SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORTThis chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.
Monday, August 31, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - August 31, 2020 #jazz
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Jazz singer-songwriter Yola Nash is an unstoppable force when “Touched By Love” #jazz
Her second album, an intimate acoustic jazz meditation on love, dropped on Wednesday.
Growing up stifled by the communist regime in Poland and an abusive, alcoholic father, Yola Nash found solace by escaping into music where she feels safe and protected. With her personal experiences in love serving as muse for her songs that paint the complete color palate of human emotions, Nash’s “Touched By Love” dropped on Wednesday. It’s the jazz singer-songwriter’s second album, an intimate six-song acoustic set that she produced with GRAMMY winning jazz pianist Edsel Gomez (Dee Dee Bridgewater) serving as musical director. The multimedia artist who hosts the celebrity driven “The Yola Nash Show” on New York City’s WABC Radio wrote lyrics for the album.
Nash began writing for “Touched By Love” five years ago. Having released her debut disc (“Another Girl”) over ten years ago, spawning the Billboard No. 1 most added adult contemporary single “I Wanna Be Loved By You,” she struggled to find her sound and direction for her sophomore outing. She turned to composers Dr. Graham Keir (guitar) and Dr. Octavio Vazquez (piano) to help create and develop her musical vision. Gomez tailored warm, elegant instrumental soundscapes around the award-winning jazz chanteuse’s sensual, breathy vocals that emit longing, fragility, heartache, hope and bliss, guiding Nash to cozy acoustic jazz settings. GRAMMY-winning percussionist Luisito Quintero (Chick Corea) and bassist Dave Baron (Herbie Hancock) anchor the rhythmic grooves while GRAMMY nominated accordionist Alex Meixner adds vital ambiance that fosters organic Polish-European accents, making “Touched By Love” a multicultural listening experience.
At the heart of the album is Nash’s heart that somehow manages to beat with her strong optimistic spirit and the vibration of hope despite her often-pained subject matters and difficult past. She’s come a long way, facing and triumphing over adversity in the process, and living to sing about it.
“The songs were inspired by my life, beautiful love and longing for it, or tremendous pain, betrayal, burning questions or just hunger for hope. All of those powerful emotions that needed to be shared and expressed. The world needs more love, hope and the spirit of never ever giving up. I’m here as living proof that bad times always pass and good things always prevail,” said Nash who arrived in New York City over 15 years ago, not knowing any English or anyone or having any place to go, with only the $1,000 that she borrowed from her late mother, Danusia, to whom the album is dedicated.
The lone song on “Touched By Love” not penned by Nash is “Dance With Me,” a cabaret-like track that she describes as “musical exploration.” It sets a theatric poem by award-winning poet and film director Fella Cederbaum to music written by the author.
The “Touched By Love” recording sessions began before the COVID-19 quarantine with the goal of a spring album release, but then came the New York-New Jersey lockdowns, which halted the project’s initial momentum.
“During the first editing-mixing session, we found out we were going to be in quarantine and that completely shut down our production process. It took months to finally get back to the studios to finish the album. It was such relief to go back, but it meant nonstop chasing the clock. I jumped into the studio and in one six-hour session, I recorded all my vocals for the album. We didn’t have the luxury of taking many takes and spending days in the studio on it,” said the resilient and determined Nash who performed at New York Fashion Week earlier this year.
Highlights of Nash’s performance career include singing for Pope John Paul II and becoming the first Polish American to perform and record with the GRAMMY-winning Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and its director, multiple GRAMMY-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. On the radio, Nash has been interviewing A-list celebrities, world changers, spiritual leaders and inspirational speakers in the Big Apple for nearly 15 years, inspiring her audiences around the globe to live a happier, more fulfilling life. An artist in other media who studied fine arts, she’s a Guinness Book world record holder for creating the original key art for the largest theater poster in the world for the renowned new play “Anne Frank,” which took eight professional mountain climbers to hang. Indeed, Nash is an unstoppable force who thinks and acts big.
