Ramiro Pinheiro(Spain/Brazil)-Limão
Composer: Djavan
Album: Limão
Label: Brasounds Productions
“Limão” is a song written by the great Djavan. It is the opening track for his album “Novena”, announcing the fresh upbeat spirit of that album. This version is an homage to him by these exponents of the new Brazilian Jazz: Ramiro Pinheiro, Rodrigo Balduino, Pedrinho Augusto. Special guest Nahor Gomes is the first trumpeter in SP Jazz Symphony Orchestra, member of Banda Mantiqueira, and has worked with João Donato, Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque, to name a few.
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Tag Archives: guitar
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: Livio Almeida, Rodrigo Bezerra, Rodrigo Balduino(Brazil)- Radamés y Pelé
Livio Almeida, Rodrigo Bezerra, Rodrigo Balduino(Brazil)- Radamés y Pelé
Album: Radamés y Pelé
Label: Brasounds Productions
Radamés y Pelé is a song written by the great maestro Tom Jobim for his last album, to render homage to these two geniuses – and friends of his: the composer Radames Gnatalli and the soccer player Pelé.
This mixture between choro and bossa-nova is the first release of the project Jobiniando, and was handled by 3 exponents of the new Brazilian Jazz: Livio Almeida (sax tenor) has a master’s degree in composition at the Brooklyn College of New York and plays with great names of the American jazz scene, such as the Grammy award winning pianist Arturo O’Farril, Ari Hoening, Helio Alves and Romero Lubambo.
Rodrigo Bezerra (guitar) is one of the most prolific guitar players and composers of his generation. Having recorded 6 albums as a leader, he can easily combine jazz and Brazilian music, and have played with artists such as Ellen Oléria and Carlos Malta.
Rodrigo Balduino (bass) is a member of the Esdras Nogueira Quartet. He has shared the stage with names like Bocato and Dominguinhos and has recently produced the new album of Ramiro Pinheiro, released with the jazz label Fresh Sound Records.
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World Music Mix: Jazando Guitar Duo(Germany) – La Fiesta(2021)
Jazando Guitar Duo(Germany) – La Fiesta
Composer: Chick Corea
Album name: La Fiesta
Label: Calygram(2021)
The Album is a Crossover of Jazz, Classic and Latin-Music.
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Freedom Tree (Norway/Brazil/Mozambique)-Modern Acoustic World Jazz Rock
FREEDOM TREE is a multicultural jazz group that have achieved international popularity among music fans for their eclectic performances, drawing from three continents.
Close friends and colleagues, internationally acclaimed musicians each in their own right; acoustic guitarist Steinar Aadnekvam – from Bergen, Norway, bassist Rubem Farias from Salvador Da Bahia, Brasil and drummer/singer Deodato Siquir from Maputo, Mozambique make their base in Stockholm, Sweden and since 2015 they form this band.
Moving from clarity to clarity ever since, they released their joint debut album “Freedoms Trio” in 2016 and followed up in 2018 with the sophomore release “Freedoms Trio II” – both on Losen Records, Oslo.
Together, the band has performed several hundreds of concerts in some 17 countries across Europe, Eurasia, Africa and the United States until 2020 brought all touring to a halt.
Formerly known as ”Freedom’s Trio” the band has undergone a slight name change in 2021, embracing the name FREEDOM TREE – a significant name with deep connotations – and with their new album they continue characteristically in the vain of an eclectic afro jazz rock expression firmly rooted in both past & present.
Aptly titled ”MODERN ACOUSTIC WORLD JAZZ ROCK” the new album was recorded live in studio during the pandemic and the performance was originally live streamed to a group of fans.
Only afterwards did the band realize that the music that had been captured was of such a high quality in both performance and recording that it deserved to be released as a proper album.
The record features a set of familiar tunes from the bands original repertoire in what is arguably their best recording to date. What we hear is a band that has lived together on tour for a number of years, honing their interplay through hundreds of concerts, perfecting their compositions and collective musical presence to a such degree that there is not a split second of temporary loss of focus to be found anywhere in the recorded music…
All tracks on this release were also captured as film during the ’live in studio’ recording session and will be released online across streaming services with video capabilities simultaneously with the audio album on
September 24.
”Their music is both complex and joyful, full of passion and energy. (…) They have a natural synergy which can be rare, especially when the musicians are so accomplished individually. People should hear FREEDOM TREE. Gives you hope!” – Robben Ford, 2019
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021 : Fabrizio Savino Trio(Italy) – Album: The Rising Sun
From Saturday July 10th 2021, “The rising sun”, the new and fourth album by modern jazz guitarist Fabrizio Savino, is available on all streaming and download platforms including Apple Music.
