The New Orleans Airlift finally got itself off the ground and we're headed for Berlin, Germany! We'll be there any minute now, and if you wanna catch what we're up to we'll be in town en masse from June 12th to the 14th at the Berlin Lacht! Festival in the Mariannenplatz in the middle of the Kreuzberg Neighborhood!.
But we'll be performing throughout the month of June at places like Bar 25, Monster Ronson's, Das Hotel and many many more...check out the calendar here, and write to us anytime with questions at info@new orleansairlift.org
And click right through to any of these artist's pages by pushing your button on their names! Thanks everyone!!! - Rusty Lazer
Meschiya Lake began her professional singing career
at the age of nine in a South Dakota steakhouse where
she won $500 (and a regular gig) in a singing contest.
She began singing jazz professionally six years ago,
and her repertoire includes both original and traditional
compositions. Dan Baum from The New Yorker said
"Meschiya Lake rocks back on her heels, lifts her chest,
and opens her throat like an air-raid siren to croon in a thrilling, pre-microphone style that is easily audible above the band—no small feat. Lake can make you feel by turns as though you were shivering around a campfire in a railroad yard or drinking in a Budapest night club in 1938." This young but accomplished solo artist has performed worldwide on streets, in night clubs, and at concert halls with the Loose Marbles, Magnolia Beacon, the Haferflocken Swingers and many more.
Chloris Flap is a clown from New Orleans. Chloris specializes in taking an audience on a journey of serious idiocy with surprising stunts and slapstick comedy all along the way.
The Black Forest Fancies is a
non-profit organization,
puppet troupe, musical
laboratory and cabaret
collective based in New
Orleans. The Fanices’
works
explore history and human
experience through a lens of
fable, waging a whimsically
playful and morbidly serious
battle for alternative modes
of being from the realm of
the possessed and
dispossessed.
This June the Fanices bring
to Berlin “
Black Bonnet", a
puppet show based on the
true story of an intersexed
housemaid in 16th century
Scotland. The maid, Black
Bonnet and Liliana, the
Landlord's lovely daughter,
fall madly in love. But bodies
are vessels with minds of
their own and soon Liliana
becomes pregnant. The Great
House is thrown into chaos
and evil forces converge to
reveal Black Bonnet's sexual
peculiarities.
Liliana is cast out of her
home and the beautiful
kitchen maid is buried alive.
Written and developed in
New Orleans on the eve
of the hurricane, "Black
Bonnet" has been on
two National tours. The
piece recently made its
"home debut," to great
audience acclaim, at the
first annual New Orleans
Fringe Theatre festival.
Ratty Scurvics’ “Singularity” is the one-man-band project of Ratty Scurvics, a legendary New Orleans electronic/
acoustic musician from the Bywater neighborhood.
This project has existed for six years, produced three
records and toured the entire United States. Playing
two keyboards, the bass drum with his right foot, and a
snare drum with his left, Ratty has pushed the one-manband
into extraordinary new territory with his energetic
performances, masterful songwriting and full sound. At
many performances he shares the stage with “Danger
Doll Gladice”
and his blushing bride, the burlesque
clown Ooops, who uses props and choreography to thrill
the audience further. Ratty is a multi-instrumentalist
who has written music for several successful plays and
conducted orchestras for circuses and cabarets.
The Magnetic Ear was originally formed by Martin Krusche in 2005 as a trio featuring Kirk Joseph (founding member of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band) on sousaphone and Kevin O’Day on drums. After the chaos of hurricane Katrina the group was reformed as a larger collective, a home for returning musicians whose previous bands were scattered.
The new extended Magnetic Ear features founder Martin Krusche on tenor saxophone, Daniel Oestereicher on baritone saxophone, Jeff Albert on trombone, Jon Gross on sousaphone and Justin Peake on drums. The orchestration of this group combined with the musical background of its players allows for a wide variety of styles. The band is as comfortable with a lush arrangement of an Ellington ballad as it is with an original jazz composition, second line or funk.