“I’m creating my purposeful path every day with my determination. I hope my story and my music will inspire people to be stronger and dream big, especially now during these challenging times, so they can find a creative way through the impossible waters and the impossible becomes possible,” said Nash.
“It’s a dream come true to finally put out my new album. I’m also excited because I found my signature sound that I’ve been looking for my entire life. Although it’s my second album, this one feels like I’m going in the right direction. I feel I’m being touched by love through this music, the people who came along to support it and the amazing musicians who brought their sensibilities to make it happen. ‘Touched By Love’ expresses what I felt and feel in my heart. After all the hardship, major challenges, obstacles and pain, I never lost hope. The album is not just a music project; it’s a miracle to me. It’s a voice of hope, a chance and a voice of strength that expresses my life’s motto: ‘Never ever give up on your dreams!’”
“Touched By Love” contains the following songs:
“Lies and Wishes”
“I Miss You Loving Me”
“Ready For Love”
“Dance With Me”
“Forbidden Love”
“Lololove Me”
For more information, please visit http://yolanash.com.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Together for the first time Randy Brecker & Eric Marienthal "Double Dealin' " on Shanachie September 11th #jazz
Two legendary legends
Both Double Grammy winners
Collaborating for the first time!!!
Randy Brecker & Eric Marienthal
“DOUBLE DEALIN’
"Brecker's gorgeous warm sound and ebullient spirit are an abundance of jazz joy." All About Jazz
"Eric Marienthal...exciting, gratifying...highly recommended." - All About Jazz
Two time Grammy winner Randy Brecker, an original member of Blood Sweat and Tears, has been featured with legendary artists such as Stevie Wonder, Art Blakey, and the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver and many others. The groundbreaking Brecker Brothers group, formed with his multi Grammy Award-winning brother Mike Brecker, is revered as one of the creators of Fusion Jazz.
Two time Grammy Winner Eric Marienthal, a longtime featured member of The Chick Corea band, has performed with such greats as Elton John, Aaron Neville and Ramsey Lewis.
'Double Dealin'' is a historic meeting of these two jazz giants, featuring ten originals such as "Mind The Fire," a heartfelt tribute to Chuck Loeb, the Brazilian-flavored "Sambop," the laid back "3 Deuces" and much more! Features special guests John Patitucci, Dave Weckl and George Whitty.
TRACKS
- Double Dealin'
- 3 Deuces
- Fast Lane
- Mind The Fire (for Chuck)
- Sambop
- You Ga (Ta Give It)
- True North
- Fast Eddie
- Jetlagged
- Habañero
Monday, August 24, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - August 24, 2020 #jazz
SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORT
This chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.
Dave Koz announces the release of "A New Day". Coming in October #jazz
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Friday, August 21, 2020
Nubya Garcia releases "Source" on Concord Records today, August 21, 2020 #jazz
Multi award-winning saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia is back with her much anticipated debut album, SOURCE. Her first release on Concord Records, under the iconic Concord Jazz imprint, SOURCE is due for release on August 21, 2020. The album is produced by Garcia in collaboration with the celebrated producer Kwes (Nerija, Bobby Womack, Solange). Garcia returns with Joe Armon-Jones (keys), Daniel Casimir (bass) and Sam Jones (drums).
The album follows her 2018 self-released EP, WHEN WE ARE, the title track of which was described as “effervescent” by The New York Times and named one of NPR’s Best Songs of 2018. Her debut EP, NUBYA’s 5IVE, released in 2017, was hailed as “exceptional” by The Vinyl Factory and sold out on vinyl within 24 hours. In 2018, Garcia also featured on five of the nine tracks on WE OUT HERE, the Brownswood compilation project celebrating London’s young and exciting jazz scene. She won the Jazz FM Breakthrough Act of the Year Award and the Sky Arts Breakthrough Act of the Year Award in 2018, and the Jazz FM UK Jazz Act of the Year Award in 2019.
