Since 2008, Lorens has played live sets Chuno That Have Been Praised as "energy-filled", "captivating", and "educative". Over esta period, the New York based Nigerian born musician has created a unique sound can be broadly classified That as West-African Jazz fusion. His warm voice and dynamic style, along With His bold compositions, Helps define this sound.
All the aforementioned qualities can be fully experienced in His new album, Naija Rhythm Affair, NYC. The songs are jazz Characterised by infectious melodies, strong rhythms, and a rejuvenating That energy permeates. The singer describe the album as a collection of melodies and lyrics That address contemporary issues from the perspective of a new generation African. Having lived in the U.S. since late teenage years His in the early 2000's, and the world Having Traveled Between then and now, Lorens Chuno is Placed in the perfect position to address issues Such.
The album Consist of 10 Original songs, Which are all composed, written, arranged, and produced by Lorens Chuno. Lyrically the songs take on issues Directly That are Not Necessarily related to one another, but come together to form a cohesive body of work. "Come My Way" and "Do Not Call" for instance, address the Often tacit Negotiations That eats with building a relationship and the Difficulties of letting go, while the Igbo lyric of "Nuru Onum" calls for dialogue, wisdom, and understanding Within a community. "Changing" Talks About the intricacies and inevitability of globalization, and "Mr Sabi" pokes fun at how Westerners, Even When they have good intentions, do not care to Understand Africa. "Wait" Directly and fearlessly tackles the issues of police brutality and the deep-seated racism in America.
, Although it is the product of a solid jazz foundation, the album Makes an uncontrived effort to Incorporate every element of Lorens Chuno's musical background, treats including Soukous, as can be in Heard in "Today" Fela Kuti's Afrobeat as can be Heard in "Mr. Sabi "¾ rhythms and traditional Igbo as can be Heard in" Nwayo "and" Nuru Onum ". The singer's jazz background Becomes very apparent in "Easy Busy of" which features a temporary alternation Between Bossa and Swing, and "Changing", a song Whose only cruises saxophone smoothly on the circle of 4th's for 16 bars, starting on an A-flat major chord and ending on an F-major chord.
The album features up and coming well commended jazz bassist John Gray Including talents and drummer Michael Vitali. The album features award winning guitarist Also Albino Mbie, have Praised Whom Lionel Loueke as a guitarist That "needs to be Heard by the whole world!", And saxophonist Michael Easton, a well respected protege and collaborator of David Liebman's.
A talented vocalist, pianist, percussionist, and dancer, Lorens Chuno have played Several concerts, many a time, sharing stages With international acts like the Chicago Afrobeat Projects, and the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars. Lorens has worked Chuno With some legendary jazz musicians Including Poogie Bell and drummers Roger Humphries, and pianists Alexander and Marc Cary Howie. Also Chuno Lorens has garnered a few international recognitions Including an appearance on the Nigerian Television Authority "Celebrity Corner" program and the African Independent Television (AIT) "Artist's Notebook".
Release Date: August 8, 2016
Track Listing
1. Come My Way
2. Nuru Onum
3. Today
4. Changing
5. Nwayo
6. Mr. Sabi
7. Do Not Call
8. Easy Busy
9. Go Unu Etete
10. Wait!
Music, lyrics, arrangements, and production by Lorens Chuno
Musician and Personnel:
Lorens Chuno - Vocal, Piano, Percussion, Vocal Background,
John Gray - Bass
Michael Vitali - Drums
Michael Eaton - Tenor Saxophone
Albino Mbie - Guitar
Derek Neivergelt - Studio Engineering
tags: african, afrobeat, world music, Fela Kuti, jazz, New York
Now we invite you to be one of the topics that make up the new CD Lorens Chuno Do Not Call, in a video recorded in recent days and where we see a wonderful Reggae Jazz:
In this website we published the article on the new album of Billie G. Davis "Hand in Hand In the Hand of the Moon" and she is always news:
Today we bring you this video that shows the skill and talent of Miss Davies and of course his excellent band in the genre Avant-Garde: "BILLIE DAVIES & The Bad Boyzzzz" Jazz Ensemble In The Key Of Jazz "Moanin'" (Charles Mingus) L to R: Oliver Watkinson - bass Billie Davies - drums Ari Kohn - reeds Branden Lewis - trumpet Evan Oberla - trombone Mike Davies - sound & video Recorded at Billie Davies studio - Cobra Basement Terrytown (New Orleans) - Louisiana
Dear friends, come and join us for our last performance of our residency at Club Bonafide for the summer! It's going to be a blast with special guest and virtuoso Jorge Glem on the Venezuelan Cuatro. I'll be also performing at Central Park @ the Harlem Meer Fest. and much more. Don't miss it!!!
