Brad Mehldau - Jacob's Ladder (March 18, 2022 Nonesuch Records)

Nonesuch Records releases Brad Mehldau’s Jacob’s Ladder on March 18, 2022 on CD and digital; a vinyl LP version will be released later in the year (exact date TBD). The album features new music that reflects on scripture and the search for God through music inspired by the prog rock Mehldau loved as a young adolescent, which was his gateway to the fusion that eventually led to his discovery of jazz. Featured musicians on the album include Mehldau’s label mates Chris Thile and Cécile McLorin Salvant, as well as Mark Guiliana, Becca Stevens, Joel Frahm, and others. A video for ‘maybe as his skies are wide’ is available today here. The song builds off an interpolation of one portion of Rush’s classic “Tom Sawyer.” Nonesuch Store pre-orders include an exclusive signed, limited-edition print.

Mehldau explains, “We are born close to God, and as we mature, we invariably move further and further away from Him on account of our ego. Jacob’s Ladder begins at that place closer to God with the voice of child, and then moves into the world of action. God is always there, but in our discovery and conquest, and all the joys and sorrows they bring, we may lose sight of him. He sets a ladder before us though, like in Jacob’s dream, and we climb towards him, to find reconciliation with ourselves, to stitch up all those worldly wounds and finally heal. The record ends with my vision of heaven—once again as a child, His child, in eternal grace, in ecstasy.

“The musical conduit on the record is prog,” Mehldau continues. “Prog—progressive rock—was the music of my childhood, before I discovered jazz. It matched the fantasy and science fiction books I read from C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle and others at that time, aged ten through twelve. It was my gateway to the fusion of Miles Davis, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra and other groups, which in turn was the gateway to more jazz. Jazz shared with prog a broader expressive scope and larger-scale ambitions than the rock music I had known already.

“The prog from Rush, Gentle Giant, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer here only hints at the genre’s conceptual, compositional and emotional range. These bands and others have continued to influence newer groups that bring prog impulses into the arena of hard rock and screaming math metal, like Periphery, whose music is included here, and also inspired the screaming vocals on ‘Herr und Knecht.’ I tried to avoid a direct tribute approach to all the songs, and opted in some cases for excerpts, or reworking of themes.”

Although Brad Mehldau is best known as a jazz composer and improviser, he has made several albums that fall outside of the mainstream jazz genre, including his 2001 Largo, produced by Jon Brion. Wide-ranging in texture and big in scale, it features woodwind or brass ensembles are on several tracks, as well as a heavy emphasis on powerful drums. In 2010, Nonesuch released his second collaboration with Brion, Highway Rider, which includes performances by Mehldau’s trio—drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier—as well as drummer Matt Chamberlain, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and a chamber orchestra led by Dan Coleman. Mehldau also orchestrated and arranged the album’s fifteen pieces for the ensemble.

Mehldau’s 2014 collaboration with Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, featured Mehldau on Fender Rhodes and synthesizers and Guiliana on drums and effects, playing twelve original tunes—six by the duo and six by Mehldau. His 2019 album Finding Gabriel featured performances by him on piano, synthesizers, percussion, and Fender Rhodes, as well as vocals. Guest musicians included Ambrose Akinmusire, Sara Caswell, Kurt Elling, Joel Frahm, Mark Guiliana, Gabriel Kahane, and Becca Stevens, among others.

1. -maybe as his skies are wide-

2. Herr und Knecht (Master and Slave)

3. (Entr'acte) Glam Perfume

4. Cogs in Cogs, pt. 1: Dance

5. Cogs in Cogs, Pt. II: Song

6. Cogs in Cogs, Pt. III: Double Fugue

7. Tom Sawyer

8. Vou correndo te encontrar / Racecar

9. Jacob’s Ladder, Pt. I: Liturgy

10. Jacob’s Ladder, Pt. II: Song

11. Jacob’s Ladder, Pt. III: Ladder

12. Heaven: I. All Once – II. Life Seeker – III. Würm – IV. Epilogue: It Was a Dream but I Carry It Still

PRE-ORDER

Nov 30-Dec 2 & Dec 17: Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant at NEC’s 'Grow Your Art: A Music and Business Residency'

Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant is guest artist for NEC’s Grow Your Art: A Music and Business Residency

 

Tuesday, November 30 – Thursday, December 2

 

Residency culminates in live concert on December 2 featuring McLorin Salvant with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles

Concert to be broadcast Internationally on Friday, December 17

Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist and MacArthur Fellow Cécile McLorin Salvant is the guest artist for this year’s Grow Your Art: A Music and Business Residency, taking place Tuesday, November 30 through Thursday, December 2 at New England Conservatory. Presented by NEC’s Jazz & Entrepreneurial Musicianship departments, the residency features a master class, panel discussion, and a performance. All events are free and open to NEC students, alumni and the public. For information visit https://necmusic.edu/em/GrowYourArt.

 

Tuesday, November 30 – Master Class

2–3:30 p.m., Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, 255 St. Botolph St., Boston. 

Select NEC students will participate in an open master class with Cécile McLorin Salvant. Event will be livestreamed. Information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-cecile-mclorin-salvant-master-class.

Wednesday, December 1 – Music Business Panel Discussion

2-3:30 p.m., Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, 255 St. Botolph St., Boston. 

Learn about the life experiences of female-identifying professionals active in the music world. This Q&A and Panel Discussion will feature the perspectives and lived experiences of President Andrea Kalyn, Cécile McLorin Salvant, CI/Jazz faculty member Dominique Eade, NEC Director of Cultural Equity and Belonging Monique Van Willingh, and NEC Alumna Ayn Inserto ('01, MM) in conversation with Jazz Studies Chair Ken Schaphorst. Event will be livestreamed. Information at  https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-music-business-panel-discussion-1.

Thursday, December 2 – Cécile McLorin Salvant in Concert with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles 

7:30 p.m., Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston

Live collaborative performance featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles. Information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-residency-concert-cecile-mclorin-salvant.

Friday, December 17 – International Broadcast of December 2 concert with McLorin Salvant and NEC Jazz Small Ensembles

7:30 p.m. ET, information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-residency-concert-cecile-mclorin-salvant.

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”. Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her 3 latest albums The Window, Dreams and Daggers, and For One To Love, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album WomanChild. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award.

 

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager.

Salvant received a bachelor’s in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France.

 

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.

 

Salvant makes large-scale textile drawings. Her visual art can now be found at Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.

 

The Grow Your Art Pitch Competition (taking place Spring 2022) is open to all NEC Student & Alumni within 10 years of graduation. This competitive application process is modeled on real-world grants, and students/alumni have access to coaching from the EM Team throughout the application process. Applicants have the chance to win up to $7,500 (1st Prize: $7,500; 2nd Prize: $3,000, 3rd Prize: $1,000) for individuals / ensembles to develop the business side of their musicianship. New and existing projects and ventures are welcome.

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY

New England Conservatory (NEC) is recognized internationally as a leader among music schools, educating and training musicians of all ages from around the world for over 150 years. With 800 music students representing more than 40 countries in the College, and 2,000 youth and adults who study in the Preparatory and Continuing Education divisions, NEC cultivates a diverse, dynamic community for students, providing them with performance opportunities and high-caliber training with internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. NEC’s alumni, faculty and students touch nearly every aspect of musical life in the region; NEC is a major engine of the vital activity that makes Boston a musical and cultural capital. 

necmusic.edu

Relief: A Benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America's Musicians’ Emergency Fund | Mack Avenue Music Group

AVAILABLE NOW, RELIEF: A BENEFIT FOR

THE JAZZ FOUNDATION OF AMERICA’S MUSICIANS’ EMERGENCY FUND

(PURCHASE/SHARE HERE)

 

An Unprecedented, Star-Studded Collection from

America’s Top Jazz Labels in Support of Musicians

Affected by the Pandemic

 

2-LP Set, CD and Digital Album Features Herbie Hancock,

Wallace Roney, Buster Williams, Jimmy Heath, Albert “Tootie” Heath, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, IRMA and LEO (Esperanza Spalding & Leo Genovese), Cécile McLorin Salvant, Charles Lloyd, Hiromi, Kenny Garrett, Jon Batiste,

and Other Jazz Greats

A consortium of major jazz labels – Concord Music Group, Mack Avenue Music Group, Nonesuch Records, Universal Music Group’s Verve Label Group and Blue Note Records, and Warner Music Group – has taken the unprecedented step of joining hands for Relief, an all-star compilation of previously unreleased music on LP, CD and digitally November 12, continuing the non-profit Jazz Foundation of America’s (JFA) ongoing efforts to aid musicians affected by the international shutdown of venues and other performance opportunities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. PURCHASE/SHARE HERE.

