Geri Allen & Timeline - Live is the companion release to Flying Toward The Sound, also released on Motéma.  The Timeline band represents another facet of the inspirational Geri Allen, in which she embraces the rhythmic grounding and, in fact, the very origins of syncopation through jazz in motion, with an extraordinary ensemble featuring bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Kassa Overall and tap percussionist Maurice Chestnut.

Geri Allen & Timeline - Live, is the first “live” recording of Allen’s twenty-year career, and was recorded at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and Reed College, in Portland, Oregon.  These two exciting live performances feature Allen’s working quartet nimbly and ferociously interacting with each other reinventing the dialog between the dance and the drums. Timeline celebrates the dance and the music together as one.

Free MP3: “LWB’s House”
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A Heart and an Open Road is the solo debut release on Motema Music from modern day troubadour and jazz/rock/blues man Patrick Stanfield Jones. Fueled by prodigious chops honed over some thirty years as a guitarist, composer and performer, Jones fearlessly - and with a dose of humor - dives into different genres, seamlessly transitioning from one style to the next, to sing a ‘conscious cowboy’s’ saga of true love, broken hearts and life on the proverbial road.

Free MP3: “A Heart and an Open Road”
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With a voice that can caress or confront, embrace or exhort, Gregory Porter exhibits such an incredible degree of vocal mastery that no less a jazz luminary than Wynton Marsalis has gone on record to call him “a fantastic young singer,” which makes the fact that Water (out on May 11 from Motema Music) is his recording debut even more impressive.

A debut release it may be, yet Water flows with a sense of timelessness that reflects the seasoned talents of the giants of blues, gospel and soul that have influenced Porter throughout his career. Some of the singers that Porter cites as influential are familiar - Nat King Cole, Joe Williams and Donny Hathaway - and others – such as the pastor of the church he attended as a child among them - may never realize their impact on his development as an artist. While the work of singers such as Hathaway or Cole obviously helped to shape Porter’s vocal styling, his own world view, as evidenced in his seven original compositions and his striking interpretation of classic songs such as “But Beautiful” and “Skylark,” adds an emotional intensity that makes each of the CD’s eleven tracks speak so eloquently.

Free MP3: “Pretty”
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Hailed by Down Beat as one of the most, “multi-dimensional keyboard players on the scene today,” whose music reveals those multi-dimensions in sensual living color, Marc Cary’s continual search for his musical identity has brought him to all corners of the earth, quenching his thirst to bring forth indigenous musics in all of their forms.

His latest offering on this journey will embark on April 13th, as Motéma Music releases their third Cary project, Focus Trio Live 2009, the follow up to his earlier live release, Focus Live 2008, which is available only digitally. Recorded live at select festivals across Europe and the US , Focus Trio Live 2009 features Cary ’s longstanding trio: on tabla and drums, Sameer Gupta and on bass, David Ewell, both of whom he met on the west coast. With inimitable style, Cary drives the trio towards hard-hitting turns, fusing together indigenous East Asian, Indian, African, and Native-American influences within the African-American blues and jazz traditions, as only a player with his undeniable talent can manage to do while simultaneously claiming new virtuosic territory.

Free MP3: “Attachment”

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Flying Toward The Sound, is a monumental addition to the solo piano canon. Conceptually ambitious, virtuosic in its execution and spiritual in its essence, this deeply moving recording reveals Allen in visionary communion with two fine Fazioli pianofortes.   As distinguished jazz scholar and author, Farah Jasmine Griffith explains in her liner notes:  “Geri Allen conceived of this project in relation to three modern jazz pianists in whom she finds inspiration: Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. Allen does not play their music; instead she plays toward it, around it, through it to her own unique voicing… resulting in a flight of light and sound.” Ms. Allen comments that, “These three pianists are foundational in terms of the modern piano. They informed my choices in abstract ways for this suite. It’s not like playing transcriptions; it’s more about refracting the admiration and love I have for them through my own muse, and letting the music reflect the ways they’ve influenced me through the years.”

