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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.

Jack DeJohnette: Drummer, Pianist, Griot and Jedi in The Fifth World 

by Raul Da Gama

Fires burning in a pow-wow circle of elders - Jack DeJohnette is probably the youngest of the musician-elders. Grandmother Twylah Nitsch of the Seneca First Nation begins by saying, “Truth becomes our byword.” Jack picks up where Grandmother Twylah leaves off. His notes during this session – Jack DeJohnette: Music for The Fifth World (Manhattan/Somethin’ Else Records, 1992) tell us: “Music is energy, and I feel we need the kind of energy that this recording evokes to create the changes needed to heal ourselves and our environment.”

This gives us an insight into what is probably Jack’s most enduring legacy as a musician and his palimpsest. Then, spinning the disc, we listen to the “Fifth World Anthem”, and immediately we enter the drum circle. Discerning the aroma of sage may not be as axiomatic as it seems. Jack is one of a Dohiyi circle of elders, including fellow drummer Will Callhoun. They (Jack and Will) also play Taos ceremonial drums on the track with Robert Rosario and Dennis Yerry.

Now Jack is singing. Together with the women of the group, they sing and chant (in Seneca), “We’re in the Fifth World that’s ever changing / So make your move this whole world’s rearranging / No need for greed and further separation / We’re in the Fifth World that’s ever-changing / So make your move this world’s rearranging /Make up your mind don’t be stuck in doubt / Come back to truth now it's time to shout it out.” These are English translations of the Seneca lyrics and sound infinitely more affecting on record than they do on paper.

To read more, visit https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/8eb448a8b9.html#page/30.

DIANNE REEVES: THE RIGHT CHOICE   

by Joyce Jones

When I connected with Dianne Reeves to gather additional information for this feature, she informed me that she took off for the summer. “Girl, I have my LIFE, my house, my enjoyment, my peace – all of those kinds of things,” she says. Even though Dianne had taken a break, she was working on a recording project with her longtime collaborator and “brother from another mother” Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo. “He’s a very close friend of mine. I enjoy working with him,” she says. The recording is scheduled to be released in January 2025. “After many years of working with Romero, and my love for Brazilian music, because I think that every recording that I’ve ever done, there’s some part of Brazil that shows itself in my work,” says Dianne. “We’ve, for years, done duo concerts, and we (have) a lot of fun and joy together. We decided to go into the studio and do what we’ve always done.” Dianne adds, “It’s a small record, but it’s big with heart, and it shows our relationship with music.”

Although Dianne was born in Detroit, MI, she was raised in her family home of Denver, CO, where she has settled in for quite some time now. Dianne’s grandmother’s father was a founding minister of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Denver. However, a large motivation for steering Dianne into music was her family, as many members were entertainers and musicians. Two of her grandmother’s sisters were entertainers. She has an uncle who was a bassist with the Colorado Symphony for over 40 years. He was the first Black member of the San Francisco Symphony, and he played European classical and jazz bass. 

To read more, visit https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/8eb448a8b9.html#page/15.