Laraaji at The Freight

The story has been told over and over for years now: In the midst of creating a deeply influential series of albums featuring sounds that he would christen “ambient music,” the English musician, producer, and conceptual artist Brian Eno chanced upon a distinctive musician busking in New York City's Washington Square Park. Stopped in his tracks by the player’s blissfully arresting work on the autoharp, a keyed zither chiefly familiar among folk groups and in elementary-school music programs, Eno dropped a note in the performer’s case, inviting him to come make an album together.

That busker, Laraaji – named Edward Larry Gordon when he was born in Philadelphia in 1943 – responded with curious enthusiasm. The result, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, brought his ecstatic strain of meditative music, which previously had circulated principally on self-released cassettes, to a global audience.

Since then, Laraaji has continued to perform and record regularly, including collaborations with inquisitive artists and groups like Blues Control, Sun Araw, Sam Prekop, Julia Holter, and Arji OceanAnada while also conducting workshops meant to harness the healing power of music – and of laughter, as well. A number of his early self-released cassettes and subsequent studio albums have been reissued in recent years. And on August 29, Laraaji revisits Day of Radiance in a live rendition at The Freight.

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