The award-winning trumpeter’s reggae jazz band will release a nine-song salute to the late Grammy winner on August 26.
Trumpeter Darren Barrett, winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition,
was flipping through cable television channels while taking a break
from a recording session when he stumbled upon a live concert by Amy Winehouse.
He had heard the buzz about the unconventional British artist, but
hadn’t heard any of her music until that moment. The musician of
Jamaican descent with a proclivity for incorporating reggae into his
neo-bop jazz recordings was instantly struck by the way the rhythm &
soul singer-songwriter infused reggae into her throwback tracks.
“I
was surprised to discover that the majority of her concert consisted of
performing music mirroring the spirit-liberating sound of reggae music.
Damn! Amy was laying the music down like one of the ‘old heads.’ She
immediately gained much respect from me and I soon became a fan and a
loyal follower of her fast-moving musical career,” Barrett recalled
about his 2008 discovery and the inspiration for his eighth album, “The Music of Amy Winehouse,” which will be released August 26 on the dB Music label.
Barrett and his Trumpet Vibes
band, a jazz and reggae group, selected nine songs from the late
artist’s songbook and spent over a year working on the arrangements and
rehearsing before entering the studio. To recreate Winehouse’s high
voltage, multi-tiered sound, Barrett augmented his band by adding
guitars, keyboards, saxophone and percussion to the Trumpet Vibes lineup
that consists of the trumpeter-producer, bassist Alexander Toth, drummer Anthony Toth and vibraphonist Simon Moullier
(noted vibraphonist Warren Wolf is featured on “Our Day Will Come”).
Naturally, the toughest part was casting a female vocalist capable of
capturing Winehouse’s uniquely soulful and charismatic spirit on
hallmark hits such as “Tears Dry On Their Own,” “Rehab,” “Back To Black”
and “Just Friends.” Enter Joanna Teters.
“I met Joanna many years ago when she was a student at Berklee College of Music,
but never had the opportunity to work with her,” said Barrett, who is
an associate professor in the ensemble department at the distinguished
school in addition to his work as an artist. “I continued to listen to
many of her projects after she graduated, having a strong sense that
someday we would eventually work together. Well it happened just as I
predicted. Joanna joined us on the Amy Winehouse project and really
captured the essence of Amy's musicality without neglecting to
incorporate the uniqueness of her own personality into each song. The
commitment and musical steadfastness that each musician brought to the
project has resulted in a recording that Amy’s well-deserving fans will
not only enjoy, but also appreciate as they reconnect to Amy’s simple
joy of creating music.”
A Toronto, Ontario native who has been based in Boston ever since he attended Berklee, Barrett was a soloist on Esperanza Spaulding’s two-time Grammy-winning “Radio Music Society.” Mentored by trumpet great Donald Byrd, he has recorded or played internationally with jazz giants Elvin Jones, Jackie McLean, Herbie Hancock, Antonio Hart, Wayne Shorter and Roy Hargrove. Barrett has also performed with Common, will.i.am, Talib Kweli and D’Angelo.
Maintaining a prolific album release pace since 2014, “The Music of Amy
Winehouse” follows last fall’s critically-hailed jazz and reggae mashup
“Trumpet Vibes” and predates a straight-ahead jazz outing from the dB Quintet that is expected in the first quarter of 2017. For more information, please visit www.DarrenBarrett.com.
“The Music of Amy Winehouse” contains the following songs:
“Tears Dry On Their Own”
“Rehab”
“Our Day Will Come”
“Back To Black”
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”
“Cupid”
“Just Friends”
“To Know Him Is To Love Him”
“Monkey Man”
“Tears Dry On Their Own” (clean version)
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