 

All net proceeds from the package – comprising studio and live tracks by top-flight jazz artists – will benefit the JFA’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund, established in the spring of 2020 after the pandemic ground the music industry to a sudden, catastrophic halt.

 

JFA executive director Joe Petrucelli says, “The Jazz Foundation of America deeply appreciates the artists, songwriters and label teams who contributed to this project with such compassion and generosity. As pandemic restrictions continue to lift, we recognize that musicians will face a particularly lengthy recovery. They were among the first to be hit by the effects of the crisis and will be among the last to achieve a true sense of normalcy or stability. We and our partners are here for the long haul.”

 

Relief commences with a recording that exemplifies the extreme challenges faced by musicians in the depths of the 2020 health emergency: “back to who,” a track by vocalist Esperanza Spalding and pianist Leo Genovese, recording as IRMA and LEO, was created remotely at home studios in Hillsboro, OR and Brooklyn, NY.

 

The compilation concludes with a live quintet performance captured at the JFA’s 2014 “A Great Night in Harlem” benefit show at New York’s historic Apollo Theater. It features pianist Herbie Hancock, trumpeter Wallace Roney, who died after contracting the coronavirus, bassist Buster Williams, drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath and tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, the composer of the number, who died at the age of 93 in January 2020, in a poignant version of “Gingerbread Boy.”

 

“I'm honored to be part of this meaningful project that supports the important work of the Jazz Foundation, who has always been there for musicians going through tough times. They have been an especially critical resource for the community during the pandemic, helping those in need of medical care, putting food on the table and paying their rent,” says Hancock. 

Offering a compact overview of jazz’s past, present, and future, the album also presents fresh tracks from bassist Christian McBride, vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, saxophonists Kenny Garrett, Charles Lloyd, and Joshua Redman, pianist Hiromi Uehara, and pianist-vocalist Jon Batiste.



The set is merely the latest pandemic relief effort mounted under the aegis of the JFA’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund. 2020 benefit events included the virtual concert #TheNewGig in May, an international “Gershwin Global” online performance led by Israeli pianist Guy Mintus in July, and the Charlie Parker-themed “Bird Calls” streaming fundraiser in December.

 

Mack Avenue Music Group president Denny Stilwell, who spearheaded the formation of the label consortium with longtime JFA board member and entertainment lawyer Geoffrey Menin last spring, says, “We had met via conference call for about two months before the idea of putting an album together came up. The initial impetus was to raise money for the fund. Sometime around eight weeks in, Blue Note’s president, Don Was, said, ‘Why don’t we make a record? Let’s all contribute some tracks.’ There was a nanosecond of silence, and then everybody in our core group – including John Burk at Concord, Jamie Krents at Verve – said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’

 

“We all decided that we were going to look into the vaults and agreed that we wanted to have unreleased tracks…it just came together organically. Once we got all the music together, we traded some ideas and Joe Petrucelli, John Burk and Will Wakefield laid out the final sequence of how the tracks would flow. I think it works great!”

 

Relief marks the first appearance on record of a performance from one of the JFA’s annual benefits at the Apollo. (The 2020 “A Great Night in Harlem” show, which had been set for April 14, was postponed due to the COVID outbreak.)

 

Stilwell recalls, “Joe Petrucelli was pretty excited about including a live track. The thing that makes that track heartbreaking and relevant is the inclusion of Wallace Roney, who was one of the first of our community to pass from COVID. I think that track, which also features Jimmy Heath, who also left us last year, has some extra weight and meaning for all of us.”

