Svetlana & The Delancey Five Energize the Connection
Between Band and Audience with Vintage-Inspired
Swing on Debut Album Night at the Speakeasy
Available January 15 on Origin / OA2 Records
The
sounds of hot jazz and swing conjure images of a long-lost world of
back-alley speakeasies, frenetic dancers, bathtub gin and tommy
gun-toting gangsters. Monday night regulars at New York's Back Room,
where Svetlana & The Delancey Five have held swinging court
for more than three years, know that the world isn't quite as lost as it
may seem (minus the gangsters and with booze made in more sanitary
conditions).
With the release of Night at the Speakeasy, produced by Grammy® Award-winner Guy Eckstine and co-produced by drummer Rob Garcia, the rest of us finally have the chance to revel in the sounds of the Delancey Five and their Moscow-born chanteuse, Svetlana Shmulyian (Eckstine called her "Astrid Gilberto via Moscow").
This is no strict throwback band, however; the repertoire on their
debut album combines swing-era classics with modern pop songs by the
Beatles and the Beach Boys, and original tunes from the pen of Svetlana
and her bandmates, who are also noted for their work in the
straightahead and modern jazz worlds. There's even a tune by the
Russian-German trumpeter/composer Eddie Rosner sung by Svetlana in her
native tongue.
"No
other band on the hot jazz and swing scene would do a song in Russian,"
says Svetlana with considerable understatement. "I'm interested in
songs in any genre. I wanted to write and record songs that you could
dance to but that you could also listen to on the radio, in the car, or
wherever. It's music that makes you smile."
Indeed,
it's hard to suppress a grin when Svetlana's sweet, winsome tones
intertwine with the warm, gravelly voice of legendary trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.
Over the years that Svetlana has been performing on the New York jazz
scene, Gordon has become a mentor and collaborator, contributing several
arrangements to Night at the Speakeasy along with singing
and playing on the album. "Wycliffe has a natural chemistry with the
band," Svetlana says. "He's truly one of the most professional,
supportive musicians and band members that I know. He behaves like a
soldier in an army that I lead, and then when he steps out the whole
room lights up in a different color."
Gordon
joins an all-star band that includes drummer Rob Garcia, a bandleader
on the modern Brooklyn scene as well as an in-demand sideman (Wynton
Marsalis, Anat Cohen, Woody Allen, Vince Giordano, Dianna Krall);
Australian-born reeds player Adrian Cunningham, (lead alto
saxophone for Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, Wycliffe Gordon,
Professor Cunningham and His Old School); trumpeter Charlie Caranicas
(Independence Hall Jazz Band, the Karrin Allyson Group, Chico
O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra); master ragtime and stride
pianist Dalton Ridenhour (Bria Skomberg, Vince Giordano); bassist George Delancey (Winard Harper, Christian Howes, Richard Galliano, Aaron Diehl); and guitarist Vinny Raniolo (longtime collaborator with Frank Vignola).
Every
Monday the band plays for a packed crowd combining swing dancers, jazz
aficionados, and those Svetlana refers to as "jazz curious" at the Back
Room, one of only two speakeasies from the days of Prohibition still
operating today. Located behind Ratner's Deli on Delancey Street (hence
the name of the band), the clandestine bar was purportedly the haunt of
such underworld notables as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.
Since forming in the spring of 2012, Svetlana & The Delancey Five
have gone on to consistently sell out a number of renowned New York
jazz venues including the Blue Note, B.B. King's, Ginny's Supper Club,
Zinc Bar, City Winery, and Kitano while maintaining their home base at
the Back Room. The
band has also become one of the most in-demand features at the numerous
sold out hot jazz and swing events (Prohibition Production, Gemeni
& Scorpio, Times Square flashmobs which consistently draw hundreds
of attendants) - as well as secured residencies in popular Brooklyn
spots whereby seamlessly integrating into the thriving Brooklyn music
scene. It's an interesting culmination of the story of a Russian girl
who grew up singing, studying piano and classical vocal, singing in
traditional Russian choirs - but, at insistence of her family of
engineers, studied a more practical subject of mathematics.
