ARTEMIS – s/t

1.  Goddess of the Hunt
   2.    Frida
   3.    The Fool On The Hill
   4.    Big Top
   5.    If It’s Magic
   6.    Nocturno
   7.    Step Forward
   8.    Cry Buttercup Cry
   9.    The Sidewinder

Renee Rosnes – piano & musical director / Melissa Aldana – tenor saxophone

Anat Cohen – clarinet / Ingrid Jensen – trumpet / Noriko Ueda – bass

Allison Miller – drums / Cécile McLorin Salvant – vocals

Die erste weibliche SUPERGROUP des Jazz!

ARTEMIS besteht aus sieben der bekanntesten Musikerinnen des modernen Jazz. Mit der Pianistin und musikalischen Leiterin Renee Rosnes, der Tenorsaxophonistin Melissa Aldana, der Klarinettistin Anat Cohen, der Trompeterin Ingrid Jensen, der Bassistin Noriko Ueda, der Schlagzeugerin Allison Miller und der Sängerin Cécile McLorin Salvant bildet ARTEMIS eine kraftvolle kollektive Stimme.

Die Gruppe zeichnet sich nicht nur dadurch aus, dass sie sieben einzigartige Künstlerinnen zusammenbringt, von denen jede für ihre bemerkenswerte Solokarriere bekannt ist, sondern auch eine generationenübergreifende und weltumspannende Besetzung mit Mitgliedern aus den USA, Kanada, Frankreich, Chile, Israel und Japan.

Das selbstbetitelte Debütalbum der Band ist ein großartiges Set mit neun Songs, das Material enthält, das von jeder der sechs Instrumentalistinnen der Band komponiert und/oder arrangiert wurde.

„An einem strahlend sonnigen Augustnachmittag im Jahr 2018 gehörte ich zu den Tausenden von Fans, die am Newport Jazz Festival teilnahmen und von ARTEMIS begeistert waren“, sagt Don Was, Präsident von Blue Note Records. „Obwohl jedes einzelne Mitglied dieser Supergruppe ein echter Jazz-Titan ist, bilden diese unglaublichen Musikerinnen jetzt eine neue Band in der Tradition von Gruppen, deren Gesamtheit größer ist als die Summe ihrer Teile. Ihr musikalischer Dialog ist raffiniert, voller Kraft und Soul, und ihr Groove ist deep.“

INFO

Throughout its eight-decade history, Blue Note Records has been celebrated as a home for the leading voices in jazz. The label continues that tradition with the release of the self-titled debut from ARTEMIS, the supergroup comprising seven of the most acclaimed musicians in modern jazz. Featuring pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller, and featured vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, ARTEMIS conjures a powerful collective voice from this septet of visionary bandleaders and composers.

The band initially assembled at Rosnes’ behest for a European festival tour three years ago. “I chose musicians whom I respected and wanted to make music with,” the pianist says, “and after performing together, I realized that we had a brilliant chemistry. We decided to explore the possibilities of what might develop over time. That’s how ARTEMIS was born.”

The group is distinctive not only for bringing together seven singular artists, each renowned for their own remarkable solo career; but for its multi-generational and globe-spanning line-up, with members hailing from the US, Canada, France, Chile, Israel, and Japan.

“Each member of ARTEMIS is a unique character which is what a band needs – versatility,” says Cohen. “That’s what makes life interesting and that’s what makes music fascinating – the personalities.”

“The Greek goddess Artemis is an explorer, a torch bringer, a protector of young children, and a goddess of the hunt,” explains Jensen, who conceived of the band’s name. “I feel that her character is indicative of the energies and wide array of musical tapestries that ARTEMIS the band brings to the stage as we take our music to the moon, the stars, and beyond.”

Despite its relatively brief existence, ARTEMIS has already been featured in Vanity Fair and on NPR’s Jazz Night in America, and has performed on some of the country’s most iconic stages, from Carnegie Hall and the Tisch Center for the Arts at 92Y to the Newport Jazz Festival.

“On a sunny August afternoon in 2018, I was among the thousands of fans attending the Newport Jazz Festival who had their minds blown by ARTEMIS,” says Blue Note President Don Was. “Although each individual member of this supergroup is a bona fide jazz titan, these incredible musicians dwell in the rarefied air of bands whose whole is greater than the sum of its already sublime parts. Their musical conversation is sophisticated, soulful and powerful and their groove runs deep.”

