Improv jazz trio Dawn of Midi were recently awarded a 2011 Chamber Music America Presenting Jazz Grant to produce new recordings.

The band is using the grant to complete their multimedia work Kashmir, for which the organization Triple Canopy is acting fiscal sponsor. Kashmir is a multimedia live concert/video piece exploring the acceleration of the recording and re-writing of history due to advances in mechanical memory, contextualized by the territorial conflict over the region of Kashmir.

The piece will premier at the Documente-se! Festival in Portugal in November, presented by the Serralves Foundation, followed by three performances in New York presented by Triple Canopy (venue TBA) in the first half of 2012. Kashmir will also be on tour worldwide until December 2012.

Meanwhile, the band's new seven-track live album new album, recorded during their recent world tour, is available free online. You can download it in its entirety at http://www.dawnofmidi.com/dawn/images/DawnofMidi-Live.zip , or simply listen to it at http://www.dawnofmidi.com/music .

Dawn of Midi was formed in 2007 at Cal Arts by three classically trained acoustic performers: longtime San Diegan Aakaash Israni (contrabassist), Pakistani native Qasim Naqvi (percussionist), and Moroccan pianist Amino Belyamani. Israni was born in India but raised in San Diego, where he studied music at UCSD. Their debut album First was released in early 2010.

Israni and Naqvi also play in a rock band called Recorder.