Alí Bello & The Sweet Wire Band w/ special guest Jorge Glem - Venezuelan Cuatro
This production shows us a Fabrizio Sotti developing his music with the experience
of the moment ... and the incorporation of Slalov and Mela gives modern and varied
features to "Forty", Luis Raul Montell - Jazz Global Beat
The CD: "Forty" Fabrizio Sotti Tracks: 1. Redemption; 2. Dangerous Walk; 3. Is That What You Think; 4. Beginning Now; 5. How Sensitive; 6. Thalia; 7. So Far So Close; 8. Forty; 9. Intro to the Bridge; 10. The Bridge The Musicians: Fabrizio Sotti (guitar); Peter Slalov (bass); Francisco Mela (drums) World renowned guitarist and composer Fabrizio Sotti is proud to announce today’s release of “Forty”, his fifth album as a leader.
The momentous occasion was celebrated with two different launch events. The first took place this past Wednesday, June 8, at the Ferrari North America Showroom in New York City. Fabrizio, who is one of the few jazz musicians to hold a major automobile endorsement, welcomed friends, fans and colleagues as they took part in an exclusive pre-release listening of "Forty".
The following evening saw the release of ‘Forty’ in concert at the Highline Ballroom as part of the Blue Note Jazz Festival. The packed house was treated to a rousing performance of "Forty" in full by Fabrizio along with bass PeterSlavov and drummer AustinWilliamson, who filled in for Francisco Mela last minute. The audience was also given a treat by special guest, MilesDavis and WeatherReport alum Minu Cinelu.
The release of “Forty” also coincides with the release of the D’AngelicoEX-SSFabrizioSottiSignatureModel guitar. Using the D’Angelico guitar as his brush, Sotti paints a dynamic sonic picture that presents him as not just an extraordinary and innovative improviser, but as the harbinger of a unique and distinctive sound that is completely his own. In the words of revered writer and critic Ted Panken, the title, “Forty”, testifies to Sotti’s assertion that the onset of his fifth decade signifies a sea change in both his personal life-path and aesthetic development. “Forty is more than arriving at one spot,” Sotti says. “It’s starting from the beginning to a new place. Artistically, as you get older, you understand how much you still have to discover, how much more deeply you can go into yourself to improve your playing and understand what you really want to say.”
On “Forty” Sotti collaborated with two jazz visionaries in their own right: bassist Peter Slavov and drummer Francisco Mela. “Peter is a complete musician with a strong melodic sense and a thorough classical music background. He’s able to be free while respecting the tradition. Francisco also brings a melodic approach and is completely a free thinker. He’s a force of nature. When he swings, it swings hard; when he’s not swinging, it’s so creative, he fills up the music with something magical,” says Sotti.
“Forty” lays its groundwork for the forthcoming 10 tracks with the autobiographical “Redemption”, a 3/4 minor blues that Sotti says represents the “redemption between myself and people around me, to accept me for who I really am.” Sotti unleashes the full measure of his jazz chops on “Dangerous Walk,” a brisk, disjunctive, Monkish line “inspired by the walk of women, and particularly my wife,” and “Is That What You Think” a B-flat blues with a melody Sotti describes as ‘aggressive.’ The mood changes on “Beginning Now,” played a cappella by Sotti on nylon string guitar but then progresses into the iconic “How Insensitive,” which Sotti’s grandmother played for him before he was a child. The trio returns for the calypso-flavored “Thalia,” named for Sotti’s year-old daughter, and written a few weeks before her birth. “The happy melody is how I felt when we were waiting for her and how she makes me feel now.” Following is the expressive ballad “So Far, So Close,” rendered as a Sotti-Slavov duo, which was written for his younger brother.
For Sotti, the title track represents “how I like to play right now—you can hear the joyful playfulness between these different rhythms, going from a modern funk rubato to a straight ahead swinging thing, playing what I like with nothing to prove.” The final track, “The Bridge”, along with its preceding introduction entirely represents Sotti’s mature voice. It’s a love song with a bluesy connotation named for the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) in Venice, where Sotti and his bride decided to get married.
With this new release, Sotti presents a departure for a new group that is only scratching the surface of possibilities with “Forty”. Says Sotti, “This album shows where I am as a guitarist, improviser and composer and of what’s to come.”
The presentation of his new CD "Forty" in the Highline Ballroom in New York, marked a success for Fabrizio Sotti Trio, but also as regards the release of his label Sotti Entertainment Inc.