A collection of sonic mantras to live by, SOURCE is a deeply personal offering in which Garcia maps cartographies around the coordinate points of her identity, her family histories, grief, afro-diasporic connections and collectivism. SOURCE is fundamentally about getting grounded within yourself, so that you can be present with others. It's about a realization of personal and collective power: the evolution of the saxophonist’s values as she re-connects with herself, her roots and her community. Garcia digs deep to present an album with a global outlook: from London to Bogota, Caura to Georgetown, it's a record drawing inspiration from the many places Garcia calls home.
Garcia’s erudite blend of broken beat, soul, dub-step, afro-diasporic sounds - from cumbia to calypso expands further on this record, all whilst never losing her deep jazz foundation. The album takes as much inspiration from Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter as it does from Flying Lotus, Calypso Rose, Mala and Nidia Góngora. SOURCE is about a radical, relentless belief in our capacity to surmount the individual and collective challenges we face now, and those to come.
The record opens with Pace, a purposeful composition, the track swings between spatial quietude and intense peaks, which Garcia likens to crashing waves. The track's relentlessness mimics the hustle and hyper productivity of modern life, a mode of living that can leave us collectively “very isolated and disconnected from ourselves and each other”, Garcia says. As an antidote, Garcia wanted “to think about what makes each of us joyful, what things we personally reach towards to feel grounded.” Moments of rest on the record are “like sweeping your hands for stillness before you go back out again, on whatever journey you’re on.” The irony of the track’s title and intentions aren’t lost on Garcia in the midst of this pandemic - it's a track about reassessing her own values, something the uncertainty of the current moment demands we all do.
Where Pace is about an internal sense of grounding, with its steady, questing solos and capacious grooves, The Message Continues is about taking root in the stories and experiences of our elders. Garcia hones in on the importance of learning about and passing on stories from the past, so that knowledge isn’t forgotten.
The album’s title track, Source, arrives reworked in steamy dub overtones, blending together reggae, jazz and myriad sounds from her youth. The sweltering heat generated in the track’s basslines and Garcia’s militant sax place the track as a paean to personal power. It's a theme that carries over into Together is a Beautiful Place To Be, a soaring ballad dedicated to her late stepfather. Dancing on the outer edges of soul and gospel, it’s a meditative space, a wake of sorts, set to high hat soft blows, a delicate accompaniment from Sheila Maurice-Grey and Joe Armon-Jones’ gentle keys. “I miss him,” Garcia reflects. “I’m thankful that I got to say goodbye. When I take my experiences out of the song, it’s about being with your family, your people and your community.”
Stand With Each Other is built on serpentine nyabinghi grooves. Here, Garcia is joined by Kokoroko’s Richie Sievwright, Cassie Kinoshi and Sheila Maurice-Grey on standout vocals recalling classic reggae harmonies from the likes of the Wailers and The Congos: “I love the three of them singing so much, the blend is like nothing I’ve heard for a really long time - I wanted the vocals to sound like a classic Lover’s Rock tune and they nailed it,” Garcia shared. It’s a celebration of collectivism, particularly of women: Garcia wants to celebrate the incredible artists she’s in community with, and at the same time, wants the industry to move beyond viewing artists only in terms of their genders: “I'm more than a woman. And I'm not the only woman [on the scene],’ she shares.
On La cumbia está llamando, the lyrics say it all: ‘'the cumbia is calling me.’ Last year with the British Council, and alongside other members of the London Jazz Scene, Garcia spent a week in Colombia where she first met multi-instrumentalist Diana San Miguel of La Perla, a young trio celebrating the nation’s traditional music. Garcia was so enamored that she went back this past winter, soaking in the sounds across her travels through Cali, Bogotá (where the track was recorded at the renowned Mambo Negro studios), and Timbiquí.
Curious to know more about her family’s lives and histories, Before Us: In Demerara & Caura follows deep dive excavations into Garcia’s family histories. Musically, Garcia draws from a rich web of Guyanese folk songs and carnival culture both in London and the Caribbean. Through the track, it's an attempt to honor those experiences, and to attend to the alienation she feels from distant homelands.
