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Dorian Wallace - Double Album Release

  • Soapbox Gallery 636 Dean Street Brooklyn, NY, 11238 United States (map)

LAND & ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This performance and the recordings it accompanies were created on Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded lands of the Munsee-speaking Lenapeand Canarsie peoples, whose history, presence, and care for this land continue today. We honor their enduring relationship with this place.

Tonight’s Program

  • One Love / People Get Ready
    Bob Marley, Curtis Mayfield (1977)

  • Genjer-genjer
    Muhammad Arief (1942)

  • Hasta Siempre
    Carlos Puebla (1965)

  • Nivişta Gerîla
    Şêro Hindê, Mehmûd Berazî (1990s)

  • It Is One Hundred Seconds to Midnight
    Dorian Wallace (2020)

  • Hand Over the Keys to the Country / سلم مفاتيح البلد
    Mohammed Wardi (1980s)

  • Beloved Comrade
    Jack Beeson, Abel Meeropol (ca. 1930s–1940s)

  • The Partisan / La Complainte du partisan
    Anna Marly, Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Leonard Cohen adaptation
    (1943 original / 1969 adaptation)

  • Solidarity Forever
    Ralph Chaplin (1915)

  • Closing Verse
    Lu’Keus Jochhanan (2025)

  • The Internationale
    Eugène Pottier, lyrics (1871), Pierre De Geyter, music (1888)

Dorian Wallace, piano

Laeh Su Tel! has been a dream of mine for a long time on the concept of creating a fully improvised solo piano project based on a repertoire of political songs from diverse traditions. I immersed myself in locating, studying, and deeply internalizing a library of resonant political music from a wide range of cultural, social, and historical contexts.

Over time, this concept album grew into a concept series, unified by the theme of authentic musical expression as an act of solidarity for the working-classes, underclasses, and Indigenous peoples of the world, a celebration of revolutionary love and collective consciousness. I hope to evangelize the potential of music therapy in addressing trauma-informed care, neurodivergent awareness, and critical social analysis rooted in the fight for liberation and solidarity for all people!

Dorian Wallace is a composer, pianist, and music therapist who explores music's healing qualities in therapeutic work, social action, and community engagement. His practice integrates contemporary classical composition, free improvisation, and a deep commitment to fostering meaningful, emotionally resonant experiences. Dorian's compositions often engage with sociopolitical, emotional, and psychological themes. He has had the privilege of collaborating with artists like Paul Pinto, Pamela Z, Bonita Oliver, and John Sanborn.

His music draws from experimentalism, expressionism, romanticism, and rhythmic complexity, creating thought-provoking, cathartic works. Alongside violinist Hajnal Pivnick, Dorian co-founded NYC-based new music collective Tenth Intervention. They have performed live silent film scores at venues like Nitehawk Cinema, Threes Brewing, and the late Videology. He accompanies the Sing In Solidarity chorus, amplifying activists, marginalized communities, and international labor and decolonial movements. His music therapy work extends to people incarcerated at Rikers Island, Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center, and Sing Sing Correctional Facility; survivors of cults through the Lalich Center for Cults and Coercion; and patients on hospice care at Calvary Hospital.

He integrates dynamic listening, improvisation, and lyric analysis to support trauma-informed, liberation-centered therapeutic spaces. His Liberation Music Therapy concept has been presented at institutions such as Columbia University, the Trauma Research Foundation, Montclair State University, the University of Louisville, and Loughborough University, among others. He leads workshops for adult film workers through Pineapple Support, activists experiencing burnout through the Democratic Socialists of America, and people transitioning out of insular communities with Footsteps.

Dorian is an active dance and ceremony accompanist who creates responsive soundscapes to support movement, storytelling, and rituals. He teaches a course at the Martha Graham School to deepen professional dancers' relationship with musicality. Dorian's work as a composer, pianist, and therapist remains committed to exploring the ways music can facilitate connection, healing, and social change.

Dorian Wallace, piano

 http://www.dorianwallace.com , https://linktr.ee/doriansmode , https://doriansmode.substack.com

Earlier Event: May 11
Jung Stratmann Duo
Later Event: June 1
BYMP Spring Jazz Recital