USA: Rudresh Mahanthappa- Bird Calls (ACT 2015)

There are no Charlie Parker tunes on this album but each track is directly based on a Parker composition or solo.
Historically, it has always been easy to state that Bird's work left an indelible and influential mark on modern music but to prove that fact has been an exciting endeavor. (Rudresh Mahanthappa)


I was blessed to first hear Charlie Parker's music when I was 12 years old. The album was Archetypes. Soon after, I picked up the Bird: Master Takes on Savoy and my world was forever changed. His sheer virtuosity and innovative vocabulary were obviously astounding but what moved and continues to inspire me is the joy, humor, and beauty that he portrays, evokes, and instills. It was Charlie Parker (Bird) who truly embedded the spark for me to make a life in music. I have never looked back since.

While jazz has continued to evolve as a global art, it is of utmost importance to examine its gravitational sources and forces. While Bird's music has been performed and recorded countless times, it is a higher order of magnitude to absorb his work and give new shape and meaning to his gifts. That is to say that imitating Parker is of no consequence to forwarding this form, but developing new perspectives upon tradition is the substance of contemporary expression. I firmly believe that Bird would have wanted his legacy to resonate in this fashion.
There are no Charlie Parker tunes on this album but each track is directly based on a Parker composition or solo. Historically, it has always been "easy" to state that Bird's work left an indelible and influential mark on modern music but to prove that fact has been an exciting endeavor. When removed from its context, much of what Parker played or wrote is as modern as any current work in western music be it jazz, classical, rock, or pop. It has also been an immense pleasure for me to revisit my core roots that predate my concentration on bridging jazz and non-western music.
This album is not a tribute to Charlie Parker. It is a blissful devotion to a man who made so much possible. Bird Calls on all of us to embrace the beauty of the world as it exists here and now.-From the liner notes by Rudresh K. Mahanthappa 

USA: "This Could Be That," 3rd CD by Drummer Brian Andres & Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, Due Jan. 15

"This Could Be That,"

3rd CD by Drummer Brian Andres

& the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel,

Due for Jan. 15 Release by Bacalao Records

Guest Percussionists Include

Alex Acuña, Louie Romero, John Santos, & Michael Spiro

December 8, 2015

Drummer Brian Andres has been leading his powerhouse Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel since 2007, establishing them as a prime voice in the thriving San Francisco Bay Area Latin jazz scene. With his third album, This Could Be That, which is due for release by his Bacalao Records imprint on January 15, Andres and his Cartel exert a firm grip on the music's cutting edge, playing with confidence, poise, and rhythmic imagination.

Featuring a core octet drawn from the cream of local players, This Could Be That includes guest appearances by innovators such as Cuban-American vocalist Venissa Santi, Fania All-Stars timbalero Louie Romero, bata master Michael Spiro, Peruvian percussion star Alex Acuña, and percussion maestro John Santos. Over the past decade, the Cartel has earned a sterling reputation as a turbo-charged vehicle for interpreting challenging material, and This Could Be That includes compositions and arrangements by top-shelf writing talent from within and outside the band's ranks.

"The first two albums we did had concepts," Andres says. "Our debut Drummers Speak [2007] focused on compositions by Latin percussionists and jazz drummers. San Francisco [2013] highlighted composers and arrangers of the Bay Area. On this one, things just happened organically. Everybody wanted to contribute. We ended up with a lot of different things in the record, and there wasn't one single thread." But the album's disparate program expresses the Cartel's vivid and distinctive personality.

In many ways This Could Be That embodies the Bay Area's close-knit Latin music community, which got a burst of international attention when the Pacific Mambo Orchestra won the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Latin Tropical Album. The PMO's co-leaders, German-born trumpeter Steffen Kuehn and Mexico City-raised pianist Christian Tumalan, both play a significant role in the Cartel. Kuehn, who plays on about half the album's tracks, brought in a state-of-the-art timba-powered arrangement of his original "Limite," which features Cuban timbalero Calixto Oviedo as a special guest. And Tumalan, who holds down the Cartel piano chair, "and is integral to developing the sound of the Cartel" Andres says, contributed a thrilling Cubanized arrangement of Chick Corea's Elektric Band anthem "Got a Match?" that slyly references Corea's standards "Armando's Rhumba" and "Spain."

Other highlights include the (translated) title track, "Esto Puede Ser Eso," a lovely cha cha by Cartel percussionist Javier Cabanillas and arranged by Cabanillas and trombonist Jamie Dubberly, who leads one of the Bay Area's top salsa bands, Orquesta Dharma; bassist Saul Sierra's arrangement of the Daniel Ponce salsa classic "Bacalaitos," with legendary Nuyorican percussionist Louie Romero adding conga, timbales, and maraca; and the bilingual bolero rendition of "My One and Only Love," featuring Cuban-American vocalist Venissa Santi as well as Andres's father Mike Andres on alto saxophone (reuniting him with a piece he recorded years ago with Cincinnati's Symphony Jazz Ensemble).

