Author: TKA

NEW ALBUM: Maria Schneider Releases New Album

Ivan Hewett for THE TELEGRAPH

The jazz orchestra is a notoriously expensive beast, which is why relatively few jazz composers choose to work with it. Composer and band leader Maria Schneider is one of those few. Over several decades she’s defied economic logic to work exclusively within the medium, refining her art as composer and arranger to the point where she now has few if any peers. Her latest album, some 10 years in the making, shows just what a supple and powerful instrument a jazz orchestra can be. The title refers to a farm owned by some family friends in the South-West corner of Minnesota, near where Schneider was raised herself. It’s unspectacular country, apart from those occasions when a storm boils up on the horizon, but Schneider loves it deeply. The eight numbers on the album, all composed by Schneider, evoke its quiet, unspectacular beauty. The liner notes are an indispensable part of the
experience, picturing the landscape and its wildlife through Audobon’s bird paintings and photographs of country lanes that to a British viewer look remarkably familiar – until you turn the page and encounter another image, which shows this landscape is on an altogether vaster scale.

Read the full article at The Telegraph

Maria Schneider on TKA

INTERVIEW: Bettye LaVette Comes Roaring Back

On the heels of a high-profile two-week gig at New York’s Cafe Carlyle, Bettye LaVette is returning to the Washington area this week, where she played at the old Howard Theatre in 1962, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008 and President Obama’s first inauguration celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, where she sang “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
Read the full article on The Washington Post 
Bettye LaVette on TKA 

INTERVIEW: Joey DeFrancesco – Born to Play B-3 Organ

Growing up in Philadelphia, organist Joey DeFrancesco sat in with Hank Mobley when he was 10. Word spread. He joined Miles Davis’s band at age 17, went on to perform with John McLaughlin, Ray Charles, Elvin Jones and many others. A protégé and friend of the late Jimmy Smith, he has been at the top of the B-3 crop for 20-plus years, and now is the model for a new generation of players.

Read the full article on MERCURY NEWS
Joey DeFrancesco on TKA

Soul Rebels Plan NYC Hip-Hop Collaborations

Photo by David Grunfeld, Nola.com |The Times-Picayune

Alison Fensterstock for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

New Orleans brass bands to emerge on the scene after the Dirty Dozen established its seminal, hybrid funk-jazz-R&B sound in the late 1970s are all technically – and most often, audibly, too – of the hip-hop generation. The consistently creative Soul Rebels, who have proven themselves to be up for almost anything via onstage collaborations with acts like Metallica, Green Day and Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, plus a collaborative cover of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” alongside Big Freedia, are among those who have dived in deepest.

Their 2013 “Power = Power” mixtape took on contemporary hits by the likes of Drake, Jay Z, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West. Earlier this year, the crafty crew played a three-night stand at New York City’s Brooklyn Bowl, sharing the stage with guest like Rakim, Pharoahe Monch, Black Thought and founding father Afrika Bambataa, as well as a tribute to D’Angelo and Marvin Gaye performed with special guest Roy Hargrove. (Video below, via Okayplayer.) Last summer, also at Brooklyn Bowl, they backed the critically acclaimed New York rapper Joey Bada$$.

This summer, the Soul Rebels are back at it: on June 26 they’ll host the midnight “Rebel Jam” at New York’s Blue Note club, featuring Rakim, Essence Festival performer Slick Rick, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, Styles P and Sheek Louch of the Lox and jamband stalwart Eric Krasno, plus more surprise guests.

Like a lot of New Orleans musicians, the Soul Rebels are on the road in cooler climes for most of this summer. (An Essence reunion with Slick Rick isn’t in the cards; they’ll be in Istanbul, then on their way to the prestigious North Sea Jazz Festival.)

Soul Rebels trumpeter (and NOCCA grad) Julian Gosin joined us recently at a record store to talk about his influences, which ranged from Nas to Hall and Oates to Clark Terry.