Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Bleeding-Edge Jamming for the Ukraine

Readers may recall from Monday’s Bleeding Edge column that last night guitarist and vocalist Karl Evangelista used his Grex Band Official YouTube channel to stream a fundraising event for the support of Ukrainian relief and resistance efforts. The YouTube Web page for the video included four hyperlinks for donations to four different organizations. Evangelista also provided a link to his Grex Bandcamp page, where the proceeds from Name-Your-Price album purchases would also go to Ukrainian support.

Most of the program involved performances by the Grex duo of Evangelista and his wife Rei Scampavia on keyboards and vocals. However, Evangelista also performed as instrumentalist in two trio selections in which he was joined by Scott Amendola on drums and Michael Coleman playing at a keyboard with extensive electronic controls, all supervised by a very curious cat:

The music was further supplemented by “landscape” videos created by Lenny Gonzalez. (Note the overlay of that video in the above screenshot.)

The entire program ran for about 40 minutes. It is now available for viewing on the same Web page used for last night’s streaming. Evangelista has an impressive track record for applying proceeds from performances to worthy causes. His effort on behalf of the Ukraine was not surprising, and the music presented in service of that effort was wildly experimental and thoroughly satisfying.

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