Jazziz Backstage Pass

From a small Argentinian port town to the vibrant club scene of New York City, saxophonist/composer Julieta Eugenio's journey has been fascinating and it has led her to finally release her debut album as a leader, Jump. The album musically explores and promotes the idea of taking leaps forward to explore new situations and accept new ideas. Recorded and completed in the midst of the pandemic, it finds her leading a chordless trio with bassist Matt Dwonszyk and drummer Jonathan Barber and in addition to her crystalline and confident phrasing, it showcases her compositional prowess. Its program is, in fact, made up almost entirely of original compositions, plus two well-chosen standards: Ted Grouya and Edmund Aderson's "Flamingo," and Carl Sigman and Sidney Keith Russell's "Crazy He Calls Me." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Sigurd Hole is one of the most in-demand bassists of today's Norwegian jazz and creative music scene. His new album, Roraima, documents a live performance that took place between lockdown in Oslo in October 2020. The work, commissioned by Oslo World, reflects on themes of solidarity and ecological vulnerability. By referring to the northernmost region of Brazil, Hole draws attention to one of the work's primary sources of inspiration: the creation myth of the Yanomami people. And aside from featuring a lineup of fine Norwegian musicians, Roraima also makes prominent use of field recordings of Amazon biophony by U.S. soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Júlio Resende is an internationally acclaimed pianist/composer and a downright music ambassador of his native Portugal. Among his most ambitious and visionary projects is the development of an idiosyncratic blend of the sounds and emotions of fado, arguably the most characteristic music of Portugal, with the invention and vocabulary of jazz. Fado Jazz is the appropriate title of his forthcoming quartet outing as a leader, where he showcases said vision. The project also points new directions for European jazz at large and marks Resende's debut full-length for top European jazz label ACT Music. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Alex "Apolo" Ayala is one of the most in-demand bassists in the contemporary Latin music and jazz scene of New York City. His latest album, Bámbula, is available now on Truth Revolution Records. On it, he marries modern jazz ideas with Afro-Puerto Rican styles via a set of seven original compositions and one reimagination. He particularly offers his own vision of the bomba, Puerto Rico's oldest and purest music, with an over 400-year history. Through it, he celebrates his ancestors and Afro-Puerto Rican culture, ruminates on identity and race, and pays tribute to his late mother and grandmother. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Miriam Elhajli is a New York-based composer/improviser/folklorist whose work is influenced by the rich musical tradition of her Venezuelan, Moroccan and North American heritage. Her anticipated second album, The Uncertainty of Signs, features a wide cast of players performing on instruments of various cultures and traditions. The record will be released on February 22 via Numina and finds her searching for the metaphysics of song, exploring the surreal and the symbolic. "This record is my llanto," explains Elhajli via a press release, "my call out to the heavens. The music emerges from a deep longing for a promised return home, to a distant memory that is only communed with when in the flight of song - must those who live in exile belong solely to the spheres?" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Award-winning virtuoso flamenco guitarist/composer Miguel Espinoza gracefully balances tradition and innovation, blending flamenco with jazz, classical and subtle world music on his latest album with his Miguel Espinoza Flamenco Fusion, Veneta. Available now, Veneta is mostly made up of new original material, capitalizing on sophisticated rhythmic elements that are emotional, natural and organic. The group's unusual instrumentation, held together with soulful "duende," is a multitude of international and traditional influences, featuring Espinoza's guitar alongside Dianne Betkowski on cello, Lynn Baker on sax, Randy Hoepker on bass, Andy Skellenger on Indian tabla and Spanish Cajon, with Mario Moreno on timbales, congas, and bongo. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Vocalist/composer Christiane Karam will release Nar, her first album in nine years, on January 28. A tribute to the lives tragically lost in the 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut, her birthplace, the record is intended to be a joyous and uplifting tribute to the resilience, connection and triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Nar is also a meeting of cultures, including folk music from different regions of the Middle East and the Balkans with contemporary jazz. Its 13 tracks, originals or reimagined traditional material, span different languages and take on common themes shared amongst humanity, such as love, grief, belonging, overcoming and starting anew. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Malcolm Jiyane is a revered figure of the contemporary South African jazz scene. He's a successful painter as well as a musician. A generous sideman and bandleader, Jiyane plays multiple instruments. He was an integral part of SPAZA's most recent release, UPRIZE!, where he played piano. On his new debut album as a leader, he showcases his chops on the trombone. UMDALI is out now on the Mushroom Hour Half Hour. Its music meditates on the concept of creation. It draws on spirituality. It also pays tribute to a history of mentors, including Johnny Mekoa, founder of the Music Academy of Gauteng, which Jiyane attended from a young age. And with UMDALI, Jiyane continues to stretch our idea of what it means to improvise within the context of jazz. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Norwegian guitarist/composer Hedvig Mollestad has fronted her own acclaimed power-trio with bassist Ellen Brekken and drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad for the best part of this decade. Her new album, however, finds her performing her sweeping brand of progressive jazz-rock with a loosely-configured sextet. Documenting a performance from 2018, Tempest Revisited was conceived as a hymn to her birthplace of Alesund, Norway, and takes cues from the weather and the natural world at large. It was unveiled for the anniversary of the opening of Parken, a cultural house in Alesund. (A new album by her trio, Ding Dong. You're Dead was also released earlier this year.) --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Vocalist/composer/saxophonist Elena Maque was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is a university-trained musician, who spent years honing her craft and wowing audiences throughout Russia, Europe and the United States, where she currently resides. She is highly regarded for her ability to cross-pollinate with funk and pop. Her new album, Feel Again, reveals an even wider range of influences with its Latin tinges and bossa nova vibes, via a program of three invigorating covers and six original compositions. Feel Again is also the result of a collaboration with Los Angeles-based acclaimed keyboardist Scott Kinsey. JAZZIZ Travel is a new podcast series hosted by JAZZIZ online editor Matt Micucci that explores jazz and creative music in all four corners of the globe. In this series, you will hear conversations with artists and people talking about the significance of jazz as an art form, the influence of folk music traditions of different cultures and backgrounds, or simply sharing their thoughts, ideas and

