Sarah Kerson and Nate Chinen for NPR – Renee Rosnes has seen her share of jazz supergroups. Thirty years ago, she held down the piano chair with Out of the Blue, a youthful all-star crew formed by Blue Note Records. She was a charter member of the SFJAZZ Collective. So she had a wealth of experience to draw from when she recently formed a supergroup of her own.

Reaching across generations and nationalities, Rosnes enlisted some of the most accomplished artists on the scene: Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, drummer Allison Miller, bassist Noriko Ueda and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. This impressive cohort went on its first tour under the banner of International Women’s Day, after which it acquired a new name: Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the hunt.

Jazz Night in America caught up with Artemis at the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival, where the band’s commanding set included both originals (like Rosnes’ “Galapagos”) and jazz standards (like Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners”). And we sat in on a conversation between Cohen, Jensen and journalist Natalie Weiner, which touched on both the magical qualities of the group and some of the challenges its members have faced as female musicians in what’s still a male-dominated field.

“I don’t think we’re there yet, where somebody would look at a group like Artemis and just think of it as a band without actually having to mention, ‘Oh, it’s an all-woman band,’ or ‘It’s an all-female band,'” Rosnes says. But listen to the music in this show and you’ll understand how a project like this is making a difference — and plenty of noise, in the best possible way.

 

Read more and listen on NPR 

Artemis on TKA 

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

Melissa Aldana on TKA

Congratulations to Kurland artist Twisted Pine, winner of Best Americana Band at the prestigious Boston Music Awards on December 12, 2018. Described recently by the Boston Globe as “boundary jumpers akin to outfits like Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek, and Crooked Still,” Twisted  Pine is excited to be heading into the studio in January to record their full-length Summer of ’19 release from Signature Sounds Recordings. Catch them on tour around the Great Lakes in January; in Montreal at Folk Alliance International in February; and on a handful of winter nights with Jerry Douglas and the Earls of Leicester, including the Back Porch Festival in Northampton, MA, on March 2.

 

Twisted Pine Official Site

Twisted Pine on TKA

Felix Contreras for NPR –  Cuba is known as much for their pianists as their percussionists — you’ll see why with this performance.

Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa and his trio open their performance with some help from a recording of famed Afro-Cuban folkloric singer Lázaro Ros. Ros is both a musical and spiritual guide for this performance; the trio dug deep into the ritual music of santeria for inspiration with “Eleguá,” a tribute to one of the Afro-Cuban deities. (Special mention should be made of Harold’s brother, Ruy López-Nussa, on drums, and bassist Gastón Joya, who both fill the spaces between the beats while elegantly leaving breathing room within the performances.)

“Preludio” demonstrates the telepathic connection between these musicians, while subtlety and emotion are not sacrificed for the slower tempo.

“Hialeah” has the recognizable piano riffs — called guajeos — that we can recognize as originating with Cuban dance music, but the trio deftly melds that rhythm to a complex jazz exploration, without compromising its danceable pulse.

 

Watch the full performance on NPR

Harold López Nussa on TKA

Catch two blues-rock titans together on tour in 2019!

Visit websites below for tour dates:

Coco Montoya Official Website

Tinsley Ellis Official Website

Coco Montoya on TKA 

Hank Shteamer for Rolling Stone –

#2) Cécile McLorin Salvant, ‘The Window’

#6) Charles Lloyd and the Marvels + Lucinda Williams, ‘Vanished Gardens’

Read the full article on Rolling Stone

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

Charles Lloyd on TKA

AEG Presents is thrilled to announce BÉLA FLECK: Friends & Family featuring THE COLORADO SYMPHONY, BÉLA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES, SAM BUSH, JERRY DOUGLAS, and ABIGAIL WASHBURN live at Red Rocks Amphitheater on Thursday, May 30th, 2019. Tickets go on sale this Friday, December 14th, 2018.

Find more info about the show 

Purchase Tickets

Béla Fleck on TKA

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn on TKA

Béla Fleck and The Flecktones on TKA

FilmMusicReporter  –  Arturo Sandoval is composing the original score for the upcoming crime drama The Mule. The film is directed by Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby) who also stars in the movie alongside Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Pena, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia, Alison Eastwood, Taissa Farmiga, Ignacio Serricchio, Loren Dean and Eugene Cordero. The movie tells the true story of Earl Stone, a man in his 80s who signs on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. Nick Schenck (Gran Torino, The Judge) wrote the screenplay inspired by the New York Times Magazine article The Sinaloa Cartels’ 90-Year-Old Drug Mule by Sam Dolnick. Eastwood is also producing the project with Tim Moore (Sully), Kristina Rivera and Jessica Meier (The 15:17 to Paris), and Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin (All the Money in the World) and Bradley Thomas (There’s Something About Mary). Sandoval who is best known as a jazz trumpeter has previously scored several films, including the HBO original movie For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, for which he received an Emmy Award and 2013’s At Middleton. The Mule is set to be released on December 14, 2018 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Read the full article here

Visit the official movie website for updates.

