SEPTEMBER 2015: Philly Fringe Arts Festival 



I had the extreme pleasure of composing transition music for Teresa D. Miller and her Thought to Life Production's The Illinois Five stage play, which is debuting at this year's Philly Fringe Arts Festival. The Illinois Five is a beautifully rendered, urgent, incendiary, compassionate and deeply resonant piece of writing about "five African American friends who find themselves in the middle of a race riot circa 1920. Forced to choose between life and death, they escape going their separate ways only to meet back up years later faced with reality of the choices each of them made." Having worked closely with Ms. Miller on designing a musical backdrop and soundscape that is both historically accurate and complementary to the narrative she created, I feel confident about saying she is an incredibly gifted, dynamic and exciting new voice on the theater scene. You'll be dazzled by her work. Ms. Miller has also written two other plays that will 'go up' ( be performed publicly in a theater) in the next 2 years or so. You'll want to keep an eye out for her future theatrical endeavors. The Illinois Five features some notable tri-state area actors, including one of my personal favorite creative minds, Shamika Byrd. The play runs at The Walnut Street Theatre in center city for two consecutive weekends starting Thursday, Sept 10th. GET TICKETS HERE

{FEBRUARY 2014} PRESS 

The Rosemary Fiki Band has been getting a fair amount of print, radio and on-camera press of late. In advance of our Art Sanctuary Live performance in January, we were featured in the Philly Metro newspaper (see image below).  In February the entire band sat in with Chase and Tiona on their Philly Hott Radio show. Shout out to their producer, Blast Off Be, who booked us for the show after seeing one of our recent live performances. We also had an on-camera interview with the folks with Philly Kid Grafix after performing during their February showcase at The Fire. 2014 has been beautiful, thus far, for The RFB squad.




{OCTOBER 1, 2013} Bass Player Magazine!!!! 

I made the Real World section of the November 2013 issue (with Earth, Wind & Fire bass icon Verdine White on the cover) of  Bass Player magazine. Bass Player is my bass information bible. Even before I was proficient at playing bass, I would head to Borders in center city and buy the latest issue of Bass Player. I would then inhale everything its writers and editors had to say about basses, amps, pedals, strings, players I should know, cds I should buy and lessons I should get under my fingers. I remember being so inspired by interviews with Nathan Watts, Rhonda Smith, Prince, Saadiq, Hub from The Roots, Meshell Ndegeocello, Larry Graham, Carole Kaye, Chuck Rainey, Jon Jon Webb etc... and transcriptions of their funkiest lines.  It's really trippy to be in this magazine even in an 'introduce yourself' capacity. It's a real boost to my confidence and lights a fire under me with respect to working even harder to become the caliber of player that  Bass Player would want to feature and interview in the inside pages of the magazine in earnest. I know I'm going to get there! Barnes and Noble carries the most recent issues of  Bass Player magazine on the shelves of its brick and mortar stores.






(photo courtesy of bassplayer.com)







 

{ MAY 21, 2013} Afro-Punk in the house!!!! 

The main band I play bass in, The Rosemary Fiki Band, made it to round 2 of the Afro-Punk Festival's Battle of the Bands. We were in 4th place with respect to the number of votes tallied. We compete in a Sweet 16 round with a show at Brooklyn's FREE CANDY June 3rd-6th. Two of the bands in this Sweet 16 cohort are going to Brooklyn in August to perform at Afro-Punk Festival. We're ecstatic about this opportunity to show folks who we are and how we get down. Wish us luck!


(photo courtesy of afropunk.com)


THE ROSEMARY FIKI BAND

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