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OKeh announces a 12-city North American tour for Bill Frisell‘s Big Sur Quintet (Nov. 6, 2013, through Jan. 23, 2014). The tour is in support of his new album, Big Sur, and will feature violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang, cellist Hank Roberts and drummer Rudy Royston (who are all featured on the album as well).
The tour will include performances at the Sunset Cultural Center in Carmel, Calif.; Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz, Calif.; The Shedd in Eugene, Ore.; The Aladdin Theater in Portland, Ore.; The Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle, Wash.; Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; Clifton Center in Louisville, Ky.; SPACE in Evanston, Ill.; Wolftrap in Vienna, Va.; Le Poisson Rouge in New York City; Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Minn., and SFJAZZ in San Francisco, Calif.
The project marks Frisell’s OKeh debut as well as the first album featuring the Big Sur Quintet (which combines his 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers trio). Born of a Monterey Jazz Festival commission in 2012, Big Sur features an hour of original music, that explicitly references the coastal-mountain environment of Big Sur, California. The quintet recorded Big Sur at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, with longtime Frisell collaborators Lee Townsend and Adam Muñoz producing and engineering, respectively.
The commission included a residency at Glen Deven Ranch, an 860-acre property bequeathed to the Big Sur Land Trust. Glen Deven’s beauty and quietude provided Frisell with both inspiration and something even more rare: time to be alone with his muse (for the first ten day stay in April 2012).
“It was extraordinary. You’re surrounded by forest, and there’s a trail that you can walk to the end of the bluff, where the land just drops off and you see the whole panorama of the Big Sur coast and the Pacific Ocean,” says Frisell in a news release. “That’s what I woke up to every morning. It was incredible.”
Stellar Award nominated balladeer Earnest Pugh has returned to the top of the music chart with his new, highly anticipated The W.I.N. (Worship In Nassau) Experience. The CD debuts at No. 1 on next week’s Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart, and the radio single “More of You” climbs to #14 on Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart.
“It’s impossible to articulate in words what I am feeling right now,” says Pugh in a news release. “Though it’s my sixth CD release, my heart leaps with joy and appreciation today just as it did 15 years ago when I released my very first CD. I am blown away by the response, love, and support of the W.I.N. Project. I cannot take all the credit. I have been blessed with an amazing team of people to create and push this project. There are so many people to thank such as my personal staff, radio promoter Damon Stewart, TKO Marketing, Central South Distribution, plus, all of the great guest artists and singers. They all put their hands to the plow and we never looked back.”
Recorded live in Nassau, Bahamas, in the Grand Ballroom of the Atlantis Hotel, the album commemorates Pugh’s 20-15 Celebration -20 years in ministry and 15 years in the music industry. The full-length concert boasted cameos by gospel icon Shirley Caesar, Bishop Rance Allen, LeJuene Thompson and the energetic choir, Vincent Tharpe & Kenosis. The companion DVD video will soon hit retail shelves as well. For more information, visit www.earnestpugh.com.
According to a recent news release, Mosaic Records is set to release The Complete Sun Ship Session which includes newly discovered and previously unissued alternate takes from one of the final studio sessions by the John Coltrane Quartet. The three LP set will be released August 6 and was also made available on a two-disc set through Verve Records on April 16.
Sun Ship, recorded Aug. 26, 1965, captures one of the last sessions by the Classic John Coltrane Quartet (Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones). It comes at the culmination of a year in which Coltrane arguably reached his creative peak, a year rich in such masterworks. The Sun Ship album, though, was not issued until 1971, one of several Coltrane albums issued by Impulse Records after his death. And Sun Ship was, like many jazz albums, the product of editing between takes, a process overseen by John’s widow Alice.
John Coltrane‘s Sun Ship session was recorded at the RCA Recording studio on 24th Street by engineer Bob Simpson who also did superb work with Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Albert Ayler and others. The original three-track masters with the tenor sax on one track, the piano and bass on another and the drums on the third track were recently discovered, enabling the complete session to be released for the first time. Kevin Reeves remixed the entire session from the original three-track masters with great sonic results, improving greatly on the original LP mix. Mosaic has remastered them and pressed them on 180-gram vinyl at the renowned Record Technology Inc. plant in Camarillo, Calif.
This limited edition set is available exclusively from Mosaic Records.
Composer/pianist Myra Melford. Photo Credit: Michael Wilson
Pianist, composer and Guggenheim fellow Myra Melford realizes two long-cherished dreams on her beautiful new release, Life Carries Me This Way (Firehouse 12). The album is both Melford’s first solo piano recording and a tribute to her friend, the late California visual artist Don Reich. Each of the eleven tracks was directly inspired by one of Reich’s rich, colorful canvases, brought to vivid sonic life by Melford’s deeply spiritual and personal compositions.