Sara Serpa is a singer/composer/improviser who, through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. She was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and moved to New York in 2008, where she resides to this day, and where she creates ethereal music drawing from a broad variety of inspirations, including literature, film and visual arts, as well as history and nature. Her new album, Intimate Strangers, documents her collaborative and multi-media performance with Nigerian author Emmanuel Iduma, commissioned by John Zorn. Much of it revolves around Iduma's stories and stories of others that he collected in his book, A Stranger's Pose, and deals with such themes as migration and displacement. It also continues a narrative that Serpa began in 2020 with Recognition: Music For a Silent Film. While that album grappled with the legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa via her own family's history, Intimate Strangers gazes back at colonial powers from the vantage point of Africa itself. --- Suppo

Puerto Rican master drummer/composer/arranger Henry Cole is known for his versatility and groove. Over the years, he has performed with many of the greats, from Miguel Zenón to Gary Burton and beyond. During this time of intense activity, he also developed his own idiosyncratic "mestizo sound," which synthesizes African, Indigeound and European influences in a contemporary jazz setting. This sound, also developed via a mixture of personal experiences within a wide range of styles and genres, reflects the eclectic of his Puerto Rican heritage. It is showcased on his upcoming bold and life-affirming work, Buscando la Vida, the music of which came from a profoundly personal place and was inspired by dramatic events in his recent history. The record features his dynamic ensemble, Villa Locura, augmented by the renowned Metropole Orkest and special guests. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Trumpeter/vocalist/composer Amir ElSaffar is a Chicago native of Iraqi-American heritage. A visionary musician with a prominent background in classical music and jazz, ElSaffar is also a purveyor of old, endangered Arabic music. He is particularly fond of the Iraqi maqam, which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player, and has integrated in his eclectic and idiosyncratic artistic vision. His new album, The Other Shore, was released earlier this year via Outhere and marks a further evolution for his Rivers of Sound ensemble, which has grown to become a 17-piece all-star lineup featuring instruments of various cultures and backgrounds. Yet, As ElSaffar explains via an official statement: "I'm less interested in the surface intermingling of cultures and more fascinated by the sonic possibilities in this unique combination of instruments from around the world." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Adam Bałdych is a Polish violin master who works within a wide range of settings and genres, and who is particularly known for leading a jazz violin renaissance in European jazz in later years. Yet, no matter the project, he is driven by one fundamental goal: to make music that communicates, able to enter people's lives and stay with them. His new album Poetry is a landmark project featuring his quintet and the great trumpeter/flugelhornist Paolo Fresu. It marks a further step in Bałdych's journey, away from mere virtuosity and towards a kind of authentic individual expression that feels more natural. Much of its music was written during the pandemic and is dedicated to his wife and his young son, who was born in 2020. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Icelandic-born, Sweden-based singer/songwriter/pianist Anna Gréta was born in music (her father is acclaimed jazz saxophonist Sigurður Flosason) and has performed with some of the great Nordic jazz musicians of today. On October 29, she will release her debut album, Nightjar in the Northern Sky, via ACT Music. The record emerged from a period of two years and was partly influenced by the isolation of the global pandemic. It includes twelve original compositions, shaped by tinges of the familiar sonic Nordic surrealism, nature and Anna Gréta's own process of self-discovery. As an official press release puts it, "with each of the tracks on this album, she creates self-contained worlds that are part of a bigger picture, light-footed, relaxed, reduced, concentrated. And a remarkably multilayered, immersive and beautiful experience." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Camae Ayewa, a.k.a Moor Mother, is not only a musician but a poet, visual artist and prominent thinker. Having established her reputation as a force to be reckoned with in creative music everywhere, particularly with her debut album Fetish Bones from 2016, she has continued to share her thoughts in a variety of music and multimedia projects. Her latest album, Black Encyclopedia of the Air, is a collaboration with soundscape artist/producer Olof Melander and despite tackling such difficult themes as injustice, the erasure of African identity and a future without the stains of colonialism, she has described it as her most accessible album yet. As with all other Moor Mother releases, Black Encyclopedia of the Air also features a multitude of guest artists, instruments and voices, which together with a wide-ranging palette of influences and energy evoking the free jazz tradition is aptly described via an official press release as "a time traveler's guide to the modern world." --- Support this podcast: https://

