Mack Records has announced that Grammy winning pianist Danilo Pérez will be joining the label. An extraordinary Panamanian artist, composer and educator, Pérez’s distinctive blend of Pan-American jazz (covering the music of the Americas, folkloric and world music) has attracted critical acclaim and loyal audiences.
“It has been a long journey full of unexpected twists up to now and I am looking forward to the next chapter of my life,” Pérez said.
“Danilo is an artist of uncompromising artistry,” Mack Avenue Records President Denny Stilwell said. “We are pleased to have him as a member of the Mack Avenue family and look forward to an album that will mark a new beginning in his expansive career.”
Pérez has recorded and performed with Wayne Shorter, Steve Lacy, Roy Haynes, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, Tito Puente, and Wynton Marsalis, among others.
He plans to release his debut Mack Avenue Records album in 2010.
Category: releases
Mack Avenue label imprint Sly Dog Records has released seven titles by Kenny Rankin (who died in Los Angeles from lung cancer on June 7, 2009 at 69) for download and the titles will be available by compact disc at popular retailers on Nov. 3, 2009.
The following titles are “Mind-Dusters,” “Family,” “Like a Seed,” “Silver Morning,” “Inside,” “The Kenny Rankin Album,” and “After The Roses.” All seven CDs will be available at online digital sellers (iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc.).
Rankin, who grew up in New York City, came into the larger public consciousness in the early 1970s. It was the era of the singer-songwriter, and although he fit the profile, Rankin transcended that genre. Rankin brought a finely tuned sophistication and a capacity for a surprising variety of musical expression to contemporary pop music.
absorbed the many forms of music around him like a sponge. He sang a cappella in the hallways of the same neighborhood that Dion DiMucci and Teddy Randazzo lived in. It would be no surprise to his old friends when doo-wop elements surfaced later in songs such as “Roll-A-Round” on the “Inside” album.
A Greenwich Village apprenticeship brought Rankin into contact with producer Tom Wilson in 1965. At Wilson’s invitation, Rankin played rhythm guitar on “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” for Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home.”
Pianist/bandleader Ramsey Lewis will release “Songs From the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey” on Concord Records. The CD will contain a refined collection of 12 new originals that he composed over a period of two years.
The collection includes music from two commissioned world premiere performances at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill. Eight songs come from the 2007 ballet score “To Know Her,” written for the Joffrey Ballet Company and four pieces come from 2008’s “Muses and Amusements” suite performed with the Turtle Island Quartet.
“Songs From the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey” features eight pieces with bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce, and four piano solo performances. The project marks a turning point in Lewis’ storied career – now as a composer.
New York guitarist and composer Pete McCann will release his fourth solo album “Extra Mile” on Nineteen-Eight Records.
McCann is joined by alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher and Henry Hey on keyboards, as well as his long-time collaborators bassist Matt Clohesy and drummer Mark Ferber. These ten originals demonstrate McCann’s deep roots in jazz while allowing him to branch off into the diverse sound-worlds he’s loved since his youth.
McCann, a native of Eau Claire, Wis., has worked with artists as diverse as Kenny Wheeler, Dave Liebman, Lee Konitz, Kenny Garrett, Peter Erskine, Gary Thomas, Greg Osby, Brian Blade, and the Maria Schneider Orchestra.
Concord Music Group will celebrate the legacy of Lester Young with the August 4 release of “Lester Young: Centennial Celebration.”
The 10-track compilation is the latest installment in Concord’s ongoing Centennial Celebration series, which honors the 100th birthdays of some of the most iconic and influential figures in jazz history.
Compiled and produced by Nick Phillips, Concord Music Group’s vice president of Jazz and Catalog A&R, “Lester Young: Centennial Celebration” draws primarily from recordings made in December 1956, during Young’s week-long run at Olivia Davis’ Patio Lounge in Washington, D.C. Young was accompanied in the first seven tracks by the Bill Potts Trio, the house band at the Patio Lounge: pianist Bill Potts, bassist Norman Williams and drummer Jim Lucht.
Even during his lifetime, Young’s approach had become highly imitated in jazz by such luminaries as Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and John Coltrane.