The band’s debut album is a superb nine-song set that features material composed and/or arranged by each of the band’s six instrumentalists. ARTEMIS unfurls with a dynamic flow, stunningly eclectic yet entirely cohesive. “The group identity emerged organically,” Rosnes offers, and ARTEMIS discovered a thrilling collective vision early in its lifespan. “The band is seven leaders with strong personal points of view but with a unified conception.”

The propulsive surge of Miller’s “Goddess of the Hunt” kicks off the album with a steely urgency. Paying homage to the band’s namesake deity, Miller says that the piece “is a sonic exploration of the powerful traits that define women. We are resilient, tenacious, determined, life-giving, versatile, nurturing, elegant, mysterious, cunning, persistent, and patient. Each section of the piece rolls into the next, giving the listener a sense of continuum and the cycle of life.”

Rosnes’ contribution to the repertoire, “Big Top,” is a tour de force that makes a wry allusion to the perception of women in jazz as novelties. The composition’s carnival-inspired angularity, Rosnes says, uses a circus metaphor to “take that stereotype and have a bit of fun with it. It’s only a matter of time before witnessing a band of women playing together – in terms of gender – will be unremarkable. The impetus behind ‘Big Top’ was to subvert that stereotype and rob it of its power.”

The musical director created artful arrangements for Salvant’s two vocal pieces, a spellbinding rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic” and the melancholy “Cry, Buttercup, Cry,” a lesser known song recorded by the vocalist Maxine Sullivan in the late 1940s. Rosnes also crafted a sly reimagining of Lee Morgan’s classic Blue Note hit “The Sidewinder,” forsaking the original’s forceful funk punch for a more stealthy, insinuating slinkiness that vibrantly features the agile three-horn frontline.

Aldana’s simmering “Frida” pays tribute to another ferociously inventive artist, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Previously the subject of her celebrated 2019 album Visions, Kahlo inspired the saxophonist through “her own process of finding self-identity through art,” according to Aldana.

Cohen’s mesmerizing “Nocturno” seems to waft into the ear from a dreamscape. The composer says she was “inspired by Chopin and by solitude. I wanted to have a melody that floats over a moving rhythm in a ballad, like a lonely voice in the movement of life. I was imagining Melissa, Ingrid, and me playing that melody expressively in unison – something I love to do when I play with my two brothers [trumpeter Avishai and saxophonist Yuval] and now I also get to create that way with my new sisters.”

Ueda’s “Step Forward” begins with a tense, spiraling intro before bursting into an expansive waltz. The bassist was reminded of first hearing the whole tone sound in the piano pieces by the Japanese composer Yoshinao Nakata that she practiced as a child. While the song’s title alludes to the first step of a dance, Ueda adds, “I would like to think that it refers to a meaningful ‘step forward’ for woman in jazz as well.”

Ueda says, “Everyone in the band is a spectacular player with a voice of her own. You can hear colorful and diverse sounds and a range of expression in each of the compositions and arrangements.”

Jensen contributes a shadow-shrouded arrangement of The Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” – not just one of Lennon and McCartney’s many classic melodies, but a pointed political statement. Musing on the piece at a moment of pandemic and protest, the trumpeter asserts, “The title is self-explanatory. My idea was to capture an essence of the constant chatter we seem to be living with: the sorrow, the madness, the community support to be tapped into via conversation, and the change ahead. ARTEMIS is a group of extraordinary women whose combined energies and skills cannot be stifled into the label of an all-star band, as every time we meet to play our conversations both on and off-stage, lead to fluidly inspired magical musical events.”

 

 

 

Renee Rosnes

 

Renee Rosnes is one of the premier jazz pianists and composers of her generation. Upon moving to New York City from Vancouver, Canada, she quickly established a reputation of high regard, touring and recording with such masters as Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, J.J. Johnson, James Moody and Bobby Hutcherson. She was a charter member of the all-star ensemble, the SFJAZZ Collective, with whom she toured for six years.

Rosnes has released 17 recordings, including 10 for Blue Note Records, and has appeared on many others as a sideman. In 2016, Written in the Rocks (Smoke Sessions) was named one of the Best Albums by The Nation, and earned Rosnes her 5^th Canadian Juno Award. Her most recent session, Beloved of the Sky draws inspiration from Canadian painter Emily Carr, and features Chris Potter, Steve Nelson, Peter Washington and Lenny White.

Over her 30-year career, Rosnes has collaborated with a diverse range of artists, such as Jack DeJohnette, Zakir Hussain, Christian McBride, Chris Potter, Renee Fleming and Nicholas Payton. Her works have been performed and recorded by J.J. Johnson, Phil Woods, Michael Dease, and the Danish Radio Big Band among others.

