Amanda Tosoff - Earth Voices (Empress Music 2021)

Merging the deep, powerful messages of poetry with adventurous modern jazz, Toronto-based pianist/composer Amanda Tosoff leads a hybrid ensemble with strings and seven rotating vocalists on Earth Voices, the follow-up to her Juno Award-nominated 2016 release Words (“a grand achievement” – CBC Radio). The album is being released by Empress Music Group, a label and company founded by award-winning vocalist Emilie-Claire Barlow.

Earth Voices is Tosoff’s sixth album as a leader and the second to feature vocals. But whereas Words featured the marvelous singing of Felicity Williams straight through, Earth Voices adds six additional vocalists to the lineup in turn, each ideally suited to the song at hand. The compositions and orchestrations are sonorous, texturally rich, with a string quartet, guitarist Alex Goodman, and guest saxophonists Allison Au and Kelly Jefferson augmenting the lineup. The performances, full of eloquence and fire, are centered by Tosoff’s assured and lyrical pianism, revealing an artist at the peak of her powers.

Featuring the poetry of: Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Rumi, Pablo Neruda and more; plus Tosoff’s arrangements of songs by: Joni Mitchell, Mike Ross (Soulpepper Theatre), and Yo-Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Session project.

"With Words, she's raised and broadened her game, and delivers lots of sonic beauty with an album that blurs pop, classical, folk and jazz. The disc's level of craft is very high, the music's very moving.”  – Peter Hum (Ottawa Citizen)

”Its very title warns jazz purists to expect they’re about to discover a whole lot more than jazz. That’s precisely what’s to be expected from emerging composers like Tosoff whose career, mostly lots of “straight ahead modern jazz” early on, has evolved. Words speaks vigorously about that evolution and about jazz’s evolution as well.” – Peter Goddard (Toronto Star)

Earth Voices will be released internationally on January 29th, 2021 by Empress Music.

ARTISTS:

Featuring the voices of:

Emilie-Claire Barlow, Laila Biali, Michelle Willis, Lydia Persaud, Robin Dann, Felicity Williams, and Alex Samaras

INSTRUMENTALISTS:

Kelly Jefferson (soprano sax)

Allison Au (alto sax)

Amanda Tosoff (piano)

Alex Goodman (guitar)

Jon Maharaj (bass)

Morgan Childs (drums)

Aline Homzy (violin)

Jeremy Potts (violin)

Laurence Schaufele (viola)

Beth Silver (cello)

POETRY:

Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Rumi, Pablo Neruda and Marjorie Pickthall

COVERS:

Track 6 - Joni Mitchell

Track 5 - Mike Ross (Soulpepper Theatre)

Track 3 - Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, Aoife O'Donovan (from Yo-Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Sessions project)

All arrangements by Amanda Tosoff

1. Earth Voices Sample Clips (#1, 5 & 3) 02:01

2. A Dream Within a Dream (feat. Emilie-Claire Barlow) 05:04

3. Sonnet 49 (feat. Robin Dann) 05:25

4. Here and Heaven (feat. Michelle Willis and Alex Samaras) 05:20

5. Birdwings (feat. Alex Samaras) 05:27

6. Oh, Life (feat. Laila Biali & Alex Samaras) 06:14

7. The Fiddle and the Drum (feat. Lydia Persaud) 06:26

8. To a Stranger (feat. Felicity Williams) 05:59

9. Finis (feat. Emilie-Claire Barlow) 05:51