Innervision Records celebrates a shiny silver anniversary #jazz

The boutique imprint marks its 25^th anniversary on top with flutist Kim Scott’s “SHINE!” awarded Billboard’s 2022 Smooth Jazz Song of the Year and the label earning

the No. 3 Smooth Jazz Label of the Year spot for the fourth consecutive time.

 

Consistent excellence in artistry combined with passion, innovation and imagination have been the hallmarks of Innervision Records during its 25 years. The Southern California-based imprint that specializes in shades of jazz spanning groove, smooth and chill along with neo soul and world music continues to ride high on the Billboard charts after their artists Blake Aaron and Will Donato scored No. 1 singles in 2022 and Kim Scott collected the highest honor: Billboard’s Smooth Jazz Song of the Year.

Aaron was the first artist inked to Innervision Records thus there’s something special about the guitarist continuing to be a part of the label’s storied successes. His “Dreamland” occupied the No. 1 spot on five charts  - Billboard, Groove Jazz Music, Mediabase, Radiowave and Smooth Jazz Network - simultaneously last summer. The cherry on top is that Aaron is the featured soloist on Scott’s year-end chart-topper, “SHINE!”

 

"As one of the first artists on Innervision Records, I've had the honor of watching Innervision Records grow from a very small label into a major player in the industry with dozens of amazingly talented artists and become a powerhouse in the genre. It is exciting to see Innervision Records all over the Billboard charts each and every week, and most of the time, at the top. As one of the most artist-friendly labels out there, Innervision Records is truly a ‘family’ that I'm honored to be a part of,” said Aaron who has captured the No. 1 position on the Billboard singles chart for Innervision Records five times.

 

With roots in classical and jazz, Scott’s success has come by crafting a groove-laden mélange of urban, jazz, soul and pop music. The flautist has notched Billboard No. 1 singles in the past yet “SHINE!” accomplished the rare feat of becoming the most played song of the year without hitting the peak position. With an MVP performance by labelmate Aaron’s electric jazz guitar, the title cut of Scott’s “SHINE!” album is a shimmering and sophisticated blend of R&B and contemporary jazz.  

 

“I’m so honored that “SHINE!” was the most played smooth jazz song of 2022 and that it was named Billboard’s #1 Song of the Year. It was truly a labor of love to co-write the song and I was instantly inspired to write the melodies for the verses and chorus. They flowed from my spirit almost effortlessly. It was like a bright light was shining on me as I wrote it, bringing me energy, joy, inspiration, and hope. Featuring Blake Aaron on the track made the song shine even more and he did a brilliant job with his guitar solo! I’m so proud to have played a part in this achievement for Innervision Records, my team, and all the artists involved with the song. I plan to continue to let my light shine so listeners can find joy and inspiration in my music,” said the Birmingham, AL-based Scott.

 

For the fourth consecutive year, Innervision Records placed third on Billboard’s Smooth Jazz Label of the Year tally on the strength of Scott’s massive airplay and No. 1 singles by Aaron and saxophonist Donato, the latter who recently vaulted into the top spot with his soul-powered single “Good On You.” Other Innervision Records artists to enjoy Billboard top 20 success in 2022 were JJ Sansaverino, Cal Harris Jr. and Tom Braxton.

 

Innervision Records will celebrate its silver anniversary at their tenth annual After NAMM JAMM on April 16. Many of the artists on the label’s roster are expected to take the Spaghettini stage in Southern California for the popular post-NAMM show jam session. 

 

“We’re excited to bring everyone together for our Innervision Records After NAMM JAMM once again.  Originally starting out as a get together for our artists and their musician friends to come out and jam during the heavily attended annual music industry convention, the After NAMM JAMM has evolved into an exciting opportunity for many of our Innervision Records family members to get together and celebrate the label, our shared successes, the fans and, most importantly, our friendships face to face,” said Steve Belkin, Innervision Records’ general manager.

 

Independent labels come and go fast in today’s music industry thus reaching a 25^th anniversary is a testament to Innervision Records’ vision and execution. The label eagerly anticipates celebrating the milestone with their artists at the After NAMM JAMM. And while they are enthused by their accomplishments to date, they’re energized about what’s ahead.   

