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Jazz meets Gamelan

Alex Smith
/
KCUR

This week we head to a Kansas City music laboratory where we find an atypical partnership and stay tuned till the end of the show where we bring you a Sonic ID right off Broadway in Columbia.

For the last two and a half years, the Black House improviser’s collective has made its home in an unoccupied floor of a downtown Kansas City office building provided by the Charlotte Street Foundation. There, the loose group of composers and improvisers has met in three sessions a year to create original music. About a year ago, the Indonesian percussion ensemble Gamelan Genta Kasturi also moved into the space with its arsenal of gongs and xylophones. Like the Odd Couple, these unlikely roommates have decided to find common ground and work together. They are collaborating on a rare fusion of jazz and avant garde with traditional Asian music. Alex Smith has the story.

Friday, May 18th the groups perform together in a concert titled The Bell Tree.

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Columbia may be known for its coffee shop shops and independent stores, but the city also has about a dozen tattoo parlors. I visited one in this next Sonic ID, here is Kenneth Partin

If you want to hear more of these short audio snippets of life in and around Columbia, we've collected them in this map.

Scarlett Robertson joined KBIA as a producer in February 2011. She studied psychology at Lake Forest College and holds a masters degree in journalism from Syracuse University. Scarlett began her professional career in psychology, jumped to magazines and then came to her senses and shifted to public radio. She has contributed to NPR member stations WAER in Syracuse, KUT in Austin and Chicago’s WBEZ.