For immediate release: December 1, 2017
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
JoséGonzález, singer/songwriter and “possibilist,” performs February 6;
with special guest Bedouine
HANOVER, NH—With a hushed, intimate style and songs that “ask big questions” (Pitchfork), singer-songwriter-guitarist JoséGonzálezperformsTuesday, February 6, at 7 pm, in Spaulding Auditorium of the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Since he emerged on the international scene 12 years ago with his first solo album Veneer, González has won an ardent following for his crystal-clear voice, hypnotic guitar and “gloriously understated songs with a haunting appeal” (MusicWeek), as well as remarkable covers such as his best known single, his interpretation of Heartbeatsby The Knife. His music is“the soundtrack of a seeking mind; a hopeful rainy day; a world exploring itself at the brink of dawn…Gonzalez is a musician with a distinct point of view, expressed amid restless strings and dulcet vocals,” wrote the Jerusalem Post.
Opening the concert is Syrian-Armenian-American singer-songwriter Bedouine, whose mesmerizing voice and music—sixties folk meets seventies country-funk, with a glimmer of bossa nova cool—is described by The Deli Magazine as “hypnotic and soulful.”
Since Veneer, González has alternated solo performance with projects with ensembles, including his longstanding indie rock band, Junip. He reaffirmed his solo work with his recent album Vestiges & Claws,revolving around ideas of civilization, humanism and solidarity.“I think that might be where there is some sort of common thread on this new record: The zoomed-out eye on humanity on a small pale blue dot in a cold, sparse and unfriendly space,” González told an interviewer. “The amazing fact that we are here at all, an aim to encourage us to understand ourselves and to make the best of the one life we know we have—after birth and before death.”
He’s neither an optimist nor a realist, he told an Indian blog. “There’s an expression called a ‘possibilist’. Thereisa reality, but you have trends. Once you are aware of trends, you can try to notice what makes a trend go in the right or wrong direction. It’s a term coined by Hans Rosling, a Swedish health professor who has a very famousTED talkwhere he talks about statistics and how the world is improving and yet isn’t. There’s still stuff to do, so we can’t just sit down and hope for the best.”
Raised in Sweden by a family that fled Argentina’s 1976 right-wing coup, González easily overlays multiple national and musical identities. Fluent in Swedish, Spanish and English—the latter his primary language for performing and songwriting—hegrew up playing classical guitar and Brazilian bossa nova and listening to Latin folk and pop (he considers Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez as one of his chief influences) but first emerged as a performer in the hardcore punk scene of his native Gothenburg. He soon took an abrupt musical turn, formingJunip, which released its first EP, Straight Lines, in 2000.González launched his solo career in 2003 with the album Veneer, an entirely acoustic affair that reflected his childhood musical interests as well as post-punk by the likes ofJoy Division. Veneer received a US release in 2005, and González’s songs found their way onto the popular TV show The O.C.
Veneer and his subsequent solo albumIn Our Nature(2007) went on to sell more than a million albums worldwide. Audiences were captivated by the stark combination of González’s uniquely haunting voice and acoustic guitar on hits like Crosses and Down The Line, and his distinctive interpretations of covers like Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apartor Bruce Springsteen’sBorn in the USA.
Other projects include Göteborg String Theory, an experimental art and music venture involving a string orchestra; andthe soundtrack for the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Besides previously released González and Junip songs, the film also contains exclusively written material as well as an interpretation of John Lennon’s #9 Dream. Rolling Stone named Junip’s In Every Direction a Top 50 single of 2010.
González’s Hop concert is part of a wide-ranging North American tour that since summer has includedCanada and the Rocky Mountain region, and continues on the West Coast, the Eastern Seaboardand the South before finishing in Canada. He has been performing a mix of Junip classics, covers and his solo material from Veneer and the 15 singles, one 1 EP and two other studio albums he has released since then. Throughout González’s career he has experimented with pop-punk, the bossa nova, classical music and singer-songwriter vibes—all of which comes through in his shows. His other New England appearances on this tour are in Providence, RI (February 7), Portsmouth, NH (February 8) and New Haven, CT (February 9).
Bedouine is a form of the Arabic word for nomad and also the stage name of breakout Syrian-Armenian-American singer-songwriterAzniv Korkejian, who knows firsthand the experience of displacement. Born in Aleppo, Syria, to Armenian parents, Korkejian spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia, moving to America when her family won a green card lottery. They settled in Boston, then Houston, and she eventually left on her own for LA, where—after leaving for stints in Texas and Kentucky—she found a home in a close-knit community of musicians in Echo Park. A professional sound editor, she was encouraged to create recordings, eventually working with some of LA’s most talented musicians and producers.
That itinerant past informs the song You Kill Me from Bedouine’s eponymous debut album, in which she sings, “Some nights I get into the car and drive / Nowhere really could keep me satisfied.”Another song, Summer Cold, is about her family’s ancestral home of Aleppo—which she wrote after reading that weapons the US was funneling to the Syrian opposition were landing in terrorists’ hands. “It's loose, this song. It doesn't hit you over the head with the topic,” she told NPR. “But I wrote it because every time I would read the news, it just gave me this really nauseating feeling. And I guess I started to address Syria like it was a friend of mine I couldn't recognize anymore.”
MORE ABOUT…
José González
González wasborn in 1978in a suburb of Gothenburg, Sweden, to a family—an academic psychologist father, mother and older sister—that had fled Argentina two years earlier. In June 2003, González’ debut solo releasewas discovered by Joakim Gävert, co-founder of the, thenfledgling, label Imperial Records. He signed González as their first official artist and, later that year, released González’ debut album, Veneer, in Europe. The album was subsequently released in the UK and in the United States in late 2005. The album was made while González was studying for a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, a pursuit he has not had time to complete. The singer-songwriter has found an international following with his individual albums, 2003’s Veneer and 2007’s In Our Nature, which went on to sell over a million albums worldwide. The lyrical content of In Our Naturewas influenced, in part, by books he was reading, like The God Delusion by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Practical Ethics by ethicist Peter Singer. González is an atheist and a vegetarian.
González has performed on television, including appearances onLate Night with Conan O'Brien (2006 and 2007), Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2007), the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland (2006) and Canada's MTV Live (2007), among others.González' version of Massive Attack's Teardrop was used in the fourth season finale of House.
The Hopkins Center for the Arts
Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.
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JoséGonzález, with special guest Bedouine
With crystal-clear voice and spacious, hypnotic guitar, José González is one of today’s most remarkable indie folk artists—and a testament to the enduring power of the solo performer. His hushed, delicate sound draws the audience near with an intimate style—as in his best-known single, Heartbeats—and original songs that “ask big questions” (Pitchfork). Syrian-American singer-songwriter Bedouine (“hypnotic and soulful”—The Deli Magazine) opens the concert.
Tuesday, February 6, at 7 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$35-45 for adults, $10 Dartmouth students
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
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