 

“To think Innervision Records has been around for 25 years is pretty crazy.  What started as a very tiny independent one-artist label has developed into an eclectic, creative and artistic boutique label featuring artists from around the country. I'm very proud to be a part of Innervision's growth and success, building a distinct brand. Watching several of our artists go from emerging to chart-topping artists are like proud parent moments. The artists deserve the credit, but you can't help but take some pride in their success,” said Belkin. 

 

Innervision Records’ A&R and radio promotions executive Adam Leibovitz concurs, acknowledging the role fans have played in the label’s accomplishments.

 

"Innervision Records has endured and grown into a major source of talent and I am so proud of what we have accomplished. I’m proud of our artists who create incredible music, and, of course, grateful to all of the fans who have been so loyal and so dedicated to what we have built. I am amazed when thinking about where Innervision Records started, beaming with pride over what it has become, and most of all, filled with excitement over what it will be!" 

 

For more information, please visit www.innervisionrecords.com. 

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Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 100 - February 27, 2023 #jazz

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Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 100 - February 20, 2023 #jazz

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"Sound Alchemist" Myron McKinley mixes up an audacious jazz and neo soul collection #jazz

“Sound Alchemist” Myron McKinley mixes up an audacious jazz and neo soul collection

 

The keyboardist dropped the album on February 10 accompanied by a series of imaginative videos.

 

Keyboardist Myron McKinley has a clear vision for his own creative expression, but perhaps more importantly, he has a clear vision for providing a necessary impetus to shatter the boundaries and stimulate the evolution of jazz. Dropped February 10 on the Dark Elf Music label, the ten-song “Sound Alchemist” is a learned thesis of sonic exploration and experimentation written and produced by McKinley as a mélange of contemporary, straight-ahead and fusion jazz; hip hop, R&B and soul; and multicultural nuance.

 

While the music industry continues to shift towards singles as singular musical statements, McKinley prefers taking listeners on a complete journey via an album. “Sound Alchemist” does just that. Deftly, he offers enough of the familiar allure, such as recording The Carpenter’s “Close to You,” Sting’s “La Belle Dame San Regrets,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Imagination,” and Drake and Jhene Aiko’s “From Time,” but he reinvents each one - sometimes radically - making you forget the source material.

 

McKinley’s own compositions are just as far-reaching and ambitious, challenging jazz to grow and listeners to open their minds. He offers “Will You” as a tribute to Nat King Cole, who long before he was known for seducing and charming with his elegant and silky voice, he was a remarkably dexterous pianist. Another track on which McKinley performs all the instruments is “Matrix,” a wildly adventurous instrumental rooted in elements that are seemingly polar opposites: bebop and European electronic club music. In the company of guitarist Morris O’Connor and trombonist Reggie Young, the keyboardist stretches out even further on “Crowded Club,” referencing early 1970s funk and jazz fusion hybrids created by The Headhunters and Herbie Hancock. McKinley fuses straight-ahead jazz, hip hop beats and electronic dance music on “Let’s Just See,” the result of which is a vividly ingenious recording. Sensual and somber elements spawn “Remembering You.”

 

An all-star lineup illumines the centerpiece selection “Tunisian Morning.” Grammy-winning saxophonist Gerald Albright solos amidst fellow saxman Gary Bias, bassist Reggie Hamilton and percussionist Munyungo Jackson.

 

“I got the chance to play at Nelson Mandela’s birthday party and while we were there celebrating, I heard all these different types of rhythms. I thought it was amazing. So, I kind of took a Bob James approach to the melody but using the rhythm that I heard over there and then had everybody play on it. I was blessed to have all those musicians play on it. They had so much fun doing it. I literally had to stop Munyungo from adding more tracks. He wanted to do more, but he had filled it up so much that you don’t even notice that there’s no drums on the track,” said McKinley.

 

Visuals are an important aspect to McKinley’s approach for “Sound Alchemist” thus three videos were created with a fourth in the planning stages. On the auspicious date of September 21, McKinley’s tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire drops and his “Imagination” video is quite personal. For the past twenty years, McKinley has toured with the legendary band, serving as their musical director for the last dozen years. The group’s energizing bass player Verdine White plays on the track featuring falsetto singer Danny McClain. The video consists of McKinley’s photos from two decades of touring the globe with EWF.

