Latest news with #BlueNoteRecords
ABC News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
'Reach' Jacky Terrasson
For decades, France has been a jazz haven. Paris in-particular has been a home to many iconic players - from guitarist Django Reinhardt to pianist Michel Petrucciani, and the city was also a refuge for countless American musicians in the '50s and '60s. Another leader on today's jazz scene in France is pianist Jacky Terrasson. The son of a French father and an American mother, Terrasson grew up with both European classical music and American bebop ringing in his ears. In the early '90s, he burst onto the international stage after moving to the States, winning the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition and signing on with Blue Note Records. Since then, Terrasson has gone onto back names like Dee Dee Bridgewater and Cassandra Wilson, and his own output as a leader on the piano is equally impressive. A stand-out session in his extensive catalogue has to be the album 'Reach'. Recorded in 1995, this trio date featured Jacky behind the piano, accompanied by the brilliant German/Nigerian bassist Ugonna Okegwo and the expressive drummer Leon Parker. On this record, the three musicians show just how much history they have assimilated, with a trio sound that reflects the spirit and interplay of groups led by greats like Bill Evans and Chick Corea.
Boston Globe
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
After wandering, a trumpeter hones his sound at home
'I'm always going to be a little bit jagged around the edges,' he said of his music. 'You're going to hear my struggles, but you're also going to hear my celebrations and my successes. This is a homegrown thing, and it's going to stay that.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Last week, Blue Note Records released 'For the Love of It All,' an album that he and his Baltimore-based band, Upendo (Swahili that translates roughly to 'love'), honed not in the studio, but in front of audiences, primarily in his hometown. At club performances over the past half-decade, fans would find ways to request songs that had never been recorded and weren't yet titled. 'People would remember the songs and be like, 'Yo, when are you going to do …' — and just sing it because they know the melody,' Woody recalled. Advertisement Multidisciplinary artist and fellow-Baltimore native Nia June helped title some of the tracks that appear on his album. After 'telling her about the story line and what the songs meant to me,' he explained, she worked to synthesize the ideas as titles. June, a filmmaker, poet, and writer who has worked with Woody extensively since 2020, described the common thread of artists in the city: They are 'brave, real and radically vulnerable.' She added: 'The people here possess an unnatural resiliency — an unashamed, relentless will to survive. And with style.' Picking up the trumpet in elementary school, Woody remembers that he would always get butterflies before playing. 'It was an attraction or a positive nervousness because I wanted to do it so much,' he said. But some of that enchantment was tempered by frustration, first at Baltimore School of Arts, where he said that outside of the high school's jazz combo, budding musicians were relegated to studying 'all this different European music, Gregorian chant,' but not Black music. At 14, when he wasn't selected for the combo, Woody responded by forming Just Us Jazz with then-classmate Troy Long. Long would eventually become Upendo's keyboardist and Woody's key collaborator. 'We tried to play around the city,' Woody said. 'Of course, it was kind of unguided. We just were so young and we just had so much energy and we all were fiery. You could see the energy coming off of our bodies.' Advertisement A jam session held in the back of a pizzeria in the Mount Vernon neighborhood brought an encounter with Theljon Allen, a touring trumpeter based in Baltimore who would sometimes join in with the young band. 'We would shed and we would just play free,' Woody said. Woody made a name for himself, earning a scholarship to a summer performance intensive at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he met drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington, and befriended contemporaries such as pianist Julius Rodriguez, trombonist Jeffery Miller, and saxophonist Yesseh Furaha-Ali. After high school, he studied under Ambrose Akinmusire at the Brubeck Institute, in Stockton, where Woody roomed with saxophonist Isaiah Collier and was exposed to an ear training system taught by vibraphonist Stefon Harris. 'That really changed the way I think about harmony,' he said. The distance opened up new sounds and approaches outside of what he had experienced at home. 'As soon as I was 18,' he said with a bright flash of appreciation in his voice, 'I got to go farther than light,' a whole new world of possibility thousands of miles away from Baltimore. Yet he was still homesick. When Harris was appointed director of Jazz Arts at the Manhattan School of Music the next year, in 2018, Woody transferred there. In New York, the community of musicians held more allure than working toward a degree: Woody was focused in music classes and, in particular, enamored of studying under trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. Woody remembered, 'He told me so many stories about life and about being Black and playing this music.' But he rarely made it down the street to Columbia University for his academic classes. By the spring of 2018, he had lost his scholarship and was on his way back to Baltimore. Advertisement 'But this is where my real story begins,' he said. 