MIREL WAGNER plus special guest Sparlha Swa
performing live Sunday November 23rd at Brick & Mortar SF!
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TICKETS @http://brickandmortarmusic.com/event.cfm?id=180694&cart
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MIREL WAGNER - http://mirelwagner.com/
"I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing", write the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney of his solitary profession in his poem Personal Helicon. These words always come to mind when listening to the music of Mirel Wagner. There is a defiant air of unflinching bravery in her carefully chosen words and the skeletal chords of her acoustic guitar. Her songs are like a smooth, polished black pebbles, thrown into a cold bottomless pond, drops of life that set the darkness rippling. Her acoustic balladry is as far as you'll get from clichéd coffee house folk, having more to do with the primeval darkness of Swans than the folksy bonhomie of Bob Dylan. Her background couldn't be more normal: a relatively sheltered childhood in the suburbs of Helsinki. Wagner would spend her teenage years rummaging around the blues section of her local library, fumbling around with her brother's acoustic guitar. Wagner is wary of speaking of her Ethiopian origins (she was adopted at 1 ½ years of age) and insists that she is Finnish. And so she is. Her art is all the more astonishing considering this cultural context, all the more shocking in its strangeness because it stems from something so normal.
SPARLHA SWA - http://www.sparlhaswa.com/live/
The genre-splitting vocals and lyrically-potent songwriting of rising artist Sparlha Swa offers us an alternative music that is truly honest and evocatively so; sparse, powerful and to the point. Sparlha’s songs are simple yet profound, soulful and resonant on the level of spirit. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, the artist pulls her inspiration from around the globe with mentors like Sade, Astrud Gilberto, Miriam Makeba and Ravi Shankar. An independent artist, music has carried this songstrees far and wide, with solo tours to Hawaii, Canada, the UK, Paris, the Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, and all across the US. In NYC, she has headlined with a full band at the Blue Note Jazz Cafe, Joe's Pub, and BAM Cafe all to audiences of standing room only. Notable musical landmarks include being signed to Japanese label Village Again for her debut album In The Distance, 2 songs licensed (Love Addiction, Too Late) to the TV show Girlfriends, and having her music video aired on BETJ globally for 6 months. She has written score music for several independent films, including the award winning short "Pariah" which went to Sundance in January 08, and which will be developed into a feature film in the summer of ’09. In the summer of 2008 Sparlha starred in the Bill T. Jones production of Fela! Off Broadway, as Sandra Isidore alongside a phenomenal cast of dancers. The show won 5 Audelco awards and will continue in the spring of ’09. Sparlha has opened for or/shared the stage with Bilal, Fertile Ground, DJ Giles Petersen, Wumni, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Zion I, Tamar Kali, N'Dea Davenport, Anthony David, Imani Uzuri, Angela Johnson, Maya Azucena, Martin Luther, Cody Chestnutt, Burnt Sugar, Junior Kelly, & Slim Kid (Pharcyde). She has also featured on several compilations including LOVE (‘08), the Souls of Poor Folk (’07), ONE with Pete Rock (’05), and the Woodstock Film Festival Soundtrack CD (’04) as well as interviewed on Japan FM Network, a Japanese radio show with 10 million listeners.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission San Francisco
18+ || 8pm