 

The “Let’s Just See” video arrives October 5. The clip depicts the real-life story behind the song.

 

McKinley explains, “I was in New York City, and it is just so loud. I was trying to practice and then kept getting distracted by the noise. Finally, I decided to go hang out at the club and I brought a melodica. I went in there and the DJ was playing. He gave me a mic and I started playing melodica there with him. It turned out really cool. Everybody was enjoying it and I had a lot of fun. The DJ played a bunch of different stuff and we just fooled around, and it became a thing for about a good hour. For the video, I had to write a script and time everything. It was the first I’ve ever done anything like it. I had to write the timeline and tell the animator what is supposed to happen in each cartoon. We had a lot of fun creating that.”

    

The animated video for “From Time” is slated to hit October 21. What drew McKinley to the song was the lyric “I love me enough for the both of us,” which is sung in dreamlike voice by Denaine Jones.

 

“I think that statement is going to resonate with any man because that means you’re not going to have to supplement for her what she’s supposed to have already. When I heard the song, I fell in love with what she’s saying. For the video, I was thinking how a lot of people play music and do other things while they’re messaging people. I thought it would be nice to have her texting a guy about how she feels. ‘I love me enough for the both of us.’ You see her sitting up against the wall in New York, texting during the solo and at the end. I thought it was an interesting journey to add a lot of feeling to it,” explained McKinley, who will perform music from “Sound Alchemist” at Denver’s Soiled Dove Underground on October 22.

    

Los Angeles native McKinley studied classical and jazz piano, including under the tutelage of Grammy-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. But hip hop’s influence in his works is just as prevalent as jazz and classical.

 

“I grew up in the hip hop era. I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest and Oscar Peterson on the same radio station. I loved all of those. When you come up like that, it’s still a part of you, even though you have classical and jazz. It still becomes a part of your DNA musically. I think ‘Sound Alchemist’ shows a lot of that. You can hear church aspects, classical aspects, jazz aspects and it also shows hip hop aspects.”

 

In addition to his long-time duties with Earth, Wind & Fire, McKinley has toured with Whitney Houston, Kenny Lattimore, Stanley Clarke, En Vogue and Shai. He has written, cowrote or produced songs for EWF, Clarke, Doc Powell, Silk, Vesta, Cherokee and Howard Hewett. He’s also composed music for film and television scores, contributing to “Soul Food,” “Romeo Must Die,” “The Best Man,” “Think Like A Man,” “Shaft,” and “The Godfather of Harlem” among many others. But jazz is home, so McKinley makes time to perform with his own straight-ahead jazz trio.  

 

McKinley’s bold spirit and intrepid scope heard throughout “Sound Alchemist” are purposely sprawling, purposely edgy, purposely youthful and vibrant, and purposely inclusive. That’s where he believes jazz needs to go in order to thrive again in relevancy.

 

“I don’t think musically right now the boundaries are being pushed. I could have easily done (recorded) something else and directed it towards a certain genre and left it there without pushing, but musically, to really make things grow, it takes adventurers to push the genre.”

 

“Sound Alchemist” contains the following songs:

 

“Close To You”

“Will You”

“Matrix”

“Crowded Club”

“Let’s Just See”

“Imagination”

“La Belle Dame Sans Regrets”

“Remembering You”

“Tunisian Morning”

“From Time”

 

For more information, please visit https://myronmckinley.com. 

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Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 100 - February 13, 2023 #jazz

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Burt Bacharach, master of pop songwriting, dies aged 94

Singer and performer, who had 73 Top 40 hits in the US and 52 in the UK, died at home in Los Angeles of natural causes

Burt Bacharach, the songwriter and performer who turned easy listening into high art, has died aged 94. A representative for Bacharach confirmed to the Washington Post that the singer died at home in Los Angeles of natural causes.

In all, he scored 73 Top 40 hits in the US and 52 in the UK.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1928 and raised in New York, Bacharach would sneak into jazz clubs underage to hear performers such as Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, while immersing himself in the work of composers such as Stravinsky and Ravel. He was classically trained at schools in Montreal, New York and California, and, following a spell in the US army, he became a piano accompanist to musicians, including Vic Damone, the Ames Brothers and his first wife, Paula Stewart. He also worked as an arranger and conductor for Marlene Dietrich when she toured Europe in the late 50s and early 60s.