Notes of Fabrizio Sotti:
A New Yorker since 1991, when he emigrated from Padua, Italy, as an ambitious, jazz obsessed 16-year-old, Sotti drew on a broad palette of jazz-imparted musical knowledge when producing hit tracks with artists like DeadPrez, GhostfaceKillah, Q-Tip, Tupac, and WhitneyHouston while still in his twenties, as well as two collaborations Glamoured,from 2003, and Another Country, from 2012, with the great jazz diva, CassandraWilson . In parallel, he built a distinguished career as a highly-respected jazz stylist, documented on three accomplished recordings—This World Upside Down, from 1999, with jazz titans RandyBrecker, JohnPatitucci and AlFoster; Through My Eyes, from 2003, a solo guitar recital; and Inner Dance, from 2010, with organist SamBarsh, drummer VictorJones, and percussionist MinoCinelu—on which he showcases the considerable electric and acoustic guitar skills that are the centerpiece of this, his latest offering.
The title,Forty, testifies to Sotti’s assertion that the onset of his fifth decade signifies a sea change in both his personal life-path and aesthetic development. “Forty is more than arriving at one spot,” he says. “It’s starting from the beginning to a new place. Artistically, as you get older, you understand how much you still have to discover, how much more deeply you can go into yourself to improve your playing and understand what you really want to say.”
For the occasion, Sotti recruited an A-list trio of emigres—Bulgarian-born bassist PeterSlavov, and Cuban-born drummerFranciscoMela. “We mesh stylistically, and we’re about the same age, so I think we can keep going for a while,” he says. “Peter is a complete musician with a strong melodic sense and a thorough classical music background. He’s able to be free while respecting the tradition. Francisco also brings a melodic approach and is completely a free thinker. He’s a force of nature. When he swings, it swings hard; when he’s not swinging, it’s so creative, he fills up the music with something magical.”
Sotti began preparing the repertoire for Forty not long after meeting his wife, in the vicinity of the release of Right Now, from 2013, “a Herbie Hancock-type” collaborative album on which his trio with bassist Tony Gray and Cinelu interacts with high Q-score figures Ice-T, Shaggy, Melanie Fiona, Zucchero and Algebra Blessett. “It was in the vein of what I’ve done with Cassandra—mixing genres and trying to be more accessible,” Sotti says. That descriptor also applies to On The Way, from 2014, which Sotti produced for and played on with Italian piano virtuoso Alberto Pizzo, as did Cinelu, Dire Straits co-founder David Knopfler and Toquinho.
“I wanted to go back to the basics, the way I started when I was studying jazz as a kid, playing in small combos with bass and drums,” Sotti says. “I wanted to be very clear in my phrasing, to be to-the-point and not overplay. I wanted to do a pure jazz recording, but using all original compositions, not standard material. My new family influenced the music a lot; the melody of each piece means something personal. It’s a relief album, something that had to come out of me.”
His concise exegesis of the opening track, “Redemption,” a 3/4 minor blues, hints at the autobiographical substrate that bedrocks the proceedings. “It means redemption between myself and people around me, to accept me for really who I am,” says Sotti, whose divorced parents, both Doctors of Medicine, urged him to follow their career path in lieu of a musician’s life. His paternal grandmother, Alda Sotti, who held a degree in music and was Sotti’s piano teacher, “understood me and began to teach me to play under the radar of the family, and by the time I was 5 or 6 I could already read music, though I couldn’t read or write words yet.” At 9, after Sotti’s mother relocated with him and his younger brother to a small apartment with no room for a piano, he received his first guitar.
From then on, Sotti says, “I was only doing music all day.” Among other things, he absorbed jazz guitar method books by Joe Pass, Mick Goodrick and Joe Diorio; from age 12 until his first U.S. sojourn he gigged and played in recording studios. “I saved some money, and told my parents I was going to hang out in America for the summer,” he recalls. Sotti had met guitar heroes like Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Jim Hall and Mike Stern at festivals; Stern gave the promising teenager his number and told him to call if got to New York. Sotti did, and Stern provided a couch to sleep on.
The summer turned into three years, before Sotti, during a trip to Italy, was conscripted into military service. After two years stationed at the Aviano Air Force base on the border of Yugoslavia, he returned to the jazz capital in September 1996, no longer a member of the jazz police. “Before the Army I was very snobbish, always having to prove I was good enough to play jazz, although I always played a lot of different styles,” he says.
Sotti unleashes the full measure of his jazz chops on “Dangerous Walk,” a brisk, disjunctive, Monkish line “inspired by the walk of women, and particularly my wife,” and “Is That What You Think” “a B-flat blues with an aggressive melody that I wrote after I read a review of one my albums that I didn’t like too much.”