Free MP3: “Flying Toward The Sound”

More info on Geri Allen

On Along The Silk Road Tomoko Sugawara plays an ancient harp invented nearly 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Variously named “angular harp,” “chang,” “kunghou,” and “kugo,” the instrument on which she performs can be seen in centuries-old Buddhist cave paintings and in artists’ depictions from countries along the trade route known as the Silk Road. She brings the enchanting music of this historically revered instrument to life once again for the world to hear.

Free download: Qawl

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“His work is a virtual catalog of modern bass technique, tempered by his infallible musicianship.  The man has taste…he consistently offers up an earthy tone, flawless intonation, and fluid fingerwork.  Plus, you can set the clock by his impeccable time.” – DownBeat

His new recording on Motema Music, Out Front (available March 9, 2010), is further confirmation that there is nothing typical about Rufus Reid, his music or his bands.  The title of the recording, and the special camaraderie and chemistry the bassist shares with pianist Steve Allee (Buddy Rich, John Clayton, The Randy Brecker Quartet, David “Fathead” Newman) and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca (Trio Da Paz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilberto, John Scofield, Lee Konitz, Joe Henderson, Nancy Wilson, Slide Hampton, Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, amongst many others), is explained here by Reid: Out Front suggests several connotations.  “In addition to being ‘out front’ as the leader, my playing in this setting is somewhat atypical in that this music stretches far beyond the bebop boundaries for which I have received recognition in the past.  The interaction with these uniquely talented gentlemen and the outcome of this music is a direct result of my dedication to my own continuing compositional and harmonic growth and adventurous spirit.  It is fueled by my desire to continue to stretch and grow artistically with every original piece I conceive and with every recording I make.”  With Out Front, Reid, Allee and Da Fonseca have succeeded in a sonic experience that is likely to leave you with the desire to make repeated visits until the music reveals all the little things that combine to make it so very special.

Download MP3: Dry Land

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“At the heart of any true jazzman is the ability to tell his own musical stories in his own way, and hopefully touch a few hearts along the way. Down in his heart, there’s a song he can feel, something that no one can steal. It’s his own tune, all and in part. Pianist Antonio Ciacca dances to the unique songs in his heart.”
- Todd Barkan, Jazz at Lincoln Center

More than an exceptional album, Antonio Ciacca’s Lagos Blues is a mirror that reflects the broader story of jazz, its international reach as well as its inclination to come back and nourish at its American wellspring.

Ciacca’s new album, Lagos Blues, released on Motéma Music, features his regular quartet - saxophonist Stacy Dillard, bassist Kengo Nakamura and drummer Ulysses Owens - supplemented by saxophonist Steve Grossman,an artist whose impact on jazz has been profound and on Ciacca directly has been transformative.

Download MP3: Lagos Blues

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Download MP3: Fortuna

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While 2008 marked the “official” 50th anniversary of the bossa nova – a style first recorded in Brazil by guitarist João Gilberto on the 1958 song “Chega de Saudade” (No More Blues) - 2009 marks yet another key anniversary: the 50th anniversary of the release of Gilberto’s genre defining debut LP, also titled Chega de Saudade, with which he widely popularized and in many ways epitomized the emerging bossa style with his distinctive guitar styling, soft, almost whispered vocals and enchanting compositions.

In honor of this great master, Brazilian vocalist Ithamara Koorax, in collaboration with top contemporary Brazilian guitarist Juarez Moreira, has recorded Bim Bom – The Complete João Gilberto Songbook. Although Gilberto has been amply praised as a “legendary vocalist” and as the innovative guitarist who invented bossa nova, his contributions as a composer are often overlooked. With this tribute, Koorax and Moreira make clear that songwriting is indeed a valuable part of Gilberto’s legacy.

Download MP3: Minha Saudade

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