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Antoine Roney: Heart Music

by Raul da Gama

Where does music come from? We are, indeed, speaking of the realm of the platonic, the realm of the spirit. We are talking of each note that goes to form a string of ineffably precious and beautiful pearls that, in turn, forms a proverbial necklace that adorns the melody of a song. From a black dot on a line or the spaces between the lines of a staved paper? Certainly not where Antoine Roney comes from.

In the case of Antoine – as in the case of the spiritual ancestors of the horns from whom he has descended: Dexter Gordon, Hawk and Bean, Charlie Parker, Jackie Maclean, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders – it pulsates from the beat of his heart.

The heart – more than the head – speaks through Antoine’s horns. It is something he always knew from listening to music at home with his musically noble family. “Of course, technique is important,” he says, “but what’s in the heart determines the sound of your voice.” We all breathe the same air, but what you make of it aurally is what counts.

It is one of those unforgettable lessons you learn when your early mentors are Wayne Shorter and Jackie Maclean. “Jackie and [his son] René always said, ‘focus on telling the story… sing the blues.’ Sure, structure – the 12-bar structure of WC Handy – is important, but ‘composition is storytelling.’”

Antoine says, “I believe I have a story to tell. That, and because music has the power to heal. It’s why I make music.” 

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Legendary Musician, Philanthropist, Vocalist, and Role Model: Cindy Blackman Santana is Changing the Game

by Joyce Jones and Chrys L. Roney

Born in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Cindy Blackman Santana epitomizes the power of passion and perseverance in the world of music. From the moment she could stand on her two feet, Cindy found herself drawn to the rhythmic allure of the drums. "I was just drawn to everything about the drums," Cindy reminisces. "When I heard music, drums were the instrument that I singled out in my ear." Encouraged by her mother, Ghita Blackman, Cindy would tap rhythms on her mother's back, finding the perfect tones. While her parents initially believed Cindy’s fascination with drums was a passing phase, this intrigue evolved into a lifelong passion and career.

Cindy’s relentless pursuit of drumming mastery guided her trajectory. "I always searched out drums to play, people to play with, things to play music, and everything involved with playing. I was very interested in it, and I loved it, so that’s what I developed," she explains. This fervor for drumming—and a profound admiration for the legendary Tony Williams—led her to enroll at Berklee College of Music in Boston. There, she studied under Alan Dawson, the same instructor who taught Tony Williams. Berklee also introduced her to the late trumpeter and composer Wallace Roney, whose encyclopedic knowledge of music further broadened her horizons. "Wallace turned me on to a ton of incredible records, and it really opened up my head in terms of what I was thinking about," she says with evident appreciation.

To read more, visit https://heyzine.com/shelf/e31d04e81a.html.

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Yesterday, Today … and Tomorrow
by Raul da Gama

How do you fit the life of someone celebrated for her multi-dimensional artistry, and more importantly, a quintessential human being, in a few hundred words or so? Why, even a 300- or 400-page book wouldn’t do to fit all that she has accomplished in life so far. Here’s a snapshot: three GRAMMY Awards, a Tony Award winner for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz - the Broadway version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1975) - the Doris Duke Award (2019), NEA Jazz Master (2020), Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, first American to be inducted into the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie, Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Award (France), and that is just scratching the surface.

The soul is where Dee Dee’s art resides, and it is from that deepest recess of her being that it emerges. Her voyage of discovery took her first to Mali, to discover her African ancestry. The evanescent music of Red Earth: A Malian Journey (DDB Records, 2007) resulted from that part of her journey. From Bamako, the next stop was Memphis, where she was born and lived until three years of age, when she moved to Flint, MI. “After having done Red Earth, which was the African part of my journey,” Dee Dee says, “I needed to look at my birthplace. I was born in Memphis, TN. And I decided that I needed to look at my birthplace and my ancestry here in the United States.” That part of Dee Dee’s journey yielded perhaps her most stripped down, and also her most ambitious album, Memphis… Yes I’m Ready (OKeh, 2017). Again, that is just scratching the surface of her catalogue.