The mood changes on “Beginning Now,” played a cappella by Sotti on nylon string guitar. “I wrote the melody remembering a very sad day, when my mother organized a birthday party for my brother, who was turning 5 or 6,” he says. “Because we were a divorced family, not one kid showed up. That’s the moment I decided that I would fight to find my happiness.” It fades into Antonio Carlos Jobim’s iconic “How Insensitive,” which Sotti’s grandmother played for him before he was 10. The solos by Sotti and Slavov “embrace the feeling of how insensitive it was for people to do that to us.”
For Sotti, the title track represents “how I like to play right now—you can hear the joyful playfulness between these different rhythms, going from a modern funk rubato to a straight ahead swinging thing, playing what I like with nothing to prove.” He composed the expressive melody of the ballad “So Far, So Close,” rendered as a Sotti-Slavov duo, for his younger brother. “We’re very close,” Sotti says. “Sometimes we don’t talk for a month, but I know he’s a presence.” The trio returns for the calypso-flavored “Thalia,” named for Sotti’s year-old daughter, and written a few weeks before her birth. “The happy melody is how I felt when we were waiting for her and how she makes me feel now.”
Although “Thalia” has a Jim Hall-ish flavor, “The Bridge,” which follows, entirely represents Sotti’s mature voice. It’s a love song with a bluesy connotation named for the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) in Venice, where Sotti and his bride decided to get married. “Venice is a 15-minute train ride from Padua, and my grandparents took me there on Sundays to listen to classical music,” says Sotti, who prefaces the song with a brief introduction that references the experience of hearing Bach’s organ music on those expeditions.
“The jazz world is very particular,” Sotti concludes. “When you want to expand, people often make you afraid you won’t be accepted. But on this album, I’ve expanded. You want to hear Wes Montgomery? I’ve learned that. You want to hear Jim Hall or Mike Stern? Everything is there. But now it’s me—my personality, my feelings, my way of playing”.
In the following video we can hear fragment of the CD "Forty" and a brief explanation of the realization of it with Fabrizio Sotti:
Sherie Julianne is one of our "Ladies of Latin Jazz" she produced with pianist and composer Marcos Silva CD "10 Degrees South" where she shows her grace and facilities as vocalist Brazilian Jazz.
This CD "10 Degrees South" to always ringing in Jazz Caribe Radio, and may know more of Miss Julianne in www.jazzcaribe.blogspot.com; but now we want to offer this live video from the Palm Ballroom Sherie Julianne performing "Batucada" with Silva (keyboards); Brendan Neutre (bass); Mary Fettig (flute) and Phil Thompson (drums):
"Kelly and Elfman are two musicians with great imagination and good music
will continue to provide cutting edge", Luis Raul Montell-Jazz Global Beat
The CD: "In Roads" Neil Kelly / Robby Elfman
Tracks: 1. Stylus; 2. Flowers in the Fossils; 3. Moon River; 4. Ugh the Thug; 5. Inner Mission; 6. Julia; 7. Anybody in There; 8. Landscape
The Musicians: Neil Kelly (guitar); Robby Elfman (sax); Lukas Vesely (upright bass); Joe DeRose (drums)
The Neil Kelly / Robby Elfman quartet started as a meeting of minds at the Playa Jazz Café, a jazz based theme camp that appears annually at the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City Nevada. This camp entails a collective of SF Bay area and LA based jazz musicians who come together to perform concerts, host jam sessions, and provide educational workshops throughout the week of the Burning man Festival.
Kelly and Elfman were encouraged to forge collaboration when sound man/producer Ken Deloria saw them perform on the playa. Robby originally from LA relocated to North Bay San Francisco and he and Neil began co-writing the album “In Roads”.
What transpired was a mixture of Elfman’s edgy punk style jazz (his first record project Smashups recorded with the Jazz Punks bears witness to this aesthetic), with the modern Jazz lush harmonies witnessed on Kelly’s premier album Rivers Converge. Both musicians approach jazz from a composer’s perspective. Elfman holds a degree in Film Score Compositon from USC and Kelly a Master’s Degree from SJSU in Jazz composition and arranging. Teaming up with bay area all star rhythm section of Lukas Vesely and Joe Derose a unique sound and approach to music was created and is now being unveiled.
Rare moments of musical genius emerge when an ensemble finds that certain magic, that willingness to reach for the stars with nothing held back, no fears, just pouring out pure music. Moving, powerful, delightful, soothing, captivatingly pure music! When you hear it, you know you’ve experienced a profound difference when music comes from the core of a players’ being. This album is precisely that: pure music and pure heart from the deepest possible source.
