While Joe's Pub is temporarily closed to public access, join us for Joe's Pub Live! – a free series of live-streamed and archived performances - from artists' HQ and our iconic stage in New York City. Facilitating social connectivity during this time of physical distancing, Joe's Pub remains dedicated to supporting performing artists at every stage of their careers through sharing concerts with our audiences each week.

Click on the YouTube logo on the embedded player to chat with Joe's Pub, your fellow audience members, and often the artists themselves, via our YouTube channel during the premiere!

RighteousGIRLS celebrate their EP release, Live from Joe’s Pub, in collaboration with steel-pannist and composer Andy Akiho. The EP features the music of composer Andy Akiho’s "Synesthesia Suite" framing the flute and piano in re-imagined contexts of Akiho's steel-pan music, and the duo’s incorporation of improvisation, electronics, and extended techniques.

Andy Akiho, steel-pan
Ian Rosenbaum, percussion
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello
Sean Dixon, drums

As RighteousGIRLS, New York-based flutist Gina Izzo and pianist Erika Dohi “Rattle speakers and expectations with stop-time razzle, vocal (flute-talk) and electronic (phaser) effects" (NYC Jazz Record) while continually expanding their creative reach by bringing 21st century music to new audiences and commissioning works that root themselves in classical idioms but draw from other genres.

The duo was a 2020 finalist in the SAVVY Chamber Music Competition at The University of South Carolina. They have received awards including the 2016 New Music USA Impact Fund Award, a 2015 New Music USA Project Grant, and an Independent Music Awards Nomination for gathering blue (Best Album) and "KARakurENAI" (Best Instrumental) by composer/steel-pannist Andy Akiho.

RighteousGIRLS released their debut album gathering blue (New Focus Recordings) collaborating with steel-pannist Andy Akiho, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and drummer Justin Brown, among others. gathering blue has been met with critical acclaim from both jazz and contemporary-classical critics alike; Jackson Cooper, from I Care If You Listen, called it “…one of the most adventurous new music debut albums in recent years.” gathering blue received a 4.5 stars rating by John Ephland in DownBeat magazine.

RighteousGIRLS recently performed at festivals including the Gharana Music Festival (Kathmandu, Nepal), the DC Jazz Festival, and at venues such as the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, SubCulture, Icicle Creek Center for the Arts, Rockwood Music Hall, Atlas Performing Arts Center, and Joe's Pub. RighteousGIRLS were recently featured by New Music USA at SubCulture alongside Steve Coleman & the Five Elements, Rudresh Mahanthappa and the Prism Quartet, and Wet Ink Ensemble and on Q2 Music, WQXR, WNYC.

Described as “trailblazing” (LA Times) and “an imaginative composer” (NY Times), Andy Akiho is a composer and performer of new music.

Recent engagements include commissioned premieres by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Oregon Symphony with Soloist Colin Currie, American Composers Orchestra, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, LA Dance Project, and experimental opera company The Industry.

Akiho has been recognized with many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. Additionally, his compositions have been featured on PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and by organizations such as Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival.

Akiho is also an active steel pannist and performs his compositions with various ensembles worldwide. He has performed his works with the Charlotte Symphony, South Carolina Philharmonic, Grand Rapids Symphony, Nu Deco Ensemble, LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, Miyamoto is Black Enough, the International Drum Festival in Taiwan, and has had four concerts featuring his compositions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Akiho’s recordings No One To Know One (innova Recordings) and The War Below (National Sawdust Tracks) features brilliantly crafted compositions that pose intricate rhythms and exotic timbres inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan.

Akiho was born in 1979 in Columbia, SC, and is currently based in New York City and Portland, OR.

Like all Joe's Pub shows, all ages are welcome, but please be aware that performances may include adult language and topics.