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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.

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.

Antoinette Montague: The Jazz Royalty Reviving Newark’s Musical Legacy
by Raul da Gama

Antoinette Montague is a name that resonates with the heritage of jazz and blues royalty, tracing its lineage back to iconic figures like Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. As the youngest of seven children in a musically inclined household, Antoinette's passion for jazz runs deep, making her a prominent force in the jazz scene of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. When the glorious and stately Antoinette Montague begins to sing, you will always discern that blues as the root begets jazz as its fruit. In fact, she will remind you many times in a conversation about her music, “Blues is the root, jazz is the fruit, baby!” She is not, of course, the lone voice in the metropolitan desert to repeat this truism.

Naysayers and refuseniks beware, because Antoinette is about to change all that. If you haven’t heard of her, shame on you, because Antoinette is descended from blues and jazz royalty that goes back to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Ella, Sarah Vaughan and all the royal women of blues and jazz. The youngest of seven children born into a musical household, and “longtime activist of jazz-imbued New Jersey-New York-Connecticut, Antoinette Montague is a force to reckon with,” says Susan Brink, Jazz Journalists of America board member. 

To read more, visit https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/a76282af89.html#page/6.

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.” 

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

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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