To Read More, Visit: https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/509e3d909f.html#page/12

by George Kanzler

Guitarist Dave Stryker has forged a long career firmly rooted in soul jazz. Early on, he paid his dues playing with soul jazz B3 organist Jack McDuff and with leading soul jazz tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. In recent years, he has led an organ trio and recorded a series of albums in a collection he’s named Eight Track, which includes many soul jazz and R’n’B/Soul hits from the 1970s and 1980s. But as a teenager in the 1970s, Dave wasn’t just, or primarily, into music. He was also an avid film buff, a fan of the burgeoning indie film movement of the era, as well as such studio-based franchises as 007, James Bond. That love of film has persisted throughout his life, leading him to call his latest recording project “one to check off my bucket list."

Goes to the Movies, Dave Stryker with Strings, Orchestra arranged and conducted by Brent Wallarab (Strikezone Records), features eleven tunes from ten different movies, all but one featuring a string and brass (trombone choir) orchestra, with Stryker and a rhythm section, occasionally joined in solo roles by violinist Sarah Caswell; Greg Ward, alto sax; Jim Pugh, trombone; and Mark Buselli, flugelhorn.

The album is an outgrowth of a collaborative project by Brent and Dave in 2023 at Indiana University (where they were both on the jazz faculty) to honor the centennial of guitarist Wes Montgomery, a native of Indianapolis. Brent wrote orchestral arrangements for a string orchestra to highlight Dave’s guitar tribute to Montgomery, and the pair wanted to continue that orchestra-soloist relationship on a recording project. But Dave did not want it to be a Wes Montgomery project. “I just love Wes too much," he said. But one of the tunes from the tribute, “Dreamsville,” the theme from the TV series Peter Gunn and movie Gunn, prompted Dave and Brent, also a movie buff, to come up with Goes to the Movies.

The album has a definite 1970s, CTI Records vibe, reflected in the lush string-horn arrangements, pianist Xavier Davis’s contributions on electric piano (a favorite of producer Creed Taylor, the CT of CTI), and Dave’s playing that is highly reminiscent of Wes Montgomery. “Wes was a big influence on me,” says Dave, who counts the guitarist as equally important to him as movies in his formative years.

Dave Stryker will be playing versions of the movie themes on Goes to the Movies at Birdland Theater, January 24–26, with his Organ Trio (Jared Gold, organ; McClenty Hunter, drums) and tenor saxophonists Troy Roberts (January 24-25) and Rob Dixon (January 26).

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Bobby Sanabria: From the Mambo to the Multiverse

by Eugene Holley, Jr.

The Puerto Rican, Bronx-born, drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, and educator Bobby Sanabria speaks the languages of jazz and Latin jazz fluently. An eight-time GRAMMY nominee, Bobby has recorded 10 albums as a leader including Afro-Cuban Dream: Live and in Clave!!! (Arabesque Recordings, 2000) and Kenya Revisited Live!!! (Jazzheads, 2010), his big band recordings with the Multiverse Big Band - which include West Side Story Reimagined (Jazzheads, 2018) - Bobby’s Latin jazz take on the Leonard Bernstein classic, and his latest album, Vox Humana (Jazzheads, 2023), which also features three female vocalists: the multi-GRAMMY winner Janis Siegel from the Manhattan Transfer, Newark’s blues and jazz diva Antoinette Montague and the Bronx's own Dominican-Puerto Rican multilingual powerhouse, Jennifer Jade Ledesna.

Bobby and his big band will perform on September 1 at DC JazzFest, playing several Duke Ellington selections to mark his 125th anniversary. “We’re going to play some Ellington things, but in a different kind of way,” Bobby says with a sly laugh, “the way we do it in the Multiverse.”

Bobby was inspired to form the Multiverse Big Band 26 years ago, by watching a TV show that featured astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and by reading the work of Nobel Prize-winning Mexican author Octavio Paz. “Tyson was talking about the concept of the multiverse: all these different universes coexisting at the same time,” Bobby says, “and Paz talked about how Latin America is a multiverse of cultures. So that's when I decided to change the name of the band to the Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band. We do everything: Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, Venezuela and Puerto Rican rhythms; funk, jazz, R&B, gospel, avant-garde music and everything in the kitchen sink. And we do it authentically. We represent the multiverse of cultures coming together in Latin America.”

To read more, visit https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/8eb448a8b9.html#page/7.