Born (in 1968) and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of professional musicians, Brian Andres started playing drums in the fourth grade. After high school, he took classes at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music but abandoned formal studies once he landed a full-time gig with veteran bluesman Cincinnati Slim and the Headhunters.

Andres was in the midst of a thriving career playing rock, funk, R&B, and blues when he experienced his clave epiphany, courtesy of the Cleveland salsa band Impacto Nuevo. "It changed my trajectory of where I wanted to go," Andres recalls. "I've often likened it to the first time I kissed a girl. I just wanted to do it over and over again. The first time I heard it done well live, it had me."

He put together a Latin jazz band of his own, and started buying up whatever albums he could find, which introduced him to leading Bay Area artists such as John Santos's Machete Ensemble, Andy Narell, and Pete Escovedo. It was Bay Area Latin jazz stalwart, the late Dutch-born drummer Paul van Wageningen, who convinced him to make the move to San Francisco rather than New York or L.A. by offering real encouragement when Andres came through town on a visit.

Landing in the Bay Area in early 1999 at the height of the high-tech boom, Andres quickly found work in an array of Latin settings, playing salsa, Latin funk, and Latin jazz. He undertook his first recording under his own name in 2007, motivated by his love of the multidimensional writing of Latin jazz pioneers Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri, and has been developing the Cartel concept ever since. This month he placed among the Top 20 drummers in the Down Beat Readers Poll, right behind Eric Harland, Dave Weckl, and Cindy Blackman Santana.

"It's an honor to have so many world-class musicians on the new album," says Andres. "That they all were willing to contribute to the recording is a testament to the high quality of music that we've created."

Photography: Ricardo Tellez

Brian Andres & Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, "Amyable" LIVE

Web Site: brianandres.com

     

Media Contact:

Terri Hinte
hudba@sbcglobal.net
510/234-8781

USA: Vocalist Nicolas Bearde's "Invitation," Produced by Nat Adderley Jr., Due Jan. 29

 

"Invitation,"

New CD by Vocalist Nicolas Bearde,

Due for Jan. 29 Release

By Right Groove Records

Produced & Arranged by Nat Adderley Jr., &

Featuring Guest Soloist Vincent Herring on Alto Sax,

CD Is Bearde's 5th Album &

1st Straight-Ahead Jazz Recording

 

CD Release Shows at

Cafe Stritch, San Jose, March 5 &

Sound Rooml, Oakland, March 26

 

 

December 15, 2015

 

Nicolas Bearde is a San Francisco Bay Area treasure. As a charter member of Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra ensemble as well as the innovative vocal sextet SoVoSó, he's long been internationally recognized as a versatile and fearless vocal improviser, charismatic performer, and distinctive jazz and soul stylist.

 

While Bearde has drawn on his love for both R&B and jazz on his previous four CDs, Invitation, the singer's fifth release on his own Right Groove Records label, is his first entirely straight-ahead set of songs. Produced largely by renowned pianist/arranger Nat Adderley Jr., Invitation will be released January 29.

 

"Nat has a way of starting you in a different direction," says Bearde of Adderley, who spent nearly 20 years as music director for Luther Vandross and grew up in a deeply musical family including his cornetist father Nat Sr. and his alto saxophonist uncle Cannonball. "He has a way of voicing chords that is so very musical. You don't have to hear the melody to hear the melody within the chords. We found that during rehearsal of this new material. I thought, this is probably the most beautiful way I've ever heard these songs."

 

The relaxed phrasing and depth of feeling that Bearde brings to such standards as "Nature Boy," "Lush Life," and "Save Your Love for Me" and to a rarely heard vocal version of Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" place him firmly in the tradition of such deep-voiced greats as Billy Eckstine, Al Hibbler, Arthur Prysock, Johnny Hartman, Bill Henderson, Lou Rawls, and Jon Lucien.

 

Seven of the tracks were recorded in East Orange, New Jersey, or Brooklyn, New York, with Adderley on piano, Belden Bullock or Kenny Davis on bass, and Vincent Ector or Rocky Bryant on drums, and, on three tracks, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, considered by many to be Cannonball Adderley's foremost stylistic disciple. "I Want to Talk About You" was produced in Oakland by the late Bud Spangler with pianist John R. Burr, bassist John Wiitala, drummer Akira Tana, and tenor saxophonist Anton Schwartz. "Maiden Voyage" was produced in San Francisco by Bearde and Peter Horvath, who played piano in the company of bassist Gary Brown, drummer Leon Joyce Jr., and percussionist Peter Michael Escovedo.