Anchored on Daniel Casimir’s pliable bass and the haunting control of Chicagoan vocalist Akenya, the album’s closer Boundless Beings, in Garcia’s words, sums up the sentiment of the album. A dystopian anti-ballad, it’s a testament to personal triumph. It brings to mind the erotic - in Audre Lorde’s definition - as a mode of survival, one that is generative not only for each of us personally, but each other and the planet - all concerns that Garcia shares. It's about radical, relentless belief in our capacity to surmount the individual and collective challenges we face now, and those to come.
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Garcia studied under pianist Nikki Yeoh at Camden Music, before joining Gary Crosby’s Tomorrow’s Warriors in her late teens and completed her training at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music. She is a member of the contemporary septet, Nerija, and has toured extensively internationally, playing venues and festivals across Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the United States. Garcia’s reputation as a DJ is also burgeoning; she currently helms a hit radio residency on NTS and plays a growing number of live sets across Europe.
Track Listing:
1. Pace (7:52)
2. The Message Continues (6:44)
3. Source featuring Ms MAURICE, Cassie Kinoshi, Richie Seivwright (12:08)
4. Together Is A Beautiful Place To Be (7:36)
5. Stand With Each Other featuring Ms MAURICE, Cassie Kinoshi, Richie Seivwright (3:38)
6. Inner Game (7:44)
7. La cumbia me está llamando featuring La Perla (4:15)
8. Before Us: In Demerara & Caura featuring Ms MAURICE (8:00)
9. Boundless Beings featuring Akenya (2:46)
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Contemporary jazz flutist Alexander Zonjic plays it forward on suped up new album #jazz
His first album in over ten years drops October 9;
“Motor City Sway” is one of Billboard’s most added singles.
Serving as the artistic director for nearly a dozen music festivals and concert series throughout Michigan ordinarily keeps contemporary jazz flutist Alexander Zonjic super busy from March through September in addition to maintaining his own active performance schedule. But with most of the events shelved this year due to coronavirus concerns, Zonjic was able to find time to finish his first album in more than ten years. “Playing It Forward,” his 13th album, will be released October 9 on his company’s Hi-Falutin Music label. GRAMMY-winning keyboardist Jeff Lorber produced the set with the exception of the first single, “Motor City Sway,” a throwback R&B groove inspired by Zonjic’s adopted home of Detroit, which was written and produced by Pieces of a Dream’s keyboardist James Lloyd. The single has been one of the most added songs on Billboard BDS chart two weeks in a row.
The title “Playing It Forward” makes obvious reference to “paying it forward,” something the philanthropic Zonjic is big on doing throughout the Metro Detroit region where the Windsor, Ontario native has been a multimedia personality ever since he began hosting a WVMV morning radio show in 1998 and expanded to weekly television hosting duties for his own show, “Alexander Zonjic: From A to Z,” three years ago.
“When we got into this pandemic, people really started to play it forward. For us, our connection with Detroit has always been this back-and-forth relationship and us finding ways to give back. We love the people of Detroit and do a lot of fundraisers for more than a dozen nonprofit organizations. My son and I came up with ‘Playing It Forward’ and I like the energy of it. It’s a very forward momentum record. There’s a lot of energy,” said Zonjic, a three-time Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards winner (including International Broadcaster of the Year) and a15-time Detroit Music Awards winner.
Indeed, “Playing It Forward” is a high-energy jazz, funk, fusion and soul collection featuring six original tunes, five of which were penned or co-penned by Lorber.
“Several years ago, Jeff started to send tracks. He always sends a ton of amazing songs and you want to record all of them. We have a great relationship that dates back to 1979. He’s a great producer,” said Zonjic, who was accompanied by noteworthy guitarists Chuck Loeb, Paul Jackson Jr. and Michael Thompson, drummer Gary Novak, horn player and arranger David Mann, and 14-year-old South African keyboard phenom Justin-Lee Schultz.
One of the new Lorber songs, “Musaic,” is one of the final songs co-written and recorded by Loeb, who died in 2017. It’s the album’s lone downtempo number that hangs a lush melody atop a Lorber groove as the backdrop for Zonjic’s flute and Loeb’s electric guitar to dialogue.