'When I dropped out of college and I moved back, it was crazy. I got scammed. I was broke.' But he also began to truly cultivate his artistic practice and voice. The trumpeter and composer Brandon Woody in Baltimore in April 2025. Woody refined his songs in shows around his hometown Baltimore and channeled the city's lessons on his debut album, "For the Love of It All." KYLE MYLES/NYT Even as Woody was asserting his own musical direction in jam sessions and shows around Baltimore, he was pulled for stretches out of his creative cocoon. In 2019, he joined Solange on a leg of her tour in support of her album 'When I Get Home.' During the pandemic, when in-person performances halted, he modeled for Saucony and Calvin Klein. The clothing brand's campaign was featured on a billboard in his neighborhood. Finding his role in idiosyncratic band configurations such as the Solange tour or with BadBadNotGood has been a lesson in 'self-preservation,' he said. Working to balance 'doing what's needed while simultaneously being my unfiltered self, even through other people's music.' On 'For the Love of It All,' Woody does not need to strike such compromise. 'The real heart and grit of the city, the struggles that you come through, that all gets put in the music without really even being cognizant of it,' Long said. 'But then when you are older and you reflect on those experiences, you realize you've been carrying that with you the whole time.' This article originally appeared in
TimesLIVE
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Paras Dlamini's debut album offers a fresh take on South African jazz
Internationally acclaimed jazz artist Paras 'Sibalukhulu' Dlamini is set to release his highly anticipated debut album Ingoma Busuku – Song of Night. In March, Dlamini released the single Indimbane Yezizwe, a powerful track that made waves on the global jazz scene and advocated for unity and self-empowerment across the African continent. Speaking to TshisaLIVE, he said Ingoma Busuku is an album that blends southern African idioms with innovative jazz sensibilities, creating a captivating musical journey. 'This project was born out of a creative synergy that took shape during Linda Sikhakhane's SA/Swiss Celebration Group Tour in early 2023. I first caught attention for my feature on Sikhakhane's previous album Isambulo, where I contributed to the track uNongoma. This collaboration led to the creation of Ingoma Busuku, an album that reflects my rich cultural heritage and my innovative approach to jazz,' he said. Produced by Blue Note Records artist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini, Ingoma Busuku is a spiritually charged album that promises to make listeners dance, meditate and reflect. Dlamini is accompanied by the eloquent company of saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane, alongside the SA/Swiss Celebration Group featuring Swiss pianist Lucca Fries and drummer Jonas Ruther, with French bassist Géraud Portal. 'My voice, rooted from my native Zulu language, shines through in the album's grooves, which is complemented by his multidimensional musical influences. Whether through soulful ballads or rhythmic explorations, I offer a fresh take on South African jazz that speaks to both local and international audiences.'
Khaleej Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Celebrate International Jazz Day with Blue Note at Dubai Opera
This April, step into the rich legacy of one of the most iconic names in music history, Blue Note Records, as MAC Global and Dubai Opera present Blue Note Jazz to mark the 85th anniversary of the label's founding. The event will take audiences on an unforgettable journey through Blue Note's storied past, featuring a remarkable lineup of international jazz artists, all led by the acclaimed bandleader Peter Long. Founded in 1939, Blue Note Records has been a defining force in jazz, shaping the genre's evolution over decades. This celebration will spotlight the label's incredible influence, with a performance that reinterprets timeless Blue Note tracks. Under the direction of Peter Long, best known as the musical director of the renowned Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, an ensemble of world-class musicians will bring new life to the iconic sounds of jazz legends. The lineup includes Peter Long (Malta) on alto saxophone, Freddie Hendrix (USA) on trumpet, Abraham Burton (USA) on tenor saxophone, Danny Grissett (USA) on piano, Thomas Bramerie (France) on bass, Sebastian De Krom (Netherlands) on drums, and Sara Oschlag (Denmark) on vocals. Each artist brings their own unique voice and cultural influence to this powerful musical celebration. From John Coltrane's emotive improvisations to Miles Davis's smooth, sophisticated style, the performance will showcase the lasting influence of these jazz icons. The ensemble will breathe fresh energy into Blue Note classics, capturing the essence of the label's timeless sound while honouring its legacy. Whether you are a dedicated jazz aficionado or discovering the genre for the first time, this is a rare opportunity to experience the magic of Blue Note, live at Dubai Opera. Presented by MAC Global in collaboration with Dubai Opera, this event promises an unforgettable celebration of the world's most influential jazz label.