Virtuoso pianist/composer Hiromi's new album, Silver Lining Suite, is a blend of classical composition and jazz invention. It is also her collaboration with violinist Tatsuo Nishie, concertmaster of the New Japan Philharmonic. The origins of this collaboration can be traced back to the pianist's Save Live Music series of concerts and livestreams, which took place at Blue Note Tokyo during the pandemic. It was Nishie who assembled the string quartet for this project. Silver Lining Suite, out now on Telarc, is a soundtrack representing the emotional toll of the pandemic. It takes listeners on an emotional journey, from the isolation and uncertainty of its early days to the fortitude and optimism that carried Hiromi and so many others through these trying times. "[The pandemic] was weird, worrying and uncertain in the beginning, full of negative emotions," she says via a press release. "I tried to find something positive I could do under this situation." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/supp

Drummer Ches Smith and percussionist Daniel Brevil join us on this new episode of JAZZIZ Travel to talk about their collaboration on the new album, Path of Seven Colors, out now on Pyroclastic Records. This eight-track collection melds Haitian Voudou and contemporary jazz, and is performed by the We All Break ensemble, the brainchild of Ches Smith. The origins of We All Break can be traced back to 2013 and since then, the group has expanded into a stellar and multicultural quartet, with Smith and Brevil alongside pianist Matt Mitchell, saxophonist Miguel Zenón, rising-star bassist Nick Dunston, vocalist Sirene Dantor Rene, and Markus Schwartz and Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Via de la Plata is an ancient commercial and pilgrimage path that crosses the West of Spain from North to South. It represents the country's main artery and allowed Spain to come together for the first time, bringing together people of different cultures, from Celtic and Nordic to Mediterranean and African, and from the Americas also. An awareness and passion for this melting pot of cultures inform the latest project by Daniel Garcia, Via de la Plata, released on September 24 via Act Music. This new record finds the pianist/composer/arranger digging deep into his heritage and the music of his country. It is also a culmination of his investigation of the link between jazz and flamenco, which was partly inspired by his Berklee School of Music teacher and mentor, Danilo Pérez. Via de la Plata is performed with a core trio and special guests, including Ibrahim Maalouf, Gerardo Núñez and Anat Cohen. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support

Los Angeles-based saxophonist/composer Patrick Shirioshi's previous LP, 2020's Descension, heavily focused on the experience of being inside a Japanese-American concentration camp. By doing so, he revisited one of the darkest pages in American history that is not talked about as often as it should. His new album, Hidemi, is a solo multilayered woodwind journey that is more on the personal experience of his grandfather, who appears on its cover, after getting out. Due out on October 29 via American Dream, Shirioshi's forthcoming full-length is not only a fascinating work of expressive, creative avant-garde music and improvisation. Through it, the multi-instrumentalist consciously aims to represent the Japanese-American experience past and present, acknowledging music as a means for communication and activism. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jazziz/support