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Wendy Rule
December 5thWendy Rule
December 16thA Winter's Evening with Ryanhood
December 16thA Winter's Evening with Ryanhood
December 17thA Word With Writers - Michael Cunningham
January 9thJ2B2
January 12thYungchen Lhamo
January 17thAlash
January 17thDust City Opera Duo
January 18thYungchen Lhamo
January 18thBands of Enchantment Season 3 Red Carpet Premiere
January 19thYungchen Lhamo
January 19thDavid Berkeley
January 20thAlbert Castiglia
January 23rdDust City Opera Unplugged
January 24thAlbert Castiglia
January 24thSadness, Madness, & Mayhem
January 27thArkansauce
February 2ndDavid Wax Museum & Lone Piñon
February 5thRobert Jon and The Wreck
February 8thMauro Durante & Justin Adams
February 19thMauro Durante & Justin Adams
February 20thGov't Mule
February 21stDylan LeBlanc
February 22ndLas Migas
February 24thThe Psychology of Serial Killers
March 2ndAlasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
March 15thBrian Culbertson
March 22ndDerek Gripper - SOLD OUT!
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Tickets cost $20 in advance, $25 day of show (plus a $2 service charge). They are also available by phone through Hold My Ticket at 505-886-1251.
Derek Gripper is a Cape Town based composer, arranger and virtuoso guitarist known for his groundbreaking technique for evoking the West African kora on solo guitar. His work creates an unprecedented meeting point between written and oral traditions, re-writing the language of African and Classical Guitar.
When Gripper released One Night on Earth, his 2012 album of kora translations, classical guitar legend John Williams said he thought it was "absolutely impossible until I heard Derek Gripper do it," while kora maestro Toumani Diabaté asked for confirmation that it was indeed just one person playing. Both invited Derek to collaborate with them: Derek performed with Williams in London's Shakespeare's Globe and King's Place, and with Diabaté and his Symmetric Orchestra at the Acoustik Festival Bamako, Mali. His 2016 Carnegie Hall debut paired him with Mali's Trio da Kali, and the UK's Songlines honoured him with best album in Africa and the Middle East for his 2016 album Libraries on Fire.
Since these two recordings put kora/guitar on the map, his recent recordings A Year of Swimming (2020), Billy Goes to Durban, (2021) and Sleep Songs for My Daughter (2022) have incorporated elements of his kora explorations in original compositions and improvisations, captured on tape in the field and in studio.
On-stage Derek is both informative scholar and irreverent comedian, effortlessly shifting between conversation and music, reminding us that the art of the griot, even if only evoked by a non-griot, is the art of storytelling as much as it is the art of music-making.