Read the entire obituary at The Guardian by clicking here

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Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 100 - February 6, 2023 #jazz

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Jazz Winners at the 2023 Grammys #jazz

A. JAZZ CATEGORIES

Best Improvised Jazz Solo: Endangered Species – Wayne Shorter & Leo Genovese, soloist

Best Jazz Vocal Album : Linger Awhile Samara Joy (Samara Joy also won Best New Artist)

Best Jazz Instrumental Album: New Standards Vol. 1 Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, Nicholas Payton & Matthew Stevens

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album : Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra
Steven Feifke, Bijon Watson, Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra

Best Latin Jazz Album : Fandango At The Wall In New York
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra Featuring The Congra Patria Son Jarocho Collective

B.. JAZZ NAMES WINNING OTHER CATEGORIES

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: Higher Michael Bublé (includes a song by Fraser Churchill_

Best R&B Album : Black Radio III – Robert Glasper

Best Contemporary Instrumental Album – “Empire Central” Snarky Puppy

Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella : Scrapple From The Apple
John Beasley, arranger (Magnus Lindgren, John Beasley & The SWR Big Band Featuring Martin Auer)

Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals : Songbird (Orchestral Version)
Vince Mendoza, arranger (Christine McVie)

Best Opera Recording : Terence Blanchard: Fire Shut Up In My Bones

Best Traditional Blues Album: Get On Board – Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder

Best Instrumental Composition: Refuge – Geoffrey Keezer, composer

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Soul-Jazz saxophonist Shawn Raiford mixing romance and legacy #jazz

Grammy winner Derek “DOA” Allen produced the sensual new single “Forever.”

Taking an ambitious approach to recording his second album, urban-jazz saxophonist Shawn Raiford is already thinking about legacy early in his recording career. With Valentine’s Day approaching, one could make the case that Raiford’s sultry new single, “Forever,” is all about love and romance, and it is in part, but the musician also has a deeper meaning in mind. The track written by Raiford, Ashley Jemison and Grammy winner Derek “DOA” Allen (Lionel Richie, Janet Jackson, Tyrese) is crafted with the intention of being timeless and standing the test of time.

Produced by Allen, “Forever” is powered by a tight and prominent midtempo drum groove while nuanced atmospherics add to the amorous ambiance. Raiford’s alto sax coos impassioned come-ons, soloing ardently in the company of fellow saxophonist Andre Delano who adds backing harmonies. Vocalist Quintina Paris emotes lustfully on the breathy chorus.

“It’s definitely a steamy track. I’m a huge fan of Sade, and I wanted a track on the new album that reflected that type of seductive groove. When we were working on it in the studio, it felt like a timeless piece that would last and stand the test of time, which is my real goal. So, we titled it ‘Forever,’” said Raiford about the first single to be issued from the forthcoming “The Next Step” album slated to release this summer.

Raiford has been performing contemporary jazz, R&B, gospel, rock and pop music with his band throughout Northern California since 1999. He’s a dynamic entertainer, an award-winning performer who snagged the Best Live Performance title from the Sounds of Soul a decade ago, collected Hope Awards in the jazz and jazz performance categories, won Best R&B band at the Northern California Entertainers Music Awards, and is a Sammie nominated jazz artist.

On record, Raiford’s debut album, “Man with A Horn,” was released in September of 2020 spawning four charting singles – “All Systems Go,” “In The Moment,” “Good Vibrations” and the title track. The soul-jazz set finished on the year end chart at No. 22. Last November, Raiford released the holiday single, “Santa Baby,” to help whet appetites for “The Next Step.” “Forever” is destined to feed that desire.

Although presently focused on finishing the new album, Raiford is stepping out of the studio to perform with his Shawn Raiford Experience band. Catch them live on the following dates:

February 6 Mack Powell Event Center Sacramento, CA

February 10 Dante Club Sacramento, CA

February 18 Jade and Jora Duncanville, TX

March 3 Rock & Brews Sacramento, CA

March 11 Black American Political Association of California Sacramento, CA

March 13 Mulvaney’s B&L Sacramento, CA

April 15 The Miracle Los Angeles, CA

April 16 The Grand Ritz San Diego, CA

For more information, please visit https://shawnraifordsax.com.

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