In the artist’s work, Melford found a range of artistic expression equal to the diversity and vibrancy of her own broad palette of invention. “Don takes a wide range of approaches to painting, from very abstract to almost cartoonish,” she explains in a news release. “Seeing his paintings made me want to play the piano, and his very wide range from abstracts to landscapes to still lifes allowed me to cover a range of my own playing from dense, polytonal, high-energy work to very simple, beautiful melodies. I felt like there was room for all of that in the scope of his artwork.”
Reich, who passed away in 2010 after suggesting a number of artworks for Melford’s interpretation, was a longtime friend of the pianist’s family. It was that closeness that led Melford to choose his work as the basis for her long-awaited solo debut. “There’s something so immediate and personal about any kind of solo,” Melford says. “But particularly for me to play solo piano, I’m completely exposed, I’m not covered up by the orchestration or by other people playing. So that seemed to be the best way for me to communicate personally how I feel about Don’s artwork. There’s no one else to interpret it but me.”
Such personal connections were vital to Melford’s approach to writing this music. Reich’s paintings “Barcelona” and “Sagrada Familia” immediately summoned memories of Melford’s own visits to the Spanish city and its landmark Gaudí-designed church. “My experience in those places was overlaid against stories that Don had told me about being there,” Melford says. “So there were several levels of information that went into informing how the music came about for each piece.”
Most important, perhaps, was Melford’s friendship with the artist, whose personality is laced throughout her meditations on his work. “Don was a really quirky, unique individual and a very joyful person,” she recalls. “He took great pleasure in life and was a really keen observer. He was very sense-oriented, so that also informed my perception and my response to his paintings.”
Typically for Melford, who has drawn inspiration from a number of spiritual, musical and artistic traditions throughout her career, Life Carries Me This Way is a solo album that is still something of a collaborative effort. “Another way to describe that would be a sense of connectedness,” she suggests. “Nothing really exists in a vacuum, and of course all of these connections that are important to me are part of how I express myself as an artist.”
Raised in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house, Melford grew up literally surrounded by art, and has since crafted a singular sound world that harmonizes the intricate and the expressive, the meditative and the assertive, the cerebral and the playful. She draws inspiration from a vast spectrum of traditions and disciplines, from the writings of Persian poet Rumi and the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano to the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the Huichol Indians of Mexico, to the music of mentors like Jaki Byard, Don Pullen, and Henry Threadgill.
Melford’s palette expands from the piano to the harmonium and electronic keyboards or to amplifying barely audible sounds in the piano’s interior. Her playing can build from the blissful and lyrical to the intense and angular. In 2013, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She was also the winner of the 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts for Music and has been honored numerous times in DownBeat’s Critics Poll since 1991.
Marc Cary has gained a reputation as one of the most creative pianists of our time, a bandleader with musical interests that encompass jazz, go-go, hip-hop, electronic music, Indian classical music and more. But Cary is also an incisive and sought-after accompanist, a fact famously borne out by his 12-year tenure (beginning in 1994) with the great vocalist, songwriter and jazz icon Abbey Lincoln.
For the Love of Abbey (Motema Music), Cary’s first solo piano recording, is the most personal and heartfelt of tributes, shedding light on Lincoln’s remarkable body of work and honoring her extraordinary gift for melody and song craft.
“Abbey’s compositions are worthy of an instrumental approach because they’re so rich and lend themselves to be interpreted as instrumentals,” says Cary in a news release.
Cary’s tenure with Lincoln was longer than that of any other pianist. And Cary was following in the footsteps of the very best: Mal Waldron, Hank Jones, Wynton Kelly and Kenny Barron, among others.
“I try not to freak myself out by saying, ‘Wow, now I’m the one,'” Cary reflects. “It made me feel good but it didn’t influence me in any way, because Abbey wanted something new, something in the moment.”
Even when paring down to solo piano on For the Love of Abbey, Cary makes music of great orchestrational variety and depth. Still, he heeds the wisdom of Lincoln herself, who would often admonish him with the words: “It’s a simple song.” As Cary says, “With Abbey I had to play differently than I did. It changed my whole perspective. I learned how to deconstruct myself.”
Asked for the single most valuable lesson he got from Abbey Lincoln, Cary responds: “Learning how to shed things you don’t need, and claim what is yours.”
Singer-songwriter Kristin Errett releases debut album, Confessions of a Songbird, available on iTunes here. Errett, 23, initially began honing her craft as a teenager by playing piano, writing songs and performing in regional theater.
Showcasing musical influences from Sara Bareilles, Stevie Nicks, Carole King and more, Kristin’s unique vocals combine elements of jazz and soul to create a pleasant piano-pop driven aural experience while “lines and phrases form the backbone of Errett’s debut album,” declares Leading Us Absurd in a news release. The playful lead single “Don’t Call Me Sweetheart” is available for free download HERE.
