Bands & Projects:   Current B & P  • Bassology  • Chevan and Byrd Duo  • Afro-Semitic Experience

"When Connecticut's Afro-Semitic Experience - think Jewish wedding, revival meeting and Charles Mingus all at once - lays down the groove, your ears pop with strange sensations. A lot of genre combining ends up being mediocrity with an identity problem. But jazz collaborators David Chevan and Warren Byrd are so good at what they do that the resulting mix is compelling and decidedly not esoteric.
Many of the songs sound like straight-ahead jazz at a cursory listen, but the details get cross-cultural fast - the melody might turn Middle Eastern while the rhythms go African. When lap steel comes sliding in with a bluesy twang, all bets are off, and the multi-ethnic party really begins. This is multi-culturalism with its hair down, and well worth a listen. The Afro-Semitic Experience brings home the bacon and the gefilte fish."
-James Heflin, The Valley Advocate

"The Afro-Semitic Experience rocks the house" -George Robinson, The Jewish Week

The Afro-Semitic Experience is an ensemble dedicated to preserving, promoting and expanding the rich cultural and musical heritage of the Jewish and African diaspora. Imagine a band that understands and can present interpretations of music from traditions as rich as Gospel, Klezmer, Nigunim, Spirituals, and Swing and you have the Afro-Semitic Experience. This is a group that is as comfortable playing a freylakh as they are swinging a blues, that knows how to playing either a bulgar or some funk. Multi-cultural soul.

The Afro-Semitic Experience began performing in late 1999 as an off-shoot of the creative work of African-American pianist Warren Byrd and Jewish-American bassist David Chevan. In 1999 they were asked if they had a band that could perform their brand of Jewish and African-American music. As much as they liked the idea of expanding the duo to perform large ensemble versions of pieces of sacred music, Chevan and Byrd were also interested in finding a musical setting where they might be able to explore not only the sacred sounds of Jewish and African-American music, but the secular as well. At the time they both belonged to the New Haven based jazz group, Bassology. It was not before they began adding new material to the Bassology set lists. Soon the group was jamming on Klezmer and Yiddish songs along with their usual assortment of jazz and world music pieces. As word got out they found themselves playing the occasional wedding and Bar Mitzvah. People in the New Haven area were thrilled to hear a group that could encompass such a wide range of musical styles and languages.

Pretty soon it was obvious that a second band had emerged and that it was no longer Bassology. In the beginning it was known as 'David Chevan's Afro-Semitic Experience.' It sounded like the title of a novel or something. And perhaps, in way, there is something about every performance we have given that is semi-autobiographical. But now it is the autobiography of everyone in the group THE AFRO-SEMITIC EXPERIENCE.

The band continues to evolve and has played in public quite a few times. We've begun to develop a style and a sense of direction. In fact, the group has twice placed second in the New Haven Advocate's Grand Band Slam in the category of Instrumental bands. It was after our performance at the Grand Band Slam showcase that the Advocate described the band's performance as a 'mind-blowing experience'.

The Afro-Semitic Experience performs the first Monday of every month at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, Connecticut. The Buttonwood is located at at 605 Main St. in Middletown, Connecticut and the phone number is (860) 347-4957.

The band released its first CD, This is The Afro-Semitic Experience, to rave reviews, in April 2003. The CD was listed as album of the week at All About Jazz.com and was picked as one of the top ten CDs of the year by George Robinson of the Jewish Week. The band accompanied David Chevan on his 2003 solo album, The Days of Awe, and is hoping to have a new album out some time in 2004.

The Afro-Semitic Experience is:

David Chevan-bass
Warren Byrd-piano and keyboards
Alvin Carter, Jr.-drums
Baba David Coleman-percussion
Stacy Phillips- violin and dobro
Will Bartlett-saxophone and clarinet
Mixashawn.com-tenor saxophone

"With The Afro-Semitic Experience New Haven gets to claim the harbingers of one of the freshest, most distinctive, culturally explicit and ultra-PC sounds in jazz. For the Afro-Semitic Experience evokes the sound of cultural shift, of a melting pot, of spirituality and devotion and ceremony, of partying and praying and jamming. . . .A danceable, trance-causing flurry of notes with godly underpinnings. Underneath all the oomph you feel the warmth, wealth fury and pain of whole nations, repressed cultures, challenged beliefs. This band is the sound of the past, the present and the great beyond all at once."
-Christopher Arnott, The New Haven Advocate

"This is a more laid-back take on the Hebrew/Afro-American connection than you hear from John Zorn and the Downtown New York crowd, but one with its own roughshod beauty."
-Jerome Wilson, Cadence