The Jazz Voyager

Flying cross-country always gives me the opportunity to unplug, watch a movie and take a nap as I head for North Carolina. As a lifelong jazz listener always on the prowl to hear someone new, The Jazz Voyager’s destination is Middle C Jazz in Charlotte. It’s an intimate upscale club setting with southern charm and hospitality, with small plates and craft cocktails.

This week I will discover the talents of vocalist Veronica Swift. A fixture in the modern jazz scene she has recorded two albums that explore mu;tiple genres of music that she incorporates into her sound.

Middle C Jazz is located at 300 South Brevard Street 28202. Get more info by visiting the Jazz Calendar at https://notoriousjazz.com/event/veronica-swift

CALIFORNIA JAZZ FOUNDATION

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NOEL FREIDLINE & MARIA HOWELL

A jazz Celebration of Stevie Wonder featuring special guest Adam McKnight.

For over 35 years, Maria Howell, this petite North Carolina native, who splits her time between both the east coast and the west coast, has developed her career as a singer, actor, and voiceover artist. Her debut acting role was the choir soloist in the Oscar Nominated film, “The Color Purple”. She has gone on to appear in hit TV shows as Lifetime’s “Army Wives”, NBC’s “Revolution”, and CBS’s “Criminal Minds”. Feature films…“The Blind Side”, “Hidden Figures”, and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”. As a song stylist, Maria has shared the musical stage with legendary artists as, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, Ray Charles, Earl Klugh, brothers Ronnie and Hubert Laws, and veteran actor/singer, Keith David.

Pianist, vocalist, writer, arranger and educator, doesn’t come close to all things Noel Freidline! As a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of North Florida, with a BA in Music, Noel has been the bandleader of The Noel Freidline Quintet for over 26 years. He has numerous recordings to his credit, and has performed at jazz festivals from the Jacksonville Jazz Festival (FL)…to the Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland)…not to mention, a 3-year stint at the world famous Bellagio in Las Vegas, as the house band, leading his NFQ, where he performed for actress Julia Robert’s surprise 35th birthday party.

Noel was named Best Jazz Musician by Charlotte Magazine in 2006 and in 2009 and was named “Best Musical Director”, by the Metrolina Theatre Association of the Carolinas. In 2011 Freidline was chosen for the Blumenthal Performing Arts Association – Center Stage Award (Charlotte, NC), in recognition of his excellence in service to the arts. And in May, 2015, Noel Freidline was inducted into the Jacksonville Jazz Hall of Fame.

 

 

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TONY HIGHTOWER

Singer/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz…Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familiar roots that place him firmly within the music’s firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

​His sophomore project, LEGACY, finds Hightower exploring Jazz vocal stylings from a dazzling prism of angles. The 10-song album moves confidently and assuredly from original compositions such as the soulful scat-laced “All to the Good,” the seductive Brazilian bossa nova of “Rendezvous” and the tender carnal Jarreau-esque love beg “I Need You” to swingin’ covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic Skip Scarborough-penned “Can’t Hide Love,” a mean shuffle boogie groove through Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” and a smoldering upright bass accompanied tiptoe through the 1929 Andy Razaf standard “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” made further famous in 1944 by one of Hightower’s greatest and earliest Jazz vocal heroes, Nat “King” Cole. That one’ll make the women wiggle.

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JACKIEM JOYNER

Contemporary saxophonist, author, and music producer Jackiem Joyner has set the bar high in his close 20 years as a performer.  With a number one jazz album, several Billboard chart-topping hits, and a series of critically acclaimed booksto his name, he has shown himself to be the rare artist capable of transcending his instrument and reaching a mainstream audience.

Now, as he begins the 18th year of his career during a time of unprecedented change in the entertainment industry, he remains as focused on his art as ever.

Jackiem was born in Norfolk, VA.  At an early age, he began to show signs of the restless creativity that would later define his career.  Despite his humble upbringing, he was able to get his hands on a saxophone as a child.  The instrument quickly became his constant companion.  After years of practice, he emerged in style with 2007’s ‘Babysoul.’ A masterclass in seductive smooth jazz, the album marked the arrival of a brilliant instrumentalist, and set the stage for a prolific recording career that would include Grammy runner ups, hit singles, and no shortage of critical adoration, right up through 2019’s ‘Touch’, and on to 2020’s EP “Journey of Passion”

As a performer, he has toured over 30 countries and performed with the likes of the late George Duke, Marcus Miller, Keiko Matsui, Donnie McClurkin, Angela Bofill, Najee, Kirk Whalum, Peter White, and many others.

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VERONICA SWIFT

Veronica Swift’s new eponymously titled album, her third for Mack Avenue Records, is a masterful coming-out story. On her previous albums, Confessions (2019) and This Bitter Earth (2021), she ascended to the upper echelon of early 21st century jazz singers because of her virtuosic brilliance, interpretive ingenuity, bracing songwriting, and keen arrangements. Simply put, Swift is not only one of the most dazzling singers to emerge in her generation, she’s one of the most versatile.

While her first two albums solidified her position in modern jazz, Veronica Swift shows that she’s more than a jazz singer, exploring French and Italian opera, European classical music, bossa nova, blues, industrial rock, funk, and vaudeville. She pulls the feat off without the results sounding callow or pastiche. Swift’s expansive artistic voice remains firmly intact regardless of genre.

Swift describes this personal artistic statement on her new album as “transgenre.” “I grew up immersed in the culture of jazz music, blessed to have had some of the greats as mentors, and I felt a deep familial duty to uphold that tradition,” she says, reflecting on her parents – jazz singer and educator, Stephanie Nakasian, and bebop pianist, Hod O’Brien.

“But as rooted in jazz as I’ve been, there’s a uniquely visceral power in rock and soul music that’s always fueled my creative passion, and rather than mask or confine that part of my identity, the people I admire most show themselves unabashedly and that’s the kind of tradition I want to be a part of.”

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