M Lamar Presents NYC Premiere of FUNDERAL DOOM SPIRITUAL at National Sawdust

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based composer/vocalist/pianist and visual/fine artist M Lamar creates music that crosses opera, metal and blues, and his musical performances have been described as having an "otherworldly quality". The genre-defying artist, who received high praise for his last multi-media show, "Negrogothic, a Manifesto, the Aesthetics of M. Lamar", is proud to present the NYC premiere of "Funeral Doom Spiritual", a special multi-media performance, with 4 concerts at National Sawdust this Friday and Saturday, 1/13 and 1/14, in conjunction with the fifth season of the PROTOTYPE festival. On the heels of the shows, he will be releasing two new albums, "Funeral Doom Spiritual" and "Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche" on 1/27.

Through his music and art, he has commented on the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, slave ships, and lynching and "Funeral Doom Spiritual" draws on themes of apocalypse, end times, and rapture found in Negro Spirituals, what he calls "Doom Spirituals." It explores radical historical expressions and futuristic longings for destruction of the white supremacist world order. "Funeral Doom Spiritual" is a song of mourning for what law professor Anthony Paul Farley calls "the motionless movement of death through slavery, segregation, and neo-segregation." With his use of music, multichannel video, objects, and still images, Lamar shows that it is only with an intense awareness of this "motionless movement," carrying the coffins of the fallen "on our backs," that we can proceed.

Taking place a century into the future, "Funeral Doom Spiritual" features male soprano Lamar on piano, accompanied by two basses, two contrabasses (by The James Ilgenfritz Ensemble), librettist and musical collaborator Tucker Culbertson, and electronics by Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, enveloped in immersive light and video, with striking art direction by Sabin Michael Calvert and costumes designed by Erik Bergrin. For the show and record, Lamar collaborated with Hendrix, the composer-philosopher-poet known primarily as the author of the text "Transcendental Black Metal", and as the guitarist, songwriter, and conceptual architect of the band Liturgy. Hendrix created the string arrangements and the electronics for the record.

A post-performance conversation will follow the 7pm show on January 14th.

Here's a video that previews "Funeral Doom Spiritual" at National Sawdust:

https://vimeo.com/191963183

You can purchase tickets for the concerts here:

http://prototypefestival.org/show/funeral-doom-spiritual/

"Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche", was recorded with the Mivos Quartet, with string arrangements by composer/musician Charlie Looker (Extra Life, Psalm Zero) and features guitar by metal/avant-garde musician Colin Marston from acclaimed black metal bands Krallice and Gorguts. "I am in love with the string arrangements by Charlie Looker and performed brilliantly by Mivos Quartet! These collaborations have been a dream come true for me. I'm in awe of both Mivos and Looker. They are the best of the best!!!", Lamar says.

The first single from "Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche" is "Legacies".

Here's a link to stream the track: https://soundcloud. com/m-lamar/legacies-m-lamar- mivos-quartet-featuring- charlie-looker

As he told "Impose" magazine, "'Legacies' is a very important moment in the story of 'Surveillance Punishment and The Black Psyche'. This is the moment that the main character, a 17 year old black boy, realizes that the 53 year old white man with whom he was having a sexual relationship, is one of the klansmen who lynched and castrated his father." The video was shot at Participant INC in Manhattan and The Living Gallery in Brooklyn. This video is also part of the Lamar's forthcoming feature film.

You can check out the provocative video for "Legacies" here: https://vimeo.com/196229671

Honest and raw in both his music and art, although he holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute, attended the Yale School of Art sculpture program, and has received critical acknowledgment for his multi-media shows, music has always been a passion. Lamar is a classically trained pianist and continues to study classical and Bel Canto voice technique, but as he told "Impose" in January 2016, "My connection to punk / goth / metal subcultures is huge. These are my people, this is my scene. That subculture is the thing that made me, that's where I come from, I'm still there."

As esteemed composer/vocalist/artist Diamanda Galas proclaimed after listening to a few songs from "Speculum Orum - Shackled to the Dead", Lamar's 2013 album, "THIS BITCH CAN SING!"

http://www.mlamar.com/
https://www.facebook.com/m.lamarmusic/
@M_Lamar