BBC News
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Herbie Hancock: 'YouTube rabbit holes delayed me making album for 15 years'
Herbie Hancock is an all-time jazz great, so it is reassuring to hear that he suffers from the same modern day procrastination problems as the rest of us mere mortals."I fall into rabbit holes on YouTube. A lot of them. New music writing software, things about health, tech things."That is his explanation as to why he has not made an album for 15 years."I get victimised by it, so to speak, but that's life," he from his house in west Hollywood, the ridiculously sprightly 84-year-old pianist has never been afraid to embrace technology, but normally he is the one doing the mastering, not vice versa. Hancock's half century... and more Discovered by trumpeter Donald Byrd at the start of the 60s, Hancock signed to Blue Note Records, and wrote jazz standards including Watermelon Man, Cantaloupe Island and Maiden the 70s he was an early adopter of synthesisers, blending genres with the electro-funk classic Head the 80s, he had a bona fide worldwide hit single with Rockit after embracing turntablism and scratching, winning five awards at the first ever MTV Awards for its classic dancing robots Lite's Groove Is in the Heart? The riff that drives that song is a sample from Hancock's Blow-Up soundtrack. Madonna, Janet Jackson and NWA are amonst the plethora of performers to have incorporated his music into their as recently as 2008, he beat Amy Winehouse and Kanye West to win his first album of the year award at the Grammys. The reason we are talking is that Hancock has been announced as one of the recipients of this year's Polar Music Prize, the closest music has to a Nobel laureates have included Sir Paul McCartney, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Quincy Jones."It's a huge, fantastic list of people I've admired," says Hancock before expressing particular delight that the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was chosen for the honour in 2017, six years before his death. Together they made up two fifths of Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet. Working with Miles Davis Joy comes over Hancock's face when reminiscing about the period between 1964 to 1968, when he toured the world with the man Rolling Stone magazine called "the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time"."I was always frightened playing with Miles," he laughs."It was very intimidating. I always wanted to be at my best, because I admired him so much. He was such a big part in my own development as a musician."It was fear on one hand. On the other hand, it was exciting. And when things were at their best, it was really inspiring. When were all in sync, that made life worth living." On the pianist's favourite distraction, YouTube, there is a clip that has been viewed almost five million times, showing a furious Davis, on stage in Milan in 1964, stopping his improvised solo to send dagger eyes at there is much debate as to what caused this trumpet temper tantrum. But for Hancock, this was a regular occurrence."A lot of times I would be surprised at what would upset Miles, what would make him a little angry. I didn't always know. He was not always easy to figure out, so I got used to that slight discomfort," he says grinning."That's life. But I was always looking to learn from those discomforts."And when he embarks on his European tour this summer, which includes three UK dates at London's Barbican, Hancock will be thinking about another lesson he learnt from Davis - this one about the make-up of his adopts a low, deep whispering voice and does a full-on Miles Davis impression, recreating the conversation from the mid 1960s, when the trumpeter gave him a stern warning: "If all you see are dudes in the audience, that means your music is dead."Herbie Hancock is pretending to be Miles Davis to an audience of me. It is a glorious moment."He used more expletives than I just did," Hancock chortles. "But you get the idea," clearly enjoying his mimicry as much as I did. Hancock has been playing the piano for almost 80 years, but the instrument still gives him so much joy, that on occasion, during a session on the keys, he finds himself sobbing."If I've solved some kind of problem that I've had with the tune and made some kind of discovery that surpassed my expectations, I've been known to cry, to have tears coming down my face."I ask what kind of problem leaves him reaching for Herbie hankies."It's difficult to explain," he responds, "But, trying to make something work out, where there's no easy answer. Where, 'this is not supposed to work', but 'how can I make it work?'"It feels like we have been invited inside Hancock's brain and are seeing the cogs turn. At continues: "There may be something that I want to connect, but all the ways I know of connecting them are not the solution. And I have to find some other means."And sometimes that [means] can come from looking at it in a different way. And not necessarily through music."This answer goes a long way to explaining the difference between someone who is a musical genius and someone who is not. Hancock went to college to study electrical engineering, so it is no surprise that he has taken a huge interest in the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).He believes our fears about the technology are overblown, and says he prefers to "embrace it". Hancock acknowledges concerns that AI lacks an ethical framework but asks: "Who are the worst examples of understanding ethics and being able to live a life with ethics? We, human beings, we're the worst, right?"He is on a roll now."I have this feeling that AI is going to help us all understand and get closer to becoming more ethically responsible people that are helping each other, instead of hurting or killing each other. Helping the planet instead of killing the planet with environmental issues."And the man who once released an album called Future Shock, has some simple advice for us all."When I'm using ChatGPT or Siri on my iPhone, I always say thank you and they usually say, 'You're welcome.'""I try to treat AI like it's human and it actually manifests itself in an extremely positive way and that makes me feel better."At the age of 84, Herbie Hancock is still determined to try and future-proof himself, by getting the robots on his side. Finally, I ask him a question on behalf of parents all round the world. My 11-year-old Charlie loves playing the piano, but hates practising. What advice would he give anyone in that situation?He nods."I understand your pain. I don't like practising either."Hancock, pauses and thinks before adding: "But you know, I look at it as, 'OK, this is something, even if I don't want to do it, I need to do it.' And once I get into it, then I feel like I've conquered an obstacle in my life."He pauses again, before concluding: "I don't always win that battle, but I've gotten to this point. So I guess I didn't lose a lot of battles."And has he practised today?"No. I didn't today. And I probably won't."Once again he laughs, and with that he departs, ready for the rest of the day and to watch some more Hancock will be presented with the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, Sweden on 27 May 2025.
