s an early version of the track performed live in January 2013 during the launch of Alex’s book “Geek to Guitar Hero.” There are some improvisations here which are possible only in a live performance. Plus Rachel Golub joins us on her violin which is absent in the final CD.

Which version do you like better? The final CD one or this earlier live version? (Mind you, the audio is not that great here in the live performance as the camera was far away and the audience sounds get in the way.)

Album Excerpts and Preview Part 3 – tracks 10 to 14

This is the last of the album excerpts’ series for Planetary Coalition – with glimpses of the last 5 songs on the album. On Novermber 25, 2014, our itunes sales commenced and within a day the album had already climbed to the top 20 world music albums at number 13. Please help support the project – the link to buy the album on Amazon is here: http://www.amazon.com/Planetary-Coalition-Alex-Skolnick/dp/B00OTVQ0L4 and on itunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/planetary-coalition/id934930381

This series of excerpts begins with a composition with Cuban influences – with the great Grammy award-winning Cuban percussionist Horacio “el Negro” Hernandezand his daughter Jennifer who co-wrote the piece with Alex.

Following this, both countries of the Holy Land – Israel and Palestine are featured – with renowned Palestinian oud player Adnan Joubran of Le Trio Joubran co-composing a track with Skolnick (a piece with surprises in its full version where the melody takes a rather unexpected turn) followed by a duet with famed Israeli percussionist Gadi Seri (a frequent accompanist in the group of Israeli singing sensation Noa) in a piece inspired by travelling through the Negev desert. Initially both Seri and Joubran were to feature on the same track but, due to different rhythm styles, decided to have two separate pieces.

The fourth excerpt is the first guitar-pipa duet ever performed of a popular Chinese melody – with Skolnick and pipa virtuoso Yihan Chen playing on a variation of Wang Huiran’s tune Dance of the Yi People as “Return of the Yi People” and the colorful landscapes featured in the video are indeed from the region of South China where the Yi people reside. To see the very first meeting of Chen and Skolnick and how they clicked instantly go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G-ymgp5e-8

And finally, an excerpt of the popular signature tune of the project – the very first track which Skolnick had composed in 2012 when he conceived of the Planetary Coalition series: Sleeping Gypsy which includes visual clips of the dancing crowds in Union Square where he kick-started the project in 2012 and later performed once again in the summer of 2014.

On Saturday November 29, 2014, about seven of the twenty seven musicians of Planetary Coalition will play at the Liberty Science Center coinciding with an exhibition on the history and development of the acoustic and electric guitar.

Album Excerpts and Preview Part 2 – tracks 1 to 4

A short video with glimpses of the first four tracks of the album, including two time Juno-award winning Indian ghazal/folk style as well as classically trained singer Kiran Ahluwalia; also, Turkish kanun player Tamer Pinarbasi along with other members of New York Gypsy All Stars; members of the group Raza Truncka from Salto playing Argentine indigenous drums and members of the Brooklyn-based world music group House of Waters. Stay tuned till the end of the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ncMQRiX44

(Photography and videography of the artists in-studio are by Tom Couture and Maddy Samaddar – who has also done the editing and album artwork. A separate page will be put up to list all other images used, including film clips with copyrights, permissions and detailed credits for all the regional, political and landscape photos used in this video.)

Twenty Seven Musicians. Five Continents. One vision.

Planetary Coalition’s musicians represent over two dozen countries and five continents and numerous ethnicities. Here is a photo montage of the extremely talented and eminent musicians who are part of this recording. (Click to enlarge.)

From left to right:

Row 1: Alex Skolnick, Kiran Ahluwalia, Rodrigo Sanchez, Yacouba Sissoko, Yihan Chen, Pablo Aslan, Tamer Pinarbasi

Row 2: Raif Hyseni, Gabriela Quintero, Adnan Joubran, Dario Boente, Gadi Seri, Jose Luis Terzaghi

Row 3: Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, Moto Fukushima, Nitin Mitta, Rachel Golub, Jose Armando Gola, Vasko Dukovski, Juan Casanovas

Row 4: Jennifer Hernandez, Max ZT, Shane Shanahan, Luke Notary, Panagiotis Andreou,Engin Kaan Gunaydin, Fausto Nascimbene.