Zonjic said, “What an honor to have Chuck – not only composing a song for me but performing. Both from a performance and a composing standpoint, this is probably one of the last things that he wrote and produced. Musicians, more than the general public, knew what a profound guitar player he was. He truly was one of the greatest guitar players in the world. Having someone like him on the record comes with the fun challenge of going toe to toe with these guys when it comes to trading solos. You’ve got to have your chops together to trade solos with the likes of Chuck and Jeff.”
Along with a half dozen new songs, Zonjic reimagined five cover tunes for flute with fresh arrangements.
“A mix of originals and covers is a format that was very successful from a retro standpoint during the great era of CTI Records that came out of New York and made records by Hubert Laws, George Benson and Bob James. There was always a mixture of cool arrangements of covers along with originals,” said Zonjic.
Reimaging James’s “Night Crawler” has special meaning for Zonjic who was discovered by the GRAMMY and Emmy-winning contemporary jazz keyboard icon while playing in Detroit’s famous Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in 1981. James invited the flautist to join his band and off they went on tour. Their relationship has continued through various recording projects ever since.
Another cover selection was the standard “Nature Boy.”
“I always wanted to record ‘Nature Boy.’ I think it’s one of the great haunting melodies of all time when you think of the interpretations by Nat King Cole, George Benson or Kurt Elling. Flute players are very much like singers: they love melodies. The flute is pretty much the closest instrument to the human voice. When we hear great melodies, we want to play them,” Zonjic explained.
As a flute player who began as a teenage rock guitarist, Zonjic has been repeatedly asked ever since the 1980s when he was going to record a Jethro Tull song. That day finally arrives with “Living In The Past.”
“(Jethro Tull’s) Ian Anderson has been one of the great flute messengers for what seems like my entire lifetime. Although not a jazz musician, Ian has a unique sound and technique. ‘Living In The Past’ is such a cool composition. Its 5/4-time signature and smooth melody always made it one of my all-time Tull favorites. I had so much fun interpreting this melody using grunts, groans and classical chops all at the same time,” shared Zonjic.
The album comes to a rousing conclusion with a roof raising “Rolling In The Deep” showcasing the Selected of God gospel choir.
“‘Rolling In The Deep’ was not inspired by Adele but by watching Aretha Franklin sing it on David Letterman’s show. While listening, it dawned on me that it would make a great flute song. Lorber put this great track together and I got ahold of Selected of God, who I had seen on ‘America’s Got Talent’ and in an Eminem video. That’s from where the magic came.”
Although recording was complete and the mixing process was underway prior to mid-March’s COVID-19 shutdown, the questions then arose about when and how to release the album. A lot has changed in the recording industry since Zonjic’s 2009 release “Doin’ the D” and in the midst of a global pandemic, he wasn’t sure if and how best to proceed.
“The pandemic really changed things. This was a new experience for me because I normally don’t have the time to do focus groups and to research the stuff that I had to research because of all the other things we normally have going on with our various festivals and concert series this time of year. I asked a lot of questions. I interviewed a lot of big artists on my radio show that airs on Detroit’s 910AM Superstation and all of us had the same question, which was ‘Is this a good time to release a record?’ In my case, I worked so hard on it for so many years and spent so much money on making it that I wanted the fun of assembling a team to release it. I’ll admit that it’s been quite a learning curve, but I’ve really been enjoying it. I don’t plan to wait another ten years to do another album. I probably enjoyed the process of making this record as much as I do all the fun that comes from releasing it.”
“Playing It Forward” contains the following songs:
“Jazz Café”
“Benita”
“Hipster”
“Night Crawler”
“Motor City Sway”
“Playing It Forward”
“Musaic”
“Living In The Past”
“Nature Boy”
“Bottom Heat”
“Rolling In The Deep”
For more information, please visit http://www.zonjic.com.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - August 17, 2020 #jazz
SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORT
This chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.