It's
not an immigrant story that begins in hardship, however. "I had a
fabulous, happy childhood in the dark concrete buildings of Moscow,"
Svetlana recalls. "I have a great family and I guess that's where it
starts and ends - it doesn't matter where you are or how long you have
to stand in line to get bread and butter. I come from a family of nerds
and engineers and the reality of becoming a full-time artist seemed
really far-fetched, but in my heart of hearts I always knew I was an
artist."
However
after completing her mathematics degree with high honors in Moscow -
Svetlana enrolled in Moscow College of Improvised Music and Jazz. Still
the scholarship landed her in New York - where she arrived with one
suitcase and a guitar on a crisp autumn day. Soon thereafter she was
playing occasional gigs by night.
It wasn't until the late 2000's that she turned her full attention to
being a musician, after forming a band for a summer music festival. "I
was immediately hooked," she says. "We do this because we couldn't
imagine our lives without it. The exhilaration of coming together with
other musicians and producing this most abstract work of art, there one
minute and gone the next, keeps you wanting to go back so badly."
After
a few years singing in a variety of contexts and languages, Svetlana
fell into the hot jazz and swing circuit, finding the exhilaration in
singing songs she listened to on old LPs since she was a kid and feeling
highly energized by singing for mixed audiences of listeners and
dancers. In a way that style harkened back to her earliest jazz
experience, when she took her school lunch allowance to a Moscow
department store determined to buy the album with the highest number of
songs, whatever it was. That ended up being 30 By Ella, Ella Fitzgerald's 1968 recording of a half-dozen medleys arranged by Benny Carter.
Through the auspices of the Back Room, Svetlana formed the Delancey Five in 2012. She
began writing her own songs at Wycliffe Gordon's behest, and in 2013
enrolled at the one of the most prestigious and demanding graduate jazz
vocal performance programs, the Manhattan School of Music, where she
studied vocal performance with Theo Bleckmann, Gretchen Parlato, and
Kate McGarry, and composition and arranging with Jim McNeely and Phil
Markowitz. The band regularly joins forces with a DJ collective for an
electro-swing series, The Speakeasy Sessions for large-scale
vintage-inspired soirees in warehouse-style venues of the Lower East
Side and Brooklyn. Svetlana is also a frequent featured vocalist of
several New York based big bands (George Gee, Seth Weaver,
etc). Svetlana's vintage-inspired swing appeals strongly to both
dancers and listeners - be that at a high brow jazz club or an
underground Brooklyn speakeasy. The band's "magnificent energy" (noted
by the collaborator, Wycliffe Gordon) reflects the magic of "social
music" which goes to the very root of how swing became popular in 1920s
and why it is on the uprise again today - in that every live performance
creates a strong connection between the band and it's audience that
consumes the music with their minds, their hearts, and their whole
bodies. As Will Friedwald states in the record's liner notes, this may
be the reason why "Svetlana will be singing it and leading one of the
major bands in the idiom for some time to come".
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| Click to Watch the "Night at the Speakeasy" EPK |
Upcoming Svetlana & The Delancey Five Performances:
Jan. 15 / BBKings / New York, NY
Nov. 20 / Shapeshifter Lab / Brooklyn, NY
Dec. 15 / MTA Subway Swing Party / New York, NY
Dec. 25 / Zinc Bar / New York, NY
Jan. 11 / Mezzrow Jazz Club / New York, NY
Jan 13. / Urbo Gotham Club / New York, NY
Svetlana & The Delancey Five Weekly Residences:
Monday / Back Room / New York, NY
Wednesday / Bedford Hall / Brooklyn, NY
Svetlana & The Delancey Five · Night at the Speakeasy
Origin / OA2 Records · Release Date: January 15, 2015
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DL Media · 610-667-0501
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