27/4
INTONAL 2023: Laraaji + Valentina Magaletti | S:t Johannes Church
PART OF INTONAL 2023 Free for festival pass holders, separate tickets also available.
Legendary musician Laraaji creates a total sonic domination of the soul and mind and Valentina Magaletti lets her drums echo through the chambers in this year’s INTONAL concert in S:t Johannes Church.
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City.
He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980). Laraaji went on to release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances.
In recent years he has had his career celebrated extensively, with reissues of his extensive and wide-ranging back catalogue on labels including Numero Group, Glitterbeat and Leaving Records. Latest album Sun Piano, released on All Saints in summer 2020, sees Laraaji fulfilling a lifelong ambition to return to his first instrument for a suite of spiritual keyboard improvisations recorded in a Brooklyn Church by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Mary Lattimore) – a new chapter to the story of a much-loved cult icon.
‘Just absolutely destroys me this record…just love it, one of my favourite things he’s ever done’ – Tom Ravenscroft | BBC 6 Music on Sun Piano
‘The bristling performances here most closely resemble the solo piano excursions of such post-bop masters as Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett’ — Uncut
He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980). Laraaji went on to release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances.
In recent years he has had his career celebrated extensively, with reissues of his extensive and wide-ranging back catalogue on labels including Numero Group, Glitterbeat and Leaving Records. Latest album Sun Piano, released on All Saints in summer 2020, sees Laraaji fulfilling a lifelong ambition to return to his first instrument for a suite of spiritual keyboard improvisations recorded in a Brooklyn Church by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Mary Lattimore) – a new chapter to the story of a much-loved cult icon.
‘Just absolutely destroys me this record…just love it, one of my favourite things he’s ever done’ – Tom Ravenscroft | BBC 6 Music on Sun Piano
‘The bristling performances here most closely resemble the solo piano excursions of such post-bop masters as Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett’ — Uncut
Valentina Magaletti
Valentina Magaletti is a drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist with an inventive approach to drums and percussion. Her versatile technique, which can incorporate anything from vibes and marimba to contact microphones and found objects, results in a style that is forever evolving. Feeling just as comfortable performing behind a delicate ceramic kit as she does hammering out motorik rhythms, her creative take on percussion has resulted in a diverse discography and many interesting collaborations.
While studying drums, early exposure to both prog and bebop styles engendered an appetite for experimentation. With each new project, Valentina is developing fresh nuances and searching for new ways of teasing out sound from her signature instrument. For Magaletti, playing the drums is akin to an unfolding narrative: stories that eschew spoken language in favour of rhythm, pulse, and vibration.
27/4 2023 
18.30-22