 

Bearde was introduced to Adderley nearly three years ago while appearing at Trumpets in Montclair, New Jersey. The club's owner recommended that Bearde call Adderley, who lived in the neighborhood, about the possibility of their working together at his next Trumpets engagement.

 

"Nat said 'Send me the music and info, let's hear what you do,'" says Bearde. "So I sent him three albums' worth of material, and he called back and said, 'Where have you been? Why don't people know who you are? Of course I'll work with you.'"

 

 

Nashville native Nicolas Bearde, who's been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1970s, has worked extensively as an actor for stage, screen, and television and as a voice-over artist in addition to his vocal pursuits. By the mid-1980s, he'd hooked up with Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra, and when McFerrin decided to take a break from the group in the mid-'90s, Bearde and other members branched off into a smaller a cappella unit called SoVoSó, which included Molly Holm, Linda Tillery, Rhiannon, Joey Blake, David Worm, and Edgardo Cambon. "We followed in the improvisational tradition of Voicestra, but added more gospel, Latin, and R&B elements," he says.

 

Bearde maintains a busy touring schedule. He has appeared at the Russian River Jazz Festival, San Jose Festival, Salt Lake City Jazz Festival, Usadba Jazz Festival in Russia, and Minsk Jazz Festival in Belarus, as well as such clubs as Yoshi's in both Oakland and San Francisco, B.B. King's and Café Cordial in Los Angeles, and the abovementioned Trumpets.

 

Besides being a master singer, Bearde has distinguished himself as an actor. Since taking part in Juke Box, a 1986 radio play starring Danny Glover, he has appeared in such films as True Crime, Final Analysis, and Pacific Heights; on television in Monk, Henry Lee, Nash Bridges, and Baby Snatcher; on the stage in Flying West, Two Trains Running, Full Moon, Twelfth Night, American Song, and Master Harold...and the Boys; and in commercials for the California Lottery, Chrysler, Orchard Supply Hardware, and Verizon.   

 

Bearde has released four albums through his Right Groove imprint: Crossing the Line (1998), All About Love (2004), Live at Yoshi's: A Salute to Lou [Rawls] (2008), and Visions (2013). Connoisseurs of fine jazz singing will be thankful to hear him in the uncompromising context of Invitation.

 

Nicolas Bearde will be performing two CD release shows in the Bay Area: Saturday 3/5 at Café Stritch in San Jose and Saturday 3/26 at the Sound Room in Oakland.

  

Nicolas Bearde talks about "Invitation."

 

 

Web Site: nicolasbearde.com

     

 

 
Media Contact:

Terri Hinte
hudba@sbcglobal.net
510/234-8781

JAPAN: Nonoko Yoshida – Lotus (2015)

Tracklist:
01 – Take the F Train
02 – Desert Island
03 – Taka 14
04 – Lotus (improvisation)
05 – Uru-kas
06 – Excerpt From 15 Lunatics (for my mother)
07 – East River

Nonoko Yoshida

ITALY/USA: Luca Nostro Quintet, Are You OK? (Jando/Via Veneto Jazz 2015)

This autumn sees the release of Luca Nostro's new contemporary jazz album "Are You OK?" produced by Jando Music (in association with Via Veneto Jazz).
Are you OK? was recorded in New York by Luca Nostro together with a number of renowned American artists, acclaimed by critics and public alike, performing both as leaders and sidemen in innovative groups on the US and global contemporary-jazz scene: Donny McCaslin, John Escreet, Joe Sanders, Tyshawn Sorey.
JANDO

USA Roscoe Mitchell Quartet – Celebrating Fred Anderson (Nessa Records 2015)

Chicago saxophone icon Fred Anderson died in 2010 and since then his birthday has been celebrated by friends, admirers and colleagues. For the 2015 event saxophonist/composer Roscoe Mitchell assembled a quartet for a tribute. The quartet is completed by cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Junius Paul and drummer Vincent Davis. Mitchell prepared four original pieces and adaptations of two Fred Anderson compositions, Bernice and Ladies in Love. The concert was presented at Constellation in Chicago on March 27, 2015.

Nessa Records 

SWITZERLAND Thierry Lang, Heiri Kaenzig, Andi Pupato - Moments In Time (2015)

01. Embrace (5:55)
02. Mosquito Dance (4:41)
03. Traces (5:08)
04. Moby Dick (10:54)
05. Bass Song (4:48)
06. Tender Waltz (5:17)
07. Open Bonds (3:45)
08. Moments In Time (7:52)
09. P.S. (4:33)

Thierry Lang - Piano
Heiri Kaenzig - Bass
Andi Pupato - Percussion