 

In his notes for the album, Rolling Stone senior music editor Hank Shteamer writes, “Even in a pandemic, the jazz ecosystem – not just its practitioners and facilitators but those who value the music as a lifelong sustenance – has managed to summon grace, dignity and unexpected joy. That spirit extends to Relief, a compilation which continues the relief efforts undertaken last year. This album reflects the duality at the heart of jazz: It's a music of cooperation, of intuitive teamwork, that also leaves room for a broad array of personal idiosyncrasy. Differences of generation, heritage, methodology…strengthen the music's vast collective mesh.”

Album Tracklist:

1. IRMA and LEO back to who feat. Esperanza Spalding and Leo Genovese 4:41

2. Christian McBride Brother Malcolm 4:47                  

3. Cécile McLorin Salvant Easy Come, Easy Go Blues 2:32

4. Kenny Garrett Joe Hen’s Waltz 8:07

5. Jon Batiste Sweet Lorraine 3:52

6. Hiromi Green Tea Farm [2020 version] 7:52

7. Joshua Redman Facts feat. Ron Miles, Scott Colley, Brian Blade 3:39

8. Charles Lloyd & Kindred Spirits Lift Every Voice and Sing [live] 8:26

9. Herbie Hancock Gingerbread Boy feat. Wallace Roney, Jimmy Heath, Buster Williams, Albert “Tootie” Heath [live] 6:54

Relief – A Benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America's Musicians' Emergency Fund

Various Artists · Mack Avenue Records

For more information on Jazz Foundation of America, please visit:

JazzFoundation.org | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

PREORDER

Cécile McLorin Salvant delivers intimate home performance to raise funds for public health in Haiti

Grammy Award-Winning Artist Cécile McLorin Salvant 

& Sullivan Fortner

Deliver an Intimate Home Performance

to Raise Funds for GHESKIO in Haiti

Grammy Award-winning artist Cécile McLorin Salvant has partnered with the Haitian Global Health Alliance to release an intimate fundraising performance, At Home, recorded in her Brooklyn loft. The video will be available for viewing from May 10 – 31, with all proceeds benefiting GHESKIO, a world-renowned public health organization serving patients in Haiti.

“Ms. Salvant has been a generous musical champion for Haitian causes, including GHESKIO,” said Scott Morgan, Executive Director of the Haitian Global Health Alliance. “Her vocal talent and genre-spanning repertoire are unmatched in the jazz world today.” 

Tickets to view this exclusive performance, which includes Salvant with pianist Sullivan Fortner, are available through May 31, 2021 at gheskio.org for a name-your-price donation. 100% of proceeds will support GHESKIO.

A composer, singer and cross-disciplinary visual artist, Salvant has received Grammy© Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her three latest albums. In 2020, she received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award. More about Cécile McLorin Salvant, her music, art and photos can be found at cecilemclorinsalvant.com

About GHESKIO

GHESKIO, which operates a network of clinics in Port-au-Prince and throughout Haiti, is an international leader in clinical care and research for HIV, tuberculosis and other infectious and chronic diseases. Since the earliest days of the HIV epidemic, GHESKIO has been at the forefront of the HIV response, implementing testing and prevention strategies and treatment protocols that have influenced guidelines worldwide. GHESKIO has been a leader in Haiti’s decrease in HIV prevalence from 6.2% in 1993 to the current level of less than 2.0%. GHESKIO is also the Caribbean’s largest provider of tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment. GHESKIO is world-renowned for its research, with more than 35 years of continuous support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for clinical trials and decades of support from PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) for treatment and care of people living with HIV in Haiti. GHESKIO is a member of the prestigious AIDS Clinical Trials Group, and GHESKIO researchers have published over 250 peer-reviewed publications.

About the Haitian Global Health Alliance

The Haitian Global Health Alliance is a U.S.-based 501(c)3 organization that provides fundraising and communication support for GHESKIO.

Contact Scott Morgan

scott@hgha.org

973-865-0128

Cécile McLorin Salvant - The Window (MACK AVENUE RECORDS September 28, 2018)

Cécile McLorin Salvant Explores Mercurial Nature

of Love on Stunning Duo Album with

Critically Acclaimed Pianist Sullivan Fortner

The Window — Available September 28

via Mack Avenue Records

Cécile McLorin Salvant

The world first learned of the incredible vocal artistry of Cécile McLorin Salvant when she won the prestigious 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. In just under the span of a decade she has evolved into a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winner (with all three Mack Avenue Records releases receiving nominations, and the last two winning the Best Jazz Vocal Album category) and a prescient and fearless voice in music today.