The album is also physically distributed worldwide by Inner Urge Records through the website innerurgemusic.com, in Benelux by Xango Music and will soon be available also in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong through the Albore Jazz distributor.
Two weeks after its release, the album has over 80,000 plays only on the Spotify platform and has been selected by the editors and included in important playlists such as “State of Jazz”, “Jazz X- Press” and “All new Jazz”. The song “Rebirth” was selected and played, accompanied by a beautiful introduction to the album for the Anglo-Saxon audience, by presenter Chris Philips of the London radio station Jazz FM UK.
After the success of his previous production “Gemini” that has won many awards and was broadcasted by the most important worldwide radios (France, Norway, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Finland, USA, Canada and Japan), Savino brings rock sounds through a deep contemporary jazz language. With “The rising sun” Savino explores many sonorities and composes music starting from an inner analysis. The main topic of the album is the “Rebirth”.
The musical journey it’s the transposition of inner energies through the music language and the spiritual research with the practice of meditation and yoga.
The songs of the album were composed over a period of one year and embrace many of the musical forms that have always fascinated the author who was able to translate them into the line-up that best represents him: the Guitar trio.
The modern jazz sound that distinguishes him is intertwined with the sounds that most influenced his adolescence, the rock of Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix.
“The Rising Sun” is a musical journey that mix of eleven tracks, two standards and nine original compositions one of which includes an arrangement for string quartet.
To complete the line-up there are the Italian double bass player Luca Alemanno and the German drummer Sebastian Merk, musicians with whom Savino has a particular musical, artistic and human affinity.
For the release of the album, the official videoclip was published on Youtube and on the Facebook and Instagram pages of the label and the artist.
It will soon be published a video animation, entirely hand made with the technique of ink on paper by the graphic designer Marika Mastrandrea of the MM Visual Communication Design Studio, for the song of the album with the string quartet “So close and yet so far “.
World Music Mix: Guy Buttery(South Africa)-One Morning in Gurgaon
Guy Buttery(South Africa)-December Poems
Composer: Guy Buttery
Album: One Morning in Gurgaon
Label: Riverboat Records (2021)
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A beautifully spontaneous collaboration between acclaimed South African guitarist Guy Buttery and Indian master musicians Mohd. Amjad Khan (tabla) & Mudassir Khan (sarangi), One Morning In Gurgaon was inspired by the trio’s shared appreciation of the musical wonders and landscapes of the subcontinent.
Guy Buttery is a “National treasure” according to South Africa’s leading newspaper The Mercury. As an internationally recognised guitar innovator, he enjoys invitations to play sell-out performances all over the globe. The USA, UK, Australia, France, Brazil, and Italy have all welcomed him back year after year. Guy Buttery has evolved into an ambassador of South African music, inspiring people across the world with his homegrown style at the very heart of his talent and tenacity.
It was whilst Guy was embarking on his 2019 tour of India, as part of a trio with the highly acclaimed Indian classical musicians Mohd. Amjad Khan and Mudassir Khan, that the seed was sown for One Morning In Gurgaon. Remarkably, all three musicians had never met before, let alone made any music together, and before their first concert they had only “practised” via voice recordings and exchanged texts somewhere between Hindi and English to break down the various parts of the set. Ultimately it was this unrehearsed approach combined with the inauspicious and eleventh-hour nature of their first meeting which provided the stardust for this collaboration as Guy explains, “Due to Delhi traffic, our intended dry run was shaved right down to a single 60 minutes giving us just enough time to shake hands, share a chai and tune our instruments. As a result, we went in totally blind to that first concert yet what unfolded on stage over the next hour left me in complete awe. So much so that after our performance I immediately set about asking anyone who would listen, how we could track down a local studio to capture our newly formed trio. As luck would have it, the very place where we had performed that first night had a basic recording set-up and we somehow managed to secure a single morning to record.”
Guy’s fascination and love for India’s musical wonders and myriad landscapes are deep rooted and go back to his first brush with the subcontinent when he was just twenty-one. Talking about the synchronicities of his first encounter with Amjad and Mudassir and the unexpected studio session that followed to create this album, Guy explains the importance of that first trip, “I don’t believe any of my prior or subsequent travels have impacted and shaped me as much as that trip did. I came back a vegetarian, 10 kgs lighter, with a severe case of lockjaw and a deep love for a land, its people and its intoxicating music.”
