Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFunk - Wet Robots (ESP-Disk' July 17, 2018)

This is Fay Victor's first album as a leader released on an American label other than her own Greene Street Music, but she is already a star on the New York avant-jazz scene. 

from Bradley Bambarger's liner notes: 

"Few vocalists have the sheer boldness – the outright fearlessness – of Fay Victor as an improviser. The New York native has long been a creative force on the avant-jazz scene, as a singer, bandleader, composer, arranger, and teacher. She has worked on both sides of the Atlantic with the likes of Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd, and Anthony Braxton, along with recording several distinctive albums as a leader. Reviewing her recent disc Absinthe & Vermouth, NPR declared evocatively that Fay’s original songs sound “as if Joni Mitchell wrote lyrics for a lost Betty Carter prog-rock album – and it totally works.” Fay has also recorded edgy blues in a duo with guitarist Anders Nilsson, and she is an inspired re-animator of vintage instrumentals as vocal material, in the spirit of Carmen McRae in Monk; to this end, Fay has performed with her In Praise of Ornette group and with her house-rocking Herbie Nichols Sung band. 

"Now we have on record Fay’s SoundNoiseFUNK quartet, featuring Joe Morris, Sam Newsome, and Reggie Nicholson – each an exceptional maker of music in the moment. Although Fay enjoyed a rapport with each of these players in various combinations, this foursome had never played together as a unit before the single summer day last year when Wet Robots was captured in a Brooklyn studio. If jazz is the sound of surprise, this album startles – a sonic funhouse of left turns. The band floats in its own space, untethered by a bass. Morris’s guitar moves like a snake. Newhouse keens, taps, sighs on the straight horn. Nicholson makes his percussion set-up a skittering, rattling thing. Then there is Fay – her voice primal and wild, as attuned to unfettered expression as Albert Ayler’s tenor." 

1. Funky Dunk

2. A Witness in the Wilderness

3. Information Highway

4. Police Lights and Sirens

5. Squeeze Bottle

6. The Blues Are Always Free

7. Creative Folks!

8. Textured Pines

9. Whistling on a Sketeboard

10. I Sing

11. The Ha-Ha's

12. Holding Back the Scream

Fay Victor, vocals, lyrics

Sam Newsome, soprano saxophone

Joe Morris, electric guitar

Reggie Nicholson, drums

Drawings by Diana Kinscher / Design & layout by Jonathan Granola / Liner Notes by Bradley Bambarger 

Produced by Steve Holtje / Recorded at Park West Studios on August 4, 2017 by Jim Clouse

Meg Okura & The Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble (feat. Tom Harrell) - IMA IMA (May 13, 2018)

“PACJE has no peer in melding classical and jazz within an ethnically informed chamber setting.”

- Elliot Simon, The New York City Jazz Record

The ensemble’s self-titled debut album “Meg Okura’s Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble” was one of the “2006 Best Albums” of the Independent Music Awards. The Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble has since released Naima (2010), Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto (2013), and the forthcoming Ima Ima (2018) to critical acclaim. The group has performed over 50 concerts and festivals nationally and internationally, including NYC Winter Jazzfest, Lincoln Center, Levitt Pavilion (CA), KL International Jazz Festival in Malaysia and sold-out concerts in Japan.

​A native of Tokyo, Ms. Okura moved to New York after making her solo debut at Kennedy Center as at 19. She studied at the Juilliard School as a classical violinist, only to switch to jazz upon graduation. Since then, she has performed and recorded with jazz masters including Michael Brecker, Steve Swallow, Lee Konitz, and Tom Harrell, earning her place as “the queen of chamber jazz.” (All About Jazz) She has appeared on several dozens of albums and soundtracks as a violinist and erhu player.

Her composer credits appear on films such a documentary, The Congregation, or TV Series, Louie, among others.  She has also written for C. Eule Dance, the New York Symphonic Ensemble, Sirius String Quartet, the J-Orchestra (18- piece jazz orchestra), and the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble.  She has received numerous grants and awards including Metlife Creative Connections Grant (Meet The Composer), Brand Personality Award (Asia Pacific Brands Foundation), Manhattan Community Arts Fund (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), Jerome Composers Commissioning Program (American Composers Forum), and most recently, New Music USA Project Grant.

1. Ima Ima

2. A Summer In Jerusalem 10:27

3. A Night Insomnia 08:42

4. Birth of Shakyamuni 09:33

5. Blues In Jade 08:46

6. Black Rain 07:06

7. Tomiya 07:38

Tom Harrell (trumpet)

Meg Okura (violin, vocals, erhu)

Anne Drummond (flute, alto flute, piccolo)

Sam Newsome (soprano sax)

Sam Sadigursky (bass clarinet, clarinet)

Brian Marsella (piano, Wurlitzer electric piano)

Riza Printup (harp)

Pablo Aslan (bass)

Jared Schonig (drums)

Rez Abbasi (guitar)

NPO Trio: Meg Okura / Sam Newsome / Jean-Michel Pilc - Live At The Stone (CHANT RECORDS 2018)

NPO Trio (Meg Okura, Sam Newsome, and Jean-Michel Pilc) is a group of like-minded friends celebrating their freedom of expression through music and sounds. Within the context of experimental music, the group weaves through musical idioms of jazz and classical – Romantic to Atonal, blues to free jazz.

1. A Four Forty 05:58

2. Bells, Whistles and Sirens 05:01

3. Oyfn Pripetchik-ish 07:16

4. Travels 06:26

5. Exodus and Emancipation 08:47

6. Pleading 05:37

7. Unkind Gestures 06:54

8. Yiddish Mama No Tsuki 18:54

NPO stands for Newsome, Pilc, Okura. soprano-saxophone master Sam Newsome, jazz pianist and Guggenheim fellow composer Jean-Michel Pilc, and jazz composer and violinist Meg Okura create the world of improvisational music which draws influences from different genres of music – from Romantic to Atonal, blues to Free jazz, from Yiddish and Japanese melodies to Coltrane.