In-School Performances

ASPHALT ORCHESTRA

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“ AN ICONOCLASTIC 12 PIECE MARCHING BAND… PART PARADE SPECTACLE, PART HALFTIME SHOW AND PART CUTTING-EDGE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC CONCERT. THE PLAYING WAS COOLLY BRILLIANT AND INFECTIOUS. ”
The New York Times
“NOT YOUR MOTHER’S MARCHING BAND”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“THIS BAND EPITOMIZES THE CHAOS AND CREATIVE FUSION THAT COME FROM LIVING IN THIS 21ST CENTURY MELTING POT OF CULTURES....THEY'RE A BAND ON THE PROWL LOOKING TO SHOW YOU A GOOD TIME.”
Playbill
“ WATCHING THE MEMBERS OF THE ASPHALT ORCHESTRA WORK TO CAPTURE ITS ANTIQUE SPIRIT IS TO MARVEL AT THE EXTREMES OF VIRTUOSITY ”
The Wall Street Journal
“A ROLLICKING, ROVING PERFORMANCE BY NEW YORK'S ASPHALT ORCHESTRA, A KIND OF MARCHING BAND, MINUS ANY SEMBLANCE OF UNIFORMS AND TINGED WITH A BIT OF ANARCHY.”
Portland Press Herald
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Champagne (Goran Bregovic)
Carlton (Stew and Heidi Rodewald)

Biography

Asphalt Orchestra

Asphalt Orchestra is a radical new street band that brings ambitious processional music to the mobile masses. Created in 2009 by the founders of the “relentlessly inventive” new music presenter Bang on a Can (Justin Davidson, New York Magazine), Asphalt Orchestra unleashes innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs and jazz basements and takes it to the streets. Choreographed and tight, this is the future of the marching band.

With movement direction from internationally acclaimed choreographer Susan Marshall and dressed by designer Elizabeth Hope Clancy, the 12-member band brings together some of the most exciting rock, jazz and classical players in New York City: Jessica Schmitz (piccolo), Alex Hamlin, Peter Hess and Ken Thomson (saxophones), Shane Endsley and Stephanie Richards (trumpets), Jen Baker and Alan Ferber (trombones), Kenneth Bentley (sousaphone), and Sunny Jain, Nick Jenkins and Yuri Yamashita (percussion)---whom The New York Times have called “12 top-notch brass and percussion players.”

The group premiered new commissions by Tyondai Braxton of Battles, Stew and Heidi Rodewald of the Broadway hit Passing Strange, and celebrated Balkan musician-composer Goran Bregovic; and arranged music by Björk, jazz legend Charles Mingus, Swedish metal pinoeers Meshuggah, eminent American groundbreaking composers Frank Zappa and Conlon Nancarrow, Zimbabwean iconoclast Thomas Mapfumo and Brazilian experimentalist Tom Zé.