Mossa Bildner and the IMProvisers

The richly talented, Rio-born Mossa Bildner will bring her IMProvisers Quintet to The Local 269, which calls itself "the last bastion of great live music in New York City."

Monday, December 13, 8pm

Mossa Bildner (vocals)

Hilliard Greene (bass)

Steve Swell (trombone)

Daniel Levin (cello)

Warren Smith (drums)

Mossa grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil where she was exposed at an early age to an eclectic musical education which included violin, guitar, and ballet. Brazilian popular music and European Classical music as well as Jazz and American musical theatre were what was listened to at home. Parallel to this was the Afro-Brasilian music of the Umbanda and Candomble ceremonies that Mossa began frequenting when she was 10 and which remains the prism through which all other music is filtered.

Mossa graduated from Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy in 1983 in Opera Performance. She studied with Yolanda Magnoni, Maestro Mannino, and Maestro Luigi Ricci.

She continued her vocal studies in London with Vera Rosza and Robert Southerland and performed in the master classes of Tito Gobbi, and Sena Jurinac’in Vienna and also at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Mossa has performed at the English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, and Scottish National Opera, as well as in Marseilles, Monte Carlo, Bari, Vicenza, Verona, Vienna, Salzburg, and spent 2 years at the Augsburg Opera House as a member.

After arriving in New York in 1990, Henry Threadgill heard Mossa sing and invited her to record with Very Very Circus (Too Much Sugar for a Dime) . This was the first encounter with New Music and after working, recording (Song out of My Trees, Carry the Day) and touring with Henry for 3 years, Mossa took Henry’s advice and began exploring her own musical history for possible inspiration and projects.

Musicians who were instrumental in forming her personal style whom she met or worked with over the past years are (in no particular order): Roscoe Mitchell, Leroy Jenkins, Mark Dresser, Hector Martignon, Simone Shaheen, Brahim Fribgane, Nilsson Matta, Duduka da Fonseca, Alirio Ferreira, John Stubblefield, Cecil Taylor, and of course Henry Threadgill.

The Local 269

269 East Houston Street (at Suffolk Street), Manhattan

(map)