Her newest release, The Window, an album of duets with the pianist Sullivan Fortner, explores and extends the tradition of the piano-vocal duo and its expressive possibilities. With just Fortner’s deft accompaniment to support McLorin Salvant, the two are free to improvise and rhapsodize, to play freely with time, harmony, melody, and phrasing.


Each new recording by McLorin Salvant reveals new aspects of her artistry. WomanChild and For One To Love established her style, her command, and interpretive range. Dreams and Daggers is a work that highlights her fresh and fearless approach to art that transcends the conventional—live and in the studio, with a trio and with a string quartet, standards and original compositions—held together by a vocal delivery that cuts against the grain, ever deepening, intensifying, and nuancing the lyrics.

Sullivan Fortner

Thematically, The Window is a meditative cycle of songs about the mercurial nature of love. The duo explores the theme across a wide repertory that includes Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim, the inner-visionary Stevie Wonder, gems of French cabaret, and early Rhythm and Blues, alongside McLorin Salvant’s brilliant, original compositions. Just as a window frames a view—revealing as much as it hides, connecting as much as it separates—each song on the album offers a shifting and discerning perspective on love’s emotional complexity. McLorin Salvant sings of anticipation and joy, obsession and madness, torment and longing, tactics and coyness. The Window traverses love’s wide universe, from the pleasure of a lover’s touch with its feelings of human communion, to the invisible masks we wear to hide from others and from ourselves.

Her gifts as an artist are rooted in her intensive study of the history of American Music and her uncanny ability to curate its treasures for her audience. Her albums are explorations of the immense repository of experience and feeling that abound in popular song. She understands the special role of the musician to find and share the emotions and messages in music that speak to our past, present and future. “I am not interested in the idea of relevance,” she explains. “I am interested in the idea of presence. I want to communicate across time, through time, play with time.”

Onstage, her persona is often compared to that of an actress. But, as McLorin Salvant notes, “jazz would not be what it is without its theatrical origins, vaudeville, and minstrel shows.” Through her selection of repertory and brilliant interpretations, she “plays with time,” making the musical past speak to our contemporary world. Historically, her unflinching performance of songs from the minstrel tradition challenge us to think harder about race in America today. Her ironic, even sinister, rendition of songs explore the complex intertwining of sex, gender, and power. Her blues numbers are bawdy and vibrant, melancholic and forlorn, insistent and emancipatory.

She sings of the ecstasy and agony of love, of jubilation and dejection, of desire and being desired, of fearlessness and fragility. “I want to get as close to the center of the song as I can,” McLorin Salvant explains. “When I find something, beautiful and touching I try to get close to it and share that with the audience.” Immersed in the song and yet completely in control, McLorin Salvant brings her immense personality to the music—daring, witty, playful, honest, and mischievous. 

All of McLorin Salvant’s study, training, creativity, intelligence, and artistry come together in her voice on The Window. The sound of her voice covers the gamut from breathy to bold, deep and husky to high and resonant, limpid to bluesy, with a clarity and richness that is nearly unparalleled. When she first burst onto the jazz scene, many listeners were struck by her ability to recall the sound of Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan, or Betty Carter. Yet with each new album, McLorin Salvant’s voice has become more her own, more singular. While conjuring the spirits of the ancestors, her references are controlled, focused, and purposeful. Her remarkable vocal technique never overshadows her rich interpretations of songs both familiar and obscure.

Touched at every moment by Cécile McLorin Salvant’s brilliance, The Window is a dazzling new release from an artist who is surely, to quote Duke Ellington, “beyond category.

1 Visions

2 One Step Ahead

3 By Myself

4 The Sweetest Sounds

5 Ever Since the One I Love's Been Gone

6 À Clef

7 Obsession

8 Wild is Love

9 J’ai L’Cafard

10 Somewhere

11 The Gentleman is a Dope

12 Trouble is a Man

13 Were Thine That Special Face

14 I've Got Your Number

15 Tell Me Why

16 Everything I've Got Belongs to You

17 The Peacocks

www.cecilemclorinsalvant.com