Both Mohd. Amjad Khan and Mudassir Khan are renowned masters of their respective instruments, steeped in the Indian classical traditions from a young age. Although guardians of their musical heritage, One Morning In Gurgaon highlights their willingness to push the envelope of their instruments, expertly highlighted by Amjad whose tabla playing is marked by uncanny intuition and masterful improvisational dexterity. Likewise, Mudassir has harnessed the improvisational potential of the rare and notoriously difficult sarangi (Indian box cello), an instrument whose sound most resembles that of the human voice, and an instrument which Guy confesses to, “Being overly obsessed with.” The combined experience of Guy’s acoustic guitar wizardry with these two Indian master musicians culminates in an album which is as pure and uninhibited an example of empathetic collaboration as you’ll find anywhere: a musical conversation between musicians exchanging each other’s ideas on the spur of the moment and feeling out the areas of crossover with a depth that goes far beyond pure mimicry. The album also highlights Guy’s mbira (thumb piano) playing on the beautiful ‘I Know This Place’, providing a sublime and hypnotic melody which seamlessly blends with the tabla and sarangi accompaniment.
It seems impossibly fortuitous that the celestials and traffic gods aligned to allow One Morning In Gurgaon to be. All the music you hear contained within is the result of singular takes, as time didn’t allow for more. Everything had to be spontaneous as Guy describes, “Amjad chose what songs we would play. Our rendition of “Raag Yaman” presented here was the first and only time we ever played it together. Mudassir gave me a skeleton idea of the raga in spoken word and what unfolded is what you hear here. Everything else was almost certainly telepathic. I was well aware of the intuition and openness in the room that consequential morning in Gurgaon. I feel incredibly humbled to have shared in sound with these two masters and am forever grateful to them both for their profound musicianship, their warm hearts and their spontaneous spirits.”
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: Calabó(Puerto Rico) -Album: Mind Colors
Calabó(Puerto Rico)-Red Sky
Album: Mind Colors
Mind Colors is a collaboration between artists forging in this way a refreshing musical conversation with a new vision of the improvisational jazz genre. Featuring Artist: Jandro Rivas, Danel Díaz, Letzer Cartagena.
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: Nastazio Gkoumas Trio(Greece)-Escape
Nastazio Gkoumas Trio-Escape
Nastazio Gkoumas Trio(Greece)-Chicken Bucket
Composer: Nastazio Gkoumas
Album: Escape
Nastazio Gkoumas : guitar
Demetris Papanikolaou :double bass
Rafael Kyriakides : drums
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021
JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: Utopia(USA/Japan)-Imaginably
Imaginably is the 2nd album of Utopia, NY based duo project formed by Japanese musicians Yuto Mitomi (sax) and Yuto Kanazawa (guitar) who share the same first name.
The first track Karatachi no Hana is written by Japanese composer Kosaku Yamada in 1925, Mitomi originally arranged this piece for his octet and later he started to play together with Kanazawa. Title track Imaginably is the original composition by Yuto Mitomi, other tracks are a collection of jazz standards and pop covers.
First two tracks are played in a similar aesthetic, free improvisation based on the melody and form. It is a similar approach to their influence, the music of Paul Motian trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano. Mitomi and Kanazawa focused on listening to the momentum of each other’s performance and improvised freely along with the flow of the melody.
In contrast to the first two tracks, I Want You Back, Black Bird, Dralice and Isn’t She Lovely have steady rhythms with the styles of Funk, Latin, Country and Brazilian Music. Mitomi and Kanazawa express their respect and love for jazz with Thelonious Monk’s Ugly Beauty and Cliff Burwell’s jazz standard Sweet Lorraine that was written in 1928.
Their unique repertoire was formed while performing gigs in NYC and touring in Japan where they play music for audiences who love all genres of music. Utopia’s intention on this album was to introduce jazz and improvisation to a broader audience with the familiar melodies and cultural music. Mitomi plays tenor and soprano sax and Kanazawa plays Brazilian 7 string guitar on this album.
Their mutual friend pianist Noah MacNeil gave notes to the album inner cover; For both standards and cover songs, there is no limit to what one could imaginably play.
Album Release Date: 3/12/21 on major streaming websites.
Pre-release available at Bandcamp on 3/5/21.
Yuto Mitomi (Tenor & Soprano Saxophone)
yutomitomi.bandcamp.com
Yuto Kanazawa (Brazilian 7 string guitar )
yutokanazawa.bandcamp.com
Recorded by Jason Borisoff
at Conveyor Recording Studio in Brooklyn NY, on January 21st, 2020
Mixed & Mastered by Yuto Kanazawa
Art designed by Yuto Kanazawa,
Special thanks to Noah MacNeil,
noahmacneil.bandcamp.com