An Evening with Ian Nagoski - The Widow’s Joy: Pride, Genius, Grief & Lies from International 78rpm

Improvised Music Company presents an intriguing evening of recordings and reflections with celebrated US producer, writer and music historian Ian Nagoski on Monday 29th April in Odessa Club.
Ian Nagoski is a radio presenter and musicologist based in New York who has developed a reputation for unearthing and compiling lost musics of disparate origins, creating treasured archival collections for labels such as Mississippi, Tompkins Square and Dust to Digital.

Nagoski specializes in early 20th century recordings in languages other than English, excavating 78s, shellacs and cylinders from the dawn of the recording age from India, Anatolia, Greece, the Levant, and Eastern Europe.

In a presentation that surely evokes the experience of the Irish Diaspora in the US over a century ago, he shares the trove of lost music unearthed in producing his new collection. This project, entitled The Widow's Joy: Pride, Genius, Grief & Lies from International 78rpm Recordings, seamlessly presents recordings from the mid-1910s to 1950’s across a wide geographic area, covering a multitude of ethnic styles.

Musicians, famous and obscure, classical and folk alike are presented side-by-side as Nagoski describes one life after another of a creative person whose biography was marked by displacement, tragic circumstance, great opportunity, and forces of history beyond their control. In the process, Nagoski shares rarely-heard and often deeply touching performances, some joyous and some heartbreaking, while asking questions about the value of music in our lives.

Tickets only available on the door.

Special guest on the night is Dermot McLoughlin, renowned fiddler and chair of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, who brings us a short set of Donegal fiddle tunes, and the rich history that informs them.