Rosnes is a member of bassist Ron Carter’s Foursight Quartet, and often performs with her husband, acclaimed pianist Bill Charlap. The couple released Double Portrait (Blue Note) and performed their New York City concert debut in Zankel Hall in spring 2011 as part of The Shape of Jazz series. The piano duo was also featured on the 2016 Grammy Award winning album, Tony Bennett & Bill Charlap: The Silver Lining, The Songs of Jerome Kern (Columbia).

From 2008-2010, Rosnes was the host of The Jazz Profiles, an interview series produced by CBC Radio and has contributed two cover story interviews for JazzTimes with Wayne Shorter and with Geri Allen.

Anat Cohen

Anat Cohen was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and began clarinet studies at age 12. She discharged her mandatory Israeli military service duty from 1993-95, playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Air Force band. Through the World Scholarship Tour, Cohen attended the Berklee College of Music. She then spent a decade with Sherrie Maricle’s Diva Jazz Orchestra; worked with Choro Ensemble and Duduka Da Fonseca’s Samba Jazz Quintet, and with David Ostwald’s Gully Low Jazz Band.

In 2009, Anat Cohen became the first Israeli to headline at the Village Vanguard and paid tribute to Benny Goodman with the 2010 release Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard. She served as the music director for the Newport Jazz Festival Now 60! American tour in 2014 and toured with pianist Fred Hersch, as well as with Omara Portuondo. Cohen and Hersch released Live in Healdsburg (Anzic) in 2018.

Cohen has recorded four albums as part of the 3 Cohens Sextet with her brothers, saxophonist Yuval and trumpeter Avishai. Happy Song, (Anzic) the 2017 Anat Cohen Tentet debut release was arranged and conducted by her musical partner and producer Oded Lev-Ari. Earlier in 2017, Cohen released Outra Coisa: The Music of Moacir Santos and Rosa Dos Ventos. Both Anzic recordings were made in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia and received Grammy Award nominations. The Tentet released Triple Helix (Anzic) in 2019. The album’s centerpiece is a three-movement concerto composed by Lev-Ari and commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Chicago’s Symphony Center for live world premieres.

She has taught at Stanford, Oberlin, Michigan State University, University of California-San Diego, the Centrum Choro Workshop and California Brazil Camp. Cohen has been declared Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association every year since 2007.

 

Melissa Aldana

 

Melissa Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile and began playing the saxophone at six, under the influence and tutelage of her father Marcos Aldana, also a professional saxophonist. Aldana began with alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, and Michael Brecker and switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005.

She attended Berklee College of Music and graduated in 2009. She recorded her first album in 2010, Free Fall (Inner Circle), and her second album, Second Cycle, was released in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she was the first female and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991.

On her most recent album Visions (Motéma) Aldana connects her work to the legacy of Latina artists who have come before her, creating a pathway for her own expression. Inspired by the life and works of Frida Kahlo, Aldana creates a parallel between her experiences as a female saxophone player in a male-dominated community, and Kahlo’s experiences as a female visual artist working to assert herself in a landscape dominated by men.

Aldana tours extensively as a leader throughout the world and is an in-demand clinician and educator.

Ingrid Jensen

Ingrid Jensen has been hailed as one of the most gifted trumpeters of her generation and is a sought-out teacher, collaborator, and soloist.

After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1989, Jensen became the youngest professor in the history of the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, Austria. She recorded three albums for ENJA in the 90s and become one of the most in-demand trumpet players on the global jazz scene.

She has been a member of the innovative jazz orchestras of Maria Schneider (1994-2012) and Darcy James Argue (2002-present) and has performed with a cast of jazz legends ranging from Clark Terry to Esperanza Spalding. Jensen performed alongside British R&B artist Corrine Bailey Rae on Saturday Night Live and recorded with Canadian pop icon Sarah McLachlan. More recently, Jensen has been performing with Grammy winner Terri Lyne Carrington.

One of Jensen’s most frequent and closest collaborators is her sister, the saxophonist and composer Christine Jensen. She is a featured soloist on the Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra’s Juno-award-winning album, Treelines (2011), and its successor, Habitat (2013). The sisters released a small group recording entitled Infinitude (Whirlwind) in 2016.

As a dedicated jazz educator, Jensen has taught at the University of Michigan and Peabody Conservatory; performed and lectured with the Thelonious Monk Institute High School group featuring Herbie Hancock; and performed and taught at the Centrum Jazz Workshop, The Dave Brubeck Institute, the Banff Centre Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music, the Stanford Jazz Camp, and the Geri Allen Jazz Camp for Young Women.

