The Jazz Voyager
No flights for the Jazz Voyager this week as I have been hanging in New York City for the past week because the next destination is just a couple of blocks from Carnegie Hall. I’ve been visiting the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Natural History and City of New York museums. And the visit would not be complete without a trip to the Village and Harlem. But that will come this weekend.
For now, wandering around The Big Apple is momentarily paused as I am heading to Dizzy’s Club for an evening of music with The Diva Jazz Orchestra. A multigenerational outfit led by drummer, composer, and clinician Sherrie Maricle, it has garnered accolades from across the world. The 15-piece ensemble exudes the excitement and force found in the tradition of historic big bands, with an eye towards originality.
The venue is located at 10 Columbus Circle, New York City 10019. For those who want more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/the-diva-jazz-orchestra.
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CYRILLE AIMÉE
Cyrille Aimée grew up in a multilingual household full of music where dancing was an everyday activity, soundtracked by the Afro-Caribbean sounds of her mother’s native Dominican Republic. The family home was in Samois-sur-Seine, the location of the Django Reinhardt Festival, and the teenage Cyrille would climb out of her bedroom window at night to mingle with the players, igniting a passion for jazz.
Moving to New York City, her talents quickly gained her a reputation among her peers as a matchless interpreter of song. She performed and recorded with Roy Hargrove and stole the show in front of the notoriously hard-to-please crowd at the Harlem Apollo. Steven Sondheim invited her to star in a tribute at New York’s City Centre, backed by Wynton Marsalis. Her 2019 album Move On featured versions of Sondheim’s songs which received praise from Sondheim himself, and her version of “Marry Me a Little“, was nominated for a 2019 Grammy Award.
At the height of her New York success, new horizons beckoned. Visiting New Orleans, she fell in love with the energy and diversity of the city and made it her home. Linking back to New York to connect up all the dots, she teamed up with producer/multi-instrumentalist Jake Sherman, and together they have created her latest album, A Fleur de Peau. to be released on a new label, the London-based imprint Whirlwind Recordings
Combining the depth and sophistication of jazz, the immediacy of pop, the irrepressible dance rhythms of the Caribbean, it’s more intimate and more accessible than anything Cyrille has done before.
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JOHN SHAPELY OCTET & TONI BYRD
John Shapely ~ Saxophone, Justin Golding ~ Alto Saxophone, Frank Briscoe ~ Trumpet, Timmy Markey ~ Trombone, Jordan Thorne ~ Baritone Saxophone, Dallas McCorkendale ~ Keys, Chris Enghauser ~ Bass, Lee Roberts ~ Drums, Toni Byrd ~ Vocals
Since its inception in South Florida in 1994, the John Shapley Octet has grown in popularity among mainstream jazz listeners. The band plays swinging classic jazz arrangements and compositions by Shapley, Bill Dobbins, Rob Lussier, Marty Paich, Bill Holman, Quincy Jones, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Pell, Oliver Nelson, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Yellowjackets and others. With it’s beautiful solos and horn section passages, the band has been featured in South Florida at the 1995 Hollywood Jazz Festival, 1996 Riverwalk Sunday Jazz Brunch series, the 2001 Greater Florida Jazz and Swing Club and maintains an active performing schedule in jazz clubs and concert venues in Atlanta, Georgia and throughout the southeast. It is well known for the production of the show The Essence of Ellington featuring classic transcriptions of genius jazz composer Duke Ellington. In 2003 the John Shapley Octet released two CD’s entitled John Shapley Octet:Essence of Ellington and John Shapley: Jazz Ensembles which attracted attention and has been sold to listeners all over the United States, Canada, Europe and South America. In 2006 the band relocated it’s home base to Atlanta, Georgia where it continues an active performing and touring schedule. The John Shapley Octet is currently available for bookings in public and private concert venues.
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VIJAY IYER
Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet.
Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.” Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over the last 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack, McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and the Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music. The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but inaugurated entirely new ones.
The Trio: Piano: Vijay Iyer | Bass: Harish Raghavan | Drums: Jeremy Dutton
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JACKY TERRASSON
Jacky Terrasson, the most widely traveled of all jazz pianists, is the “piano player of happiness,” according to Telerama magazine in France. He is an exhilarating musician, one of those who play their public straight to euphoria. Born in Berlin, of an American mother and a French father, he grew up in Paris, France. He moved to America to study at Berklee College of Music, and in 1993, after winning the prestigious Thelonious Monk Award, he began touring with Betty Carter. He then decided to move to New York, where he still lives today.
One year later, Jacky was introduced in the New York Times Magazine as one of the 30 under 30 and signed with the Blue Note label. He made three initial trio recordings for Blue Note (Jacky Terrasson, Reach, and Alive). He then devoted himself to several collaborations: “Rendezvous”, with Cassandra Wilson, and “What it is”, with Michael Brecker and Mino Cinelu. Beginning in 2001, he recorded “A Paris” for Blue Note; a very personal interpretation of classics of French song “Smile,” (winning him Best Jazz Album of the Year); and finally a solo album, “Mirror.”
This Franco-American national has never stopped dazzling us, either by his prestigious collaborations with greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves, or with his minimalist and energetic music hammered out with drummer Leon Parker and bassist Ugonna Okegwo, in a trio that was considered one of the best jazz trios of the 90s. And this intuition, this instinct, this openness, leads him to the discovery of the great burgeoning talents of his many groups.
Terrasson has been compared to Bud Powell for his carefully controlled velocity on the piano keys and to Ahmad Jamal for his sense of phrasing. Jacky also possesses a deep knowledge of the great French composers savants, such as Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. Through his fingers, as he mingles and melts the colors and the inventions of the great pianists of yesterday and today, Jacky creates his own style, all in subtleties, freshness, facility and ease, with the desire to rewrite and reinvent, again, every day and forever.
In 2019, Jacky released “53,” a trio album (his favorite format), on Blue Note.
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