Neal Kelly on guitar and Robby Elfman on sax are players of the highest caliber. They possess the technical chops, to be sure, but far beyond that they have something to say, musically speaking. The fluidity and ease with which they command their instruments must be heard, and heard again, and heard again. Their creative rhythms and instrumental harmonies reveal greater and greater depth with each new listen. This is an album to be played often; this is an album to be cherished.
The ensemble hits high gear on these (audiophile grade) recordings1. Performed in an intimate studio setting in Silicon Valley, the tracks have the unmistakable feel of four master jazzmen who love working together...and do so seamlessly to the delight of the listener.
Lucas Vesely occasional use of sound effects on the bass give some up-tempo tracks a distinct ‘fusion’ quality that eggs on the guitar and sax to match his intensity. And that’s exactly what they do.
Joe De Rose drumming forms the groove that incite the others to bond together under his rhythmic mastery. He skillfully takes the listener from a ‘lazy’ beat, such as Moon River and Julia, to driving, exciting percussive motion on the original compositions. Joe listens and complements the other three, especially while they’re soloing, fitting in where there’s space, and laying back when there’s not.
This album represents a major milestone in today’s world of contemporary ensemble jazz. It will transport you to a new plane of rhythmic and melodic enjoyment.
The upcoming presentations Kelly / Elfman will be on June 15 at Sheba Piano Lounge (San Francisco), 1st. July at Cafe Pinkhouse (Saratoga) and every Wednesday at B Street an Vine (San Mateo)
Notes of Neil Kelly / Robby Elfman:
Neil Kelly is a Jazz Guitarist / Composer / Arranger / and Band Leader who has been working in the greater San Francisco Bay area for the past 10 years. Originally from the East Coast and Chicago Neil arrived in California in 1992. Since that time he has devoted his life to the craft of music.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Jazz Studies from San Jose State University where he majored in Jazz composition and arranging. He received the award for outstanding Graduate Student of the 2009 graduating class from the Department of Music and Dance.
Neil’s original composition “Threshold,” and “All the Things We Were,” orchestrated for Big band, were winning compositions for the San Jose Jazz Society’s Local Composer’s Showcase of 2009 and 2010
Neil is one of the founding members of the Playa Jazz Cafe, a collective of jazz musicians from LA and the bay area who bring a Jazz theme camp to Burning man each year since 2003. The Jazz Café hosts nightly jam sessions, daily educational workshops, and formal concerts throughout the week where players from all over the world converge to create art and music.
He has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Summer Fest. He has shared the stage with Bobby Shew, Chris Amberger, and countless others.
Neil’s debut CD “Rivers Converge” (2010) features his compositional talents in a quartet setting and received critical acclaim upon its release.
His second outing “In Roads” (2015) is a collaboration with saxophonist / composer Robby Elfman and takes the modern vision and exploratory sounds to a new level.
Robby Elfman is a graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music (2003) with a Bachelor’s degree in music composition. He was the recipient of the Joe and Alice Harnell Scholarship, the Silvia Grancel Endowed Music Scholarship, the Michael Kamen Scholarship through the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, and the BMI Scholarship for music for film and television.
While attending USC he had new music compositions premiered by local L.A. groups such as The Capitol Ensemble, the Donald Novakowsky Foundation, and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. He also wrote the music for several short films and documentaries, including the award-winning “Pharaoh’s Streets”, which received recognition at the Silverlake Film Festival in 2002. In 2004, Robby was one of fifteen composers selected to attend the prestigious ASCAP Summer Film Scoring Workshop.
In 2009 and 2010 Robby had two original compositions premiered in New York, as part of the “Detour” concert series featuring the work of new composers. In 2012 he composed the original score for the short film “Private War”, which was shown at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. In 2013 Robby was hired to compose the entire news theme music package for San Diego’s local CBS affiliate KFMB News 8.
In addition to composing music, Robby is also a professional instrumentalist, recording saxophone and clarinet for film and TV scores, radio and TV commercial spots, and rock/pop albums. In 1999, he won the coveted Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award for his jazz performance on the tenor saxophone at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He was the 2nd chair clarinetist of the L.A. Jewish Symphony from 2002-2012, and the tenor saxophonist for the L.A. jazz quintet, Jazz Punks, who recorded their debut album Smashups in 2011.
Robby now lives in the Bay Area, where he performs regularly with several different bands and continues to compose music for film, television and the concert stage.
"Moon River" is an original composition by Henry Mancini, but we will hear the version that make Kelly / Elfman, this song is part of "In Roads" ... enjoy it:
