The Recording Academy announced the winners for the 61st annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 10th, 2019 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA. Among them was the sensational vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her 2018 Mack Avenue Records release, The Window. This is her third consecutive Grammy Award win in this category (previous wins include 2015 for For One To Love and in 2017 for Dreams and Daggers).
SONY Music Masterworks – With over 2 million albums sold, a Grammy nomination and international recognition as one of the most successful and prolific jazz vocalist of her time, Stacey Kent stands strong among the artists that don’t have much left to prove.
She surprises us once more with her brand new album, I Know I Dream. Recorded inside the famous Angel Studios in London with an orchestra of around 60 musicians, this is her first orchestral album in a career that spans two decades and more than 15 albums. Stacey thought a long time about making such a record, but was waiting for the right time, as she states: “I’m very patient. This was something I knew I needed to do one day or another, but I didn’t want to make it at any cost or rush it in any way”. So when Sony and OKeh asked her about making an album with a big orchestra, she felt this was the moment: “It’s not every day that you get a call about a project with 58 musicians! Nowadays everyone tries to be reasonable but Sony had a real artistic vision”.
Meticulously produced by Tommy Lawrence and Stacey’s longtime collaborator (and husband!) Jim Tomlinson, the songs are arranged in a way that they are transporting the listeners instead of the size of the orchestra, which brings harmony and depth to the record and to the stories it tells. The most important thing for Stacey Kent was “to keep our sensibility and, at the center of everything, our sense of intimacy”. I Know I Dream revisits in fact the quintessence of her repertoire and soul with three songs in French (Juliette Greco’s Les Amours Perdues, originally written by Serge Gainsbourg, Nino Ferrer’s La Rua Madureira and Léo Ferré’s Avec le temps), four new compositions and five covers of Brazilian timeless classics including, for example, Carlos Jobim’s Photograph. I Know I Dream is a majestic and smooth delight, both panoramic and intimate at the same time: a self-portrait with a big orchestra, like a confidence whispered with 58 accomplices.
I Know I Dream is available everywhere now.
Clive Davis for The Times UK – One of the many virtues of the retro outfit led by the pianist Evan Palazzo and the singer Elizabeth Bougerol is that it reminds us that there was a time when jazz was a form of entertainment. That’s almost a subversive notion now that the music has acquired conservatory status.Moving up the cultural hierarchy has its drawbacks, though, so we should be grateful that the New Yorkers are helping to reconnect with the spirit of the speakeasy. They may not be the only band celebrating this kind of prewar material, but there are very few with such an astute grasp of showmanship.Like Pink Martini, the elegant band who have made lounge music hip again, the Sardines have built their own young audience. Their Roundhouse show — part of the In the Round season — started with a flourish and never once sagged, old favourites spiced with tracks from a new album, due out in April. The closing version of Caravan even managed to find a fresh path into the much-covered Tizol-Ellington standard.Palazzo and Bougerol may affect a casual demeanour — they chat and joke with each other as if playing in a neighbourhood bar — but the concert rattled along. In previous shows the tap dancing interludes have been a relatively sedate affair. The present dancer, AC Lincoln, is a much more flamboyant performer; his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat, he has a slightly humanoid, Max Headroom-style persona.The three-man horn section was raw and visceral. Even if the sound mix did Bougerol few favours, her understated vocals, with that bluesy, Peggy Lee edge to them, drew us close. Her ability to sing Comes Love and that Disney anthem I Wanna Be Like You in French was a cute touch too. Yes, a cartoon song at a jazz gig, but who cares, as long as it swings?
Nate Chinen for NPR – There are probably better uses for a time machine — but if you could drop in on the band room at Philadelphia’s High School for Creative and Performing Arts, sometime in the late 1980s, you’d encounter some historic jazz talent in the making. I’m referring in particular to the untouchable organ virtuoso Joey DeFrancesco and the irreproachable bassist Christian McBride.
They were musical brothers then, bound by a deep love of the jazz tradition and the impressive scope of their youthful abilities. And while each has followed his own path since — leading bands, making albums, achieving preeminence in the field — that fraternal bond hasn’t faded or faltered. So for this soulful episode of Jazz Night in America, it was only fitting that McBride, our host, reconnects with DeFrancesco in the City of Brotherly Love.
Over the course of the show, we’ll hear music from some sharp, recent DeFrancesco gigs at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, as well as a taste of his spiritually-minded new album, In the Key of the Universe. And we’ll hear what it sounds like when a couple of outspoken Philly cats lock into a groove. Pull up a chair and enjoy some reminiscing, some reflecting, some repartee — even a bit of spontaneous singing — as Chris McB catches up with Joey D.
Jeffrey Greenblatt for JamBase – Joe Russo’s Almost Dead hit the midway point of their three-night stand at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester on Saturday. The Grateful Dead tribute act was joined by guitarist Jonathan Goldberger during their second set and teamed up with Red Baraat during their encore on a night that also saw them serve up a pair of bust outs.
The five-piece opened things up with a Tom Hamilton led take on the “Stagger Lee.” The traditional folk tune was followed by the first surprise of the night as they unearthed their take on “My Brother Essau.” The latter-day Grateful Dead chestnut was last played back on March 17, 2017. George Jones country classic “The Race Is On” came ahead of an expansive “Help On The Way” and “Slipknot!” Instead of closing out the classic trifecta with “Franklin’s Tower” the quintet looked to another country tune as they delivered Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” A tender “Stella Blue” came ahead of a set-closing take on the Americana-rocker “Brown-Eyed Women.”
When JRAD emerged for their second set of the night they were joined by Goldberger. With the extra guitarist in tow, they worked their way through an extended stretch of freeform jazz-tinged weirdness that eventually melted into the psychedelic-drenched “Blues For Allah.” Last night marked the band’s second ever attempted of the title track to the Dead’s 1975 album which had been sitting on the shelf since October 8, 2016. The now six-piece act then dug in on a fiery, must-hear version of “Saint Stephen.” “Truckin,” The Band’s interpretation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” and “Casey Jones” helped fill out the back half of the frame. The day-appropriate “One More Saturday Night” that featured the band jamming on Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” brought the stanza to an end.
Red Baraat, who played an opening set at Garcia’s, worked their way through the crowd from the back of the venue second line-style to stage to get the encore going. An extended jam followed as, drummer Joe Russo joined in prior to the rest of JRAD emerging as well as Goldberger. The ensemble then lit into a raucous show-closing take on Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
The Kurland Agency is proud to welcome the KRUGER BROTHERS for all European bookings!
They are available as a trio, 7-piece with the Kontras Quartet, or for symphonic offerings.
Watch the Kruger Brothers with Steve Martin live on the Late Show with David Letterman
Sarah Kerson and Nate Chinen for NPR – Renee Rosnes has seen her share of jazz supergroups. Thirty years ago, she held down the piano chair with Out of the Blue, a youthful all-star crew formed by Blue Note Records. She was a charter member of the SFJAZZ Collective. So she had a wealth of experience to draw from when she recently formed a supergroup of her own.
Reaching across generations and nationalities, Rosnes enlisted some of the most accomplished artists on the scene: Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, drummer Allison Miller, bassist Noriko Ueda and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. This impressive cohort went on its first tour under the banner of International Women’s Day, after which it acquired a new name: Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the hunt.
Jazz Night in America caught up with Artemis at the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival, where the band’s commanding set included both originals (like Rosnes’ “Galapagos”) and jazz standards (like Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners”). And we sat in on a conversation between Cohen, Jensen and journalist Natalie Weiner, which touched on both the magical qualities of the group and some of the challenges its members have faced as female musicians in what’s still a male-dominated field.
“I don’t think we’re there yet, where somebody would look at a group like Artemis and just think of it as a band without actually having to mention, ‘Oh, it’s an all-woman band,’ or ‘It’s an all-female band,'” Rosnes says. But listen to the music in this show and you’ll understand how a project like this is making a difference — and plenty of noise, in the best possible way.
Congratulations to Kurland artist Twisted Pine, winner of Best Americana Band at the prestigious Boston Music Awards on December 12, 2018. Described recently by the Boston Globe as “boundary jumpers akin to outfits like Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek, and Crooked Still,” Twisted Pine is excited to be heading into the studio in January to record their full-length Summer of ’19 release from Signature Sounds Recordings. Catch them on tour around the Great Lakes in January; in Montreal at Folk Alliance International in February; and on a handful of winter nights with Jerry Douglas and the Earls of Leicester, including the Back Porch Festival in Northampton, MA, on March 2.
Felix Contreras for NPR – Cuba is known as much for their pianists as their percussionists — you’ll see why with this performance.
Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa and his trio open their performance with some help from a recording of famed Afro-Cuban folkloric singer Lázaro Ros. Ros is both a musical and spiritual guide for this performance; the trio dug deep into the ritual music of santeria for inspiration with “Eleguá,” a tribute to one of the Afro-Cuban deities. (Special mention should be made of Harold’s brother, Ruy López-Nussa, on drums, and bassist Gastón Joya, who both fill the spaces between the beats while elegantly leaving breathing room within the performances.)
“Preludio” demonstrates the telepathic connection between these musicians, while subtlety and emotion are not sacrificed for the slower tempo.
“Hialeah” has the recognizable piano riffs — called guajeos — that we can recognize as originating with Cuban dance music, but the trio deftly melds that rhythm to a complex jazz exploration, without compromising its danceable pulse.
Catch two blues-rock titans together on tour in 2019!
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