Trumpeter-bandleader and Mack Avenue Recording artist Sean Jones has not only performed at the Jazz Studio at the White House, hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama, in June, but Jones is preparing to release a new project “The Search Within” in August.
“The Search Within,” Jones’ fifth project, is described as “a journey inside my soul that’s taken place over the past 10 years.” He says “it’s an assessment of where I am in the present as well as how I’ve learned from my mistakes and triumphs as a way of looking into the future. This album goes very deep for me. It’s a spiritual and sonic journey for me.”
Jones and his quintet, consisting of Orrin Evans (piano), Brian Hogans (alto sax), Walter Smith (tenor sax), Luques Curtis (bass), and John Davis (drums) – will perform at a CD release event at Jazz Standard at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 11 and Wednesday, Aug. 12. For more information, go online to http://www.seanjonesmusic.com/.
Count Basie Orchestra presents “Swinging, Singing, Playing: The Count Basie Orchestra Salutes the Jazz Masters,” a 11-track CD that salutes jazz titans as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Freddie Hubbard and John Coltrane, in addition to such living legends as Bennett, Quincy Jones, Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Jon Hendricks, Curtis Fuller, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and others.
Produced by Mack Avenue’s executive vice president of A&R Al Pryor and CBO producer / conductor of special projects Dennis Wilson, Count Basie Orchestra achieves just what the CD title boasts: a swinging good time of extraordinary blues-fueled performances that hail various jazz legends. There are top-drawer performances by the big band and its all-star guest list that includes Jones, Wess, Hendricks, Fuller, Geri Allen, Nnenna Freelon, Janis Siegel, Butch Miles, Rufus Reid and, in a nod to the younger generation that embraces Basie music, sparkplug singer/pianist Jamie Cullum. The project will be released on Aug. 25 on Mack Records.
Vibraphonist-composer Stefon Harris is set to release his 7th album as a bandleader in August. The 10-track “Urbanus” picks up where 2004’s “Evolution” left off in that it features Harris’ ensemble Blackout that’s as versed in modern jazz as it is with rhythms, melodies and soundscapes associated with R&B, pop, hip-hop and funk.
Marc Cary complements his acoustic piano with Fender Rhodes and alto saxophonist Casey Benjamin lends his captivating vocoder work to the proceeding. Harris’ broadening textures and colors comes to play with his sensational woodwind and string arrangements on a few of the compositions. New Blackout bassist Buster Williams rounds out the group.
Harris and Blackout will be on tour to promote “Urbanus” (on Concord Jazz label) starting in September 2009.
Drummer and composer Matt Wilson will release his eighth CD and first quartet CD since 2003 on July 7.
Wilson describes “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” as “getting a chance to have this great band record again!” Alongside Wilson, alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo, tenor saxophonist Jeff Lederer and bassist Chris Lightcap are all in fine form. All the members of the Quartet have played together since the late 1990s, though this marks Lightcap’s first recorded appearance with the group.
“That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” was recorded by Matt Balitsaris at Maggie’s Farm.
The CD contains a wide spectrum of repertoire, with originals by all of the members. “To have everybody else contribute a song too, that makes it more special,” Wilson says. “I think it’s much like the player, they have distinct personalities, and we blend together, but you can always tell the personality. That’s the way the tunes work together too.”
Jazz keyboard virtuoso Eldar will be releasing his latest CD, “Virtue,” August 25 on Sony Masterworks.
“Virtue” is the follow-up to Eldar’s 2008 Grammy-nominated album, “re-imagination.” Partnered by bassist Armando Gola and Ludwig Afonso, “Virtue” features original compositions by Eldar. Eldar also welcomes guest appearances by trumpeter Nicholas Payton and saxophonists Joshua Redman and Felipe Lamoglia.
Born in Kyrgyzstan and raised in Kansas City, Eldar started playing jazz festivals before the age of ten (in what was then the Soviet Union). In 1998, he and his family emigrated to the United States and resettled in Kansas City. He became the youngest guest ever to appear on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. Later, he pursued advanced study at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and eventually began enjoying a career that has seen him in performances throughout the United States, Europe, Indonesia, Japan and South America.