Martin Perna 12/15/22 Martin Perna 12/15/22

2023

“Roberta” a documentary about Roberta Flack, had its theatrical premiere at the DocNYC fest last month and will be airing nationwide on PBS “American Masters” series on 1/24/2023 and subsequently in Europe on ARTE.

I composed and performed the score for the feature-length documentary and am now on to my next scoring project, an episode of PBS Frontline with investigative journalists Daffodil Altan and Cristina Ibarra which will air in the spring of 2023.

Martin Perna 6/27/22 Martin Perna 6/27/22

Summer 2022

A picture of one corner of my studio in Oakland. Drum kit, saxophone, congas, vibes, microphone, shakers, picture of bell hooks.

Happy belated summer solstice from the Bay Area. I am spending my days parenting, walking the flats and hills of the East Bay, trying to find clean water to my kid to swim, picking stone fruits (plums, loquats, apricots) which are just coming into season, and scoring two big pieces for PBS.

Antibalas continues to bring our new repertoire throughout Europe and North America this summer and we’ll be recording all this for a new album this fall or early next year. There’s a feature on us and our back catalogue in the recent Songlines Magazine June 2022 issue.

Hmm…what else. Reading Joan Didion “Salvador,” B.W. Higman “Jamaican Food”, working on some musical / nature prototypes and a big Fire Wedding collaboration at the end of this month with Earth Lab at UCSC, Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Courtney Desiree Morris and other artists.

Now back to the lab. Love to whoever’s reading this.