Sabrina Lastman

Drawing from jazz, Latin American, and contemporary music, often integrating extended vocal techniques, New York based vocalist, performer, and composer Sabrina Lastman has created and performed interdisciplinary new music projects incorporating voice, sound, movement, and visuals – these include Dialogues of Silence, On Becoming, and River of Painted Birds. Described as an artist who “embraces the audience with the sweetness of her voice,” she has also lead three exciting jazz projects -Sabrina Lastman Quartet, Candombe Jazz Project, and Tango Jazz Duo. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Sabrina has performed at La Mama, ISSUE Project Room, Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, Blue Note, Joe's Pub, Blues Alley Jazz, Museo del Barrio, City University of New York and Classical Guitar Association of New York, among others. She has played with musicians such as Fernando Otero (Grammy Award Winner), Bakithi Kumalo, Tali Roth, Pablo Aslan (Grammy Award Nominated), Emilio Solla, Pedro Giraudo, David Silliman, The M6, Philip Hamilton, Sasha Bogdanowitsch and Leonardo Suarez-Paz. Her album The Folds of the Soul was nominated by the Graffiti Award 2008 as one of the best jazz albums of the year, and it was considered of cultural interest by the Ministry of Culture and Education in Uruguay. She was invited to sing her compositions based on the poems of Uruguayan poet Idea Vilariño at the presentation of the book Idea Vilariño: La Vida Escrita. Sabrina was awarded grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) & New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). She is the co-artistic director of Vital Vox: A Vocal Festival that explores the myriad power of the human voice in its solo and ensemble forms across a multitude of genres. It celebrates composer-performers in the vocal arts that stretch and expand the voice in new and original ways (www.vitalvoxfest.com). Sabrina has toured in Israel, Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States playing in many musical and interdisciplinary projects from Tango to New Music. She graduated from The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel.

Sasha Bogdanowitsch

Sasha Bogdanowitsch is a composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, actor and dancer, whose work strives to unite East and West sensibilities by working towards a unique ‘world’ musical language. His compositional output has ranged from writing for chamber ensembles to multitrack tapes with live performance to music for unique ensembles, such as gamelan and early music groups, to live and recorded music for theater, dance and film.

Sasha has a Master of Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, both where he studied composition and world musics, integrating the two into multi-movement, interdisciplinary performances. These works, such as ‘An Ocean Walks Behind a Lake’, ‘Atom Turning in the Sun of Eternity’, ‘Chakra Mundi’ and ‘Akasha’, have focused on the merging of music with theater, movement, and visuals alongside themes of universal cycles and creation.

Sasha has worked extensively as composer and/or a performer in many contexts. He is currently active performing & creating new work with the Loom Ensemble, an interdisciplinary theatre troupe, and Socorpo, a vocal duo. He was a co-founder of the Vital Vox Vocal Festival as well as the SaReel Project, an ensemble that performs original music with homemade and world instrumentation. He is also a co-founder of World In One, a non-profit organization whose purpose is to sponsor new music and interdisciplinary collaborations. Bogdanowitsch has also worked with the late composer Lou Harrison, Meredith Monk, Artisan Entertainment, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, Hesperus, M6, choreographers & dancers Faith Pilger & Otis Cook on the multimedia dance theater work, ‘Grimm,’ Rod Poole, puppeteer and theater director Kathy Foley, New Music Works, Just Strings, Ockham’s Razor, Weave and the gamelans: Son of Lion, Si Aptos, Si Betty, Sari Raras, Pusaka Sunda and UCSC. Awards have included a 2012 nomination from New York Innovative Theater Awards for Best Originla Music, a BMI 1995 Composer Award for his ‘Encompassing’ for four tenor voices and a Meet the Composer grant with the American Festival for Microtonal Music.

Sasha Bogdanowitsch has studied composition with Lou Harrison, David Evan Jones, Richard Zvonar, Alan Chaplin, Mark McGurty, and Ros Bandt. He has performed and studied classical North Indian music, Central Javanese gamelan and Sundanese tembang in their countries of origin and in the United States. For the former, he has studied on voice, bansuri bamboo flute and tabla with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Salamat Ali Khan, Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, Amiya Dasgupta, G.S.Sachdev, Iqbal Singh, Kalyan Chowdury, John Sackett, David Philipson and Jeffery Whittier. For the latter, he has studied with Djoko Walujo, Nyoman Wenten, Undang Sumarna, Lou Harrison, Sumarsam, I.M. Harjito, Burhan Sukarma, Rukruk Rukmana, Tatang Rukmana, and Yayah Dachlan.

Sasha has taught world music/ ethnomusicology classes at New Jersey City University, University of New Haven and Central CT State University and has completed two television film scores, ‘The Burkittsville 7’ and ‘Shadow of the Blair Witch’ for Artisan Entertainment and independent film scores for ‘Tea Time’ by Jay Bogdanowitsch & ‘Laundromat Days’ by Simon O’Reilly. Bogdanowitsch has also worked extensively with composer Meredith Monk and her ensemble.