Israeli-born musician and composer Noam “Nani” Vazana is one of the few artists in the world who write and compose new songs in the endangered Jewish language Ladino (Judeo-Spanish).
She will be performing with a band on Wednesday, Sept. 20, from 7 to 9 p.m., in the Parkway Room of the 1900 Building (1900 Shawnee Mission Pkwy, Mission Woods, KS 66205).
Vazana will be performing music from new album, “Ke Haber” (“What’s New”), with songs that feature lyrics celebrating migration, gender and female empowerment. She will perform vocals, piano, trombone; Beau Bledsoe will play guitar; Ezgi Karakus will play cello; and John Currey will play percussion.
“Soft choral-like trombones embellish mariachi guitars and percussion with glimpses of piano and cello tracks, [making] this record a magical realistic mosaic,” said representatives of Ensemble Iberica, a Kansas City-based group of musicians who perform music from Spain and Portugal. “Nani unveils a piece of history we don’t easily find in other mythology and anthropology.”
Vazana’s achievements include charting in the Roots Music Report and World Music Charts Europe; representing the Netherlands at the European Music Festival in Vietnam; and performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the London Jazz Festival in the United Kingdom and the Jodhpur Rajasthan International Folk Festival in India. She held talks at TEDx Amsterdam and hosted three WOMEX panels.
Netherlands-based television network NPO released a mini-documentary about Vanzana’s music, and she composed music for British Broadcasting Corporation and NPO documentaries. Vanzana is a professor at the London Performing Academy of Music and the Jerusalem Music Academy. She is the founder of Why DIY Music.