That variety is well demonstrated on their release ‘The Magnetic Ear live at Saturn Bar’. The Magnetic Ear was nominated by the monthly New Orleans music magazine ‘offbeat’ for ‘best new emerging artist’ for 2006 and again 2007. In 2009 the band was nominated by off-beat in the category ‘best contemporary jazz band’ and ‘best contemporary cd of 2008.
Scott Heron and Billy Schultz aka "Scotty and Billy Dance" performing "!Ghost!Vamp!Goat!" -
The Scotty and Billy Dance Company's mission is to foster and celebrate an enjoyment and appreciation of all types of movement as they naturally occur in the body of a dancer. The elements of surprise and humor play an illuminating role as we propose, validate and piece together: the improbably, the awkward, the wild, the grotesque and the beutiful in our work. Scott Heron’s solo and group work has been presented in practically every downtown New York venue including Dance Theatre Workshop, The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place and especially Performance Space 122 which has commissioned four evening-length works. He received a 2003 New York Dance and Theater “Bessie” Award for his body of work as a performer. Currently he resides in New Orleans where he dances and runs the Sidearm Gallery and Theater in a cinder block building attached to his house. Billy Schultz fell in love with performing while travelling around Western Europe as a clown in his friend’s magic act. They performed at festivals, including Mercantia Festival in Certaldo, Italy, and Aurillac Street Theater Festival in France, as well as on the street, in open air markets and in club settings along the way. He later studied at the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theater in Blue Lake, CA.
MC Sub-Zero Permafrost is a world-touring, award-winning uncategorizable entertainer born and raised in New Orleans, LA. She combines original freestyle rhyming, improvisational comedy, theater and dance, costume design, and graphic arts into her live sets. She integrates traditional folk songs, cabaret and jazz standards sung in English, Spanish and Portuguese into a post-modern/post-hip hop tour-de force. Irreverent, idiosyncratic and heartbreaking, she can bring an audience to their feet dancing, or to their knees in awe. Her performances have incorporated live accompaniment in collaboration with world class DJs, percussionists, drum corps, and brass bands such as The Extra Action Marching Band, The Infernal Noise Brigade, The Hungry March Band, Casa Samba, Kermit Ruffins & his Barbecue Swingers, Vaudeville 2000 and RANT for the Literary Rennaisance. MC Sub-Zero has performed at such prestigious international Festivals as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Distortion Festival (Catalonia), The Clandestino Festival (Sweden), Riddim Collision 9 (France) and is slated to perform at Sonar Festival (Spain) this year.
Following in the tradition of the second line parades and
block parties that make New Orleans famous, Rusty Lazer
spins songs from the three hundred year old repertoire of
music this decadent city has to offer. In a single set, dancers
are likely to hear the hypnotic beat of the Mardi Gras Indians,
Hot Jazz from the early 20th century, Twists from the 50's,
Soul and R&B from the 1960's and 70's, Brass Band jams
stretching across all of these eras and even the modern block
party sounds of Hip Hop and Bounce Music (a particular
invention of local musicians that manages to feature all of
these styles rolled up together with an ass shakin' beat!) along
with mash-ups of all of the above created by Rusty Lazer
himself. In addition, he moves across multiple unrelated
genres (electro, bizarre 80's, new ghetto beats, baile funk,
dance punk, metal) as well in a kind of "kitchen sink", but
always danceable, fashion. Other Music Records in New
York calls his set "a sweaty, mega-mix crash course in the
hard and nasty sound of the 'Nolia (New Orleans). Rusty
Lazer ain't for the prudes, but it's some of the most infectious
dance music you'll ever hear if you're not familiar." He has
performed at clubs, art galleries, benefits, guerilla public events,
and created soundtracks for circuses, plays and performance
art spectacles throughout Europe, the U.S., China and Japan.
Rusty is currently working live with "Sissy Bounce"
(queer/transgender) superstars Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby,
whose songs are at the top of the local radio charts and heard
on the streets at every block party.
Check out all of this and more at the NEW ORLEANS AIRLIFT website, where you'll find dates, times and future events. Remember, we'll be performing all over the city of Berlin throughout the month of June so don't miss an opportunity to come out and have some fun with us!