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Qasim Naqvi is a percussionist, composer and synthesist based in Brooklyn, NY. Along with being the drummer of lauded cult minimalist trio, Dawn of Midi, Naqvi is an accomplished solo artist and his passion for multidisciplinary work has brought him into the world of film, dance, installation art, and the stage of orchestral and chamber music. Naqvi's love for collaboration originated from his love of improvised music. Having grown up as a jazz musician, and then exploring the experimental music scene of New York in the mid '90s and onward, Naqvi has been actively involved in the New York improvised music scene as a drummer for almost 30 years. His newest improvised music project, titled Two Centuries, is a trio with the creative music legends, Andrew Cyrille on drums and Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, with Naqvi at the helm on modular synthesizer and composition. For the past ten years, Naqvi has been developing a musical language and a solo career recording for the lauded Erased Tapes label. His concert music has been commissioned and performed by The London Contemporary Orchestra, The BBC Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Bang on a Can All Stars, Jennifer Koh, Stargaze, The Cello Octet of Amsterdam, The Helsinki Chamber Choir, and others.
Hailed by The New York Times as "boldly inventive" and Jazz Times as "a virtuoso of otherworldly sound," trumpeter and experimental composer Steph Richards bridges jazz and creative music with multimedia performance, integrating electronics, choreography, film, and even scent into groundbreaking projects presented at premier venues and festivals worldwide. These include Lincoln Center, the Blue Note, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, the Guggenheim, the Park Avenue Armory, the Barbican (UK), Berliner Konzerthaus (Germany), and Bimhuis (Netherlands). Richards has collaborated with some of the most influential figures in creative music and art, with recordings ranging from work with Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis, Anthony Braxton, and Jason Moran to Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne. A founding member of Bang on a Can's Asphalt Orchestra, she also performs with leading new music and improvisation ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble and Braxton's Tricentric Orchestra. As a recording artist, Richards has released five acclaimed solo albums -- including Supersense (2019), which combined music with custom scent art, and Zephyr (2021) -- both awarded multiple "Best of the Year" distinctions and earning recognition from The New York Times, DownBeat, Jazz Times, and NPR. Her work as an improviser, composer, and conductor of experimental ensembles continues to expand the language of contemporary music on an international scale.
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LP
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WJLP 084LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/21/2025
Talk Show is a new duo collaboration featuring Steph Richards on trumpets and resonating surfaces and Qasim Naqvi on drums, almglocken bells and modular synthesizer. Having worked together on other projects for almost two decades, Miss America, released by We Jazz Records, marks their first, pure duo collaboration -- a space to engage with a sonic language they've been cultivating together for years. The album was recorded live, with Qasim crafting real-time electronics and drum set work, and Steph using trumpets and resonating percussion to summon sympathetic vibrations and otherworldly sounds through timpani, snare and water. The trumpet sounds electronically processed, though every sound is acoustic. Both artists wanted to retain the live nature of their process, so what you hear is virtually untouched. Sharing an appetite for experimentalism, theatricality and irreverent collisions of sound and image, Qasim and Steph met in 2008 at CalArts- which was a breeding ground for open creative thought and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Often working with directors in the theater program, choreographers, or experimental and character animators, Steph and Qasim's musical language has a rooting in visual performance art. From their first premiere, costumed together inside a giant two-person dress sculpture that consumed a drum set, to their most recent audio-visual nightmare which explores the horrors of '80s daytime reality talk shows, this duo presents a voice the grimy and the grotesque: a new beauty of questionable acts and character flaws in sound.
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