So almost two weeks ago now I went to the One World Music Concert held at the Warwick Arts Centre, with the headlining act being Miri Ben-Ari, the self-styled 'Hip-Hop Violinist'.
Miri is an Israeli now living in New York who has played with many of the big names in hip hop of late - Kanye, Common, John Legend, etc. Her schtick is that she plays violin, accompanied with hip hop beats, and I have to say, she's really not half bad.
While she's nowhere near as revolutionary as she thinks she is, her finest moment in the concert was not one of her own compositions but instead when she played through a montage of some of the biggest tunes from hip hop of recent years - from Ne-Yo's Miss Independent to Dirt Off Your Shoulder by Jay-Z. It's certainly entertaining stuff, and certainly the enthusiastic, mainly student crowd thought so last week.
Her most recent single that has been attracting attention was Symphony of Brotherhood, a track in which she plays the violin to hip hop beats, with samples from Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech woven through. It's a heartfelt, if not especially original opinion of the subject of race, (she has her own foundation to raise awareness and education about the Holocaust) and is fairly affable to listen to. If it sounds like I'm damning this with faint praise... it's probably because I am a tad.
To be fair to the girl, in my view she had some stiff competition from the World Music Group, a selection of Warwick students put together to play the breaks in between all the other acts, and were absolute class, they were worth the ticket price alone.
Here is a video of her performing live the Apollo in 2007 (perhaps that explains the awful outfit!). Not bad stuff, but just not as groundbreaking as she thinks she is. Also, it's worth mentioning she didn't have a DJ with her doing live mixes, but a pre-recorded backing track, which I think meant she kind of lost something.
Here is the video for Symphony of Brotherhood.
Miri is an Israeli now living in New York who has played with many of the big names in hip hop of late - Kanye, Common, John Legend, etc. Her schtick is that she plays violin, accompanied with hip hop beats, and I have to say, she's really not half bad.
While she's nowhere near as revolutionary as she thinks she is, her finest moment in the concert was not one of her own compositions but instead when she played through a montage of some of the biggest tunes from hip hop of recent years - from Ne-Yo's Miss Independent to Dirt Off Your Shoulder by Jay-Z. It's certainly entertaining stuff, and certainly the enthusiastic, mainly student crowd thought so last week.
Her most recent single that has been attracting attention was Symphony of Brotherhood, a track in which she plays the violin to hip hop beats, with samples from Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech woven through. It's a heartfelt, if not especially original opinion of the subject of race, (she has her own foundation to raise awareness and education about the Holocaust) and is fairly affable to listen to. If it sounds like I'm damning this with faint praise... it's probably because I am a tad.
To be fair to the girl, in my view she had some stiff competition from the World Music Group, a selection of Warwick students put together to play the breaks in between all the other acts, and were absolute class, they were worth the ticket price alone.
Here is a video of her performing live the Apollo in 2007 (perhaps that explains the awful outfit!). Not bad stuff, but just not as groundbreaking as she thinks she is. Also, it's worth mentioning she didn't have a DJ with her doing live mixes, but a pre-recorded backing track, which I think meant she kind of lost something.
Here is the video for Symphony of Brotherhood.
More fun stuff to come soon!
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