Arturo Sandoval on TKA

The Recording Academy has revealed their nominees for the 61st annual Grammy Awards ahead of the event, taking place on February 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

The Kurland Agency is proud to congratulate the following artists on their nominations:

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
Tony Bennett & Diana Krall (Bill Charlap Trio) – “‘S Wonderful” from Love Is Here to Stay

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
Tony Bennett & Diana Krall (Bill Charlap Trio) – Love Is Here to Stay

Best Urban Contemporary Album
Meshell Ndegeocello – Ventriloquism

Best Jazz Vocal Album
Kurt Elling – The Questions
Cécile McLorin Salvant – The Window

Best Traditional Blues Album
Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio – Something Smells Funky ‘Round Here

 

View the full list of nominations here

Bill Charlap on TKA

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA

Kurt Elling on TKA

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

Elvin Bishop on TKA

 

Lauren Onkey for NPR – When a baby grand piano rolls into the office for a Tiny Desk concert, you expect something special. But none of us could have imagined what it’s like to see 15-year old Joey Alexander play that piano with such mastery. The thing is, when you see him play live, you quickly forget his age and get lost in the intense focus of his performance. Alexander and his stellar supporting cast — Reuben Rogers on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums — form a tight trio, locking eyes as Alexander’s compositions unfold. The relaxed, seasoned veterans looked thrilled to be playing with Alexander at the Tiny Desk, and he was clearly inspired playing with them. The crowd was both mesmerized and humbled by the memories of what they were doing at 15.

Born in Indonesia, Alexander learned to play by listening to his father’s jazz albums. When he was just 10-years old, Wynton Marsalis invited him to play at a Jazz at Lincoln Center gala, and the young Alexander set the jazz world buzzing. He made his mark covering classics by Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, but he’s now recording and performing more of his own compositions. He showcased that original work during his Tiny Desk performance. Alexander’s vigorously rhythmic playing was playful in the opening “Eclipse” (from his latest album of the same name), which he described as “spontaneous playing.” “Bali,” also from Eclipse, followed, while “City Lights” (from his 2016 album Countdown) closed a set that ranks among the year’s finest jazz performances at the Tiny Desk.

 

Watch full performance on NPR

Joey Alexander on TKA

Joe Reinartz for CelebrityAccess – The Manhattan Transfer is on tour, promoting The Junction, its first studio album in 10 years and singing Christmas tunes along the way. CelebrityAccess talked a bit about it with the group’s Janis Siegel, who is also its vocal arranger. Siegel herself is a nine-time Grammy winner and a seventeen-time Grammy nominee.

(sic) became the first act to win Grammy awards in the Pop and Jazz categories in one year (1981) for “Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal” for “Boy From New York City” and “Best Jazz Performance Duo or Group” for “Until I Met You (Corner Pocket).” In 1985, their album Vocalese made history as the single greatest Grammy-nominated album in one year — with  12 nominations. Vocalese earned two Grammys: “Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group”; and “Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices” for “Another Night in Tunisia” (won by Cheryl Bentyne and Bobby McFerrin). The album, which featured jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Ron Carter, and the Count Basie Orchestra, changed the perception of The Manhattan Transfer from successful pop artists to formidable jazz singers 

Can you please tell us a little bit about the newest album, The Journey, and how people are reacting to it?

It’s been out now for a while. We’re doing quite a few of the songs from the record, which is a whole other process. In the studio you can look at music, and look at words. Doing it live, the singer has to learn arrangements, notes and words, and memorize them as opposed to, say, an instrumentalist on stage who can still look at charts and see everything. We’re the front people; we don’t have music in front of us.

But I’m very happy with it. I think (producer) Mervin Warren is a genius, first of all, and he did an amazing job of keeping what people may consider the traditional Manhattan Transfer sound but also stretching us out in a lot of unexpected ways, which is what we want. We’ve never been one to rest on our accomplishments.

Obviously there are even local bands bring out sheets on music stands to sing lyrics

Ipads are the latest thing

But it feels lazy.

Yeah, I agree with you. Memorizing new songs is difficult. We tend to have a lot of words in our songs so, sometimes, we need a little cheat sheet. Trigger words or something – but then we get rid of it.

Well, this song “Cantaloop” for instance.

Right! Woo! We’re doing that! We are doing that! We’ve been doing that a lot. Most every show now.

I had a little bit of a leg up because I was familiar with the US3. They came out in 1993. I was kinda blown away with that. I was vaguely familiar with the words, at least. But putting pitch and harmonies to it was the little frisson of excitement.

You’re playing three nights at the Blue Note in Napa.

We’ve never been there but we play the Blue Note in New York all the time, and we’ve played the Blue Note Mulan and the one in Tokyo as well. It’s all part of the same organization.

Any venues that you are particularly looking forward to?

I love playing the Museum of Musical Instruments in Phoenix. We’re doing two nights there. It’s an awesome place. It’s worth a trip to Phoenix.

Anything else?

Well, we’re mainly doing Christmas shows. We’re doing a couple of “regular” shows but people this time of year want to hear Christmas stuff.

I think the Blue Note shows will be mostly other stuff. We’ll be doing stuff from the new album, regardless. We’ll be doing a couple shows with Herb Alpert and Lani Hall. A double bill deal.

Didn’t know ya’ll were hanging out.

I’ve never met him, actually. Sometimes agents put together these things; it’s not that you’re besties and want to tour together.

You would think our paths would have crossed by now, but not really. We were with Atlantic Records for many years (not Albert’s A&M).

Ah, so enemies.

Of course! Enemies! Hey, there are no enemies in music!

 

Read full article on CelebrityAccess

The Manhattan Transfer on TKA