Justin Time Records is proud to release vocalist Alex Pangman‘s new album, Have a Little Fun (available tomorrow, June 11). The album features legendary guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, and is Pangman’s second release for the Canadian music label.
Have a Little Fun finds the young Toronto chanteuse on a baker’s dozen of swing era standards and originals penned in the same vintage style. Along with Pizzarelli, a seven-decade veteran who’s played with Les Paul, Benny Goodman, and Stephane Grappelli, Pangman is joined by her long-running band, The Alleycats.
Since her teens, Pangman has earned a devoted following in her native Canada, garnering three National Jazz Award nominations, twice as “Jazz Vocalist of the Year” and once for “Best Original Song,” and she has performed three showcases at the renowned Festival International de Jazz de Montréal.
The carefree attitude expressed in the title has been earned in part through Pangman’s lifelong struggle with lung disease, which culminated in a successful double lung transplant in 2008. “I was born with lung disease so I’ve always had that perspective,” she says in a recent news release, “but it’s been freshly reinvigorated. Life is precious, and if you sit around with your gut in a twist, it’s really not worth it.”
Have a Little Fun came together quickly, when Pangman learned that Pizzarelli would be performing in her hometown of Toronto. Despite a half-century’s difference in their ages, the two quickly bonded over their shared love of 1930s song. “He’s in his eighties and I’m in my thirties,” Pangman says, “but we quickly became friends because we both love these melodies and these songs. That lineage is what binds us together.”
Pangman has been christened “Canada’s Sweetheart of Swing,” a title threatened when her cystic fibrosis began to compromise her ability to sing. A donor was fortuitously located, and she came back from her double lung transplant with her 2011 disc 33.
Since the surgery, Pangman says, Have a Little Fun has taken hold as “my mantra in life. You can have a million smackers and a fancy car, but if you’re not having any fun, what’s the point? You’re not here forever, so try to enjoy yourself.”
Mark Temple, chairman of the 2013 Charlie Christian International Music Festival, announced via a recent news release the updated schedule of events that will take place during the weekend of the festival in Oklahoma City. The “Feel Deep Deuce Brunch” scheduled at Urban Roots, 322 NE 2nd St. in Oklahoma City, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. is on schedule for Saturday, June 8. There will not be an admission charge. The music will be provided by “Miss Muffy and Friends” and Deep Deuce stories with author Anita Arnold.
Other events at the Bricktown Ballpark are being re-scheduled for a later date because of complications arising from the recent tornadoes and flooding.
“While Saturday and Sunday may look like perfect days, the recent and continued rains have inhibited our ability to properly stage and produce the concerts. The public will be notified of the re-schedule of these programs,” Temple said. “Expectations are that the concerts will likely be scheduled later this year or early fall, most likely,” he concluded. Ticket buyers can get refunds by going to outlets where they purchased or they may hold on to their tickets which will be honored at the re-scheduled events.
One of the New York City area’s most popular radio personalities Liz Black has gone nationwide with a new syndicated weekend radio program, “Inspirations with Liz Black.” The two-hour show airs Sunday afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern time on the Rejoice Musical Soulfood Network.
“Joining forces with Rejoice Radio Networks is another blessed avenue to be able to meet the needs of gospel music lovers,” says Black in a news release. She also hosts weekly radio shows on WBLS 107.5 FM and WLIB 1190 AM in The Big Apple.
“This opportunity will allow me to take my love for Jesus and gospel music to a wider audience,” she said. “It’s time to take the New York City flava gospel style to the masses. I love what I do and look forward to working closely with Rejoice and its affiliates.”
“Liz Black is one of the most talented air personalities in the business,” says Mike Chandler, president of Rejoice Radio Networks Musical Soulfood. “We are honored to have Liz join our team. She brings a level of excellence that will enhance our offerings to radio stations across the country.”
Rejoice is a network of radio stations that play a mixture of contemporary and traditional gospel songs. It also features specialized programming from Dottie Peoples, Dorinda Clark-Cole, Pastor Jamal Bryant, Soulfunny and comedian Akintunde. Fans of gospel music can listen to the network globally on www.musicalsoulfood.com or via the mobile app.
Black began her radio career as an announcer on Tri-State Christian radio stations such as WWDJ, WMCA and WFDU in the late 1990s. She moved to New York’s 24-hour gospel station WLIB in 2007 where, in addition to hosting her own show, she frequently sits-in for Bishop Hezekiah Walker’s daily “Afternoon Praise” radio program. In 2010 she joined the legendary R&B radio powerhouse WBLS where she hosts “Sunday Praise.” She still finds time to host “Midday Café” on k107 FM Jamz in Toronto, Canada. Black is also the founder of a monthly Gospel Variety Show/Open Mic program at various locations throughout the NY-NJ-CT Tri-State area.