Jensen won the Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition in 1995 and recently served as artist-in-residence at the prestigious Monterey Jazz Festival.

Her latest album Invisible Sounds (Whirlwind) honors the late Kenny Wheeler and Jensen was hailed by the Jazz Journalist Association as 2019’s Trumpeter of the Year.

Noriko Ueda

Noriko Ueda is originally from Hyogo, Japan. Her interest in music began early in her life, studying classical piano at the age of four. At 16, she began playing the electric bass and by 18 she began her career with the upright bass.

Ueda was the B.E.S.T. scholarship recipient for the Berklee College of Music where she majored in Jazz Composition, graduating in 1997. She then relocated to New York City and has since become an in-demand player with such legendary groups such as the Frank Wess Quintet and his Nonet, the Ted Rosenthal Trio, Sherrie Maricle and The Diva Jazz Orchestra, Five Play, Grady Tate’s Band, Harry Whitaker’s Band and with artists such as Marion Cowings, Makoto Ozone and Terumasa Hino.

Other career highlights to date include leading her own small groups and her big band, the Noriko Ueda Jazz Orchestra, and recording her first trio album, Debut (Terashima Records), in 2015 which features pianist Ted Rosenthal and drummer Quincy Davis. She toured Japan with the Ted Rosenthal Trio for 11 consecutive years (2006 – 2017), and performed on his album Out of this World, which reached #1 on the national jazz radio charts in 2011.

Ueda was featured on a Japanese documentary TV show called “Gutto Chikyu-bin“ which introduced the life as a jazz musician in New York City and won the third annual BMI Foundation/Charlie Parker Jazz composition Prize for her original big band piece „Castle in the North.”

Alison Miller

Drummer, composer and teacher Allison Miller has been described as a “Modern Jazz Icon in the Making.” She has been named “Top 20 Jazz Drummers” in Downbeat and her composition „Otis Was a Polar Bear“ is on NPR’s list of The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women. Miller served as a Monterey Jazz Festival 2019 Artist in Residence and is the first recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Commissioning Grant.

Miller’s band Boom Tic Boom, featuring pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, and bassist Todd Sickafoose is currently celebrating its 10^th anniversary with the release of their album, Glitter Wolf. Previous releases include 5am Stroll, Boom Tic Boom, Live at Willisau, No Morphine No Lilies, and Otis was a Polar Bear.

Miller co-directs Parlour Game with Jenny Scheinman and Science Fair with Carmen Staaf. She is the musical director for Camille A. Brown’s Ink, Michelle Dorrance and the American Ballet Theater’s Dream Within A Dream, Speak with Rachna Nivas and Michelle Dorrance, and And Still You Must Swing with Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards.

As a side-musician, Miller has collaborated with Ani DiFranco, Sara Bareilles, Natalie Merchant, Brandi Carlile, and Toshi Reagon as well as Dr. Lonnie Smith, Patricia Barber, Marty Ehrlich, Myra Melford, Steven Bernstein, and Ben Allison.

Miller is a three-time Jazz Ambassador for the US State Department and has been appointed Arts Envoy to Thailand for her work with Jazz Education Abroad. She is on Yamaha’s Top 30 Clinicians List and teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC, Stanford Jazz Workshop, and is the Artistic Director of Jazz Camp West. Her instructional videos are produced and published by Reverb. In 2008 Miller founded the Walter Salb Memorial Musical Scholarship Foundation in honor of her late teacher and mentor.

Cécile McLorin Salvant

 

Cécile McLorin Salvant was born and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father. She started classical piano studies at five and began singing in a children’s choir at eight. Early on, she developed an interest in classical voice.

In 2007, she moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to study law as well as classical and baroque voice at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory. It was in Aix-en-Provence, with reedist and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, that she started learning about jazz, and sang with her first band. In 2009, after a series of concerts in Paris, she recorded her first album „Cécile“, with Jean-François Bonnel’s Paris Quintet. A year later, she won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocal competition.

In 2014, her second album, WomanChild (Mack Avenue Records) was nominated for a Grammy. Her third and fourth albums, For One To Love and Dreams and Daggers (Mack Avenue Records), both won Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Her latest album, released in fall of 2018, The Window (Mack Avenue Records) was recorded duo with Sullivan Fortner (piano), featuring Melissa Aldana (tenor saxophone) and garnered her third Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Ogresse is McLorin Salvant’s latest musical journey. With its dark and romantic “fairytale-like” story, Ogresse is a delightfully audacious addition to Salvant’s increasingly eclectic body of work.

She frequently makes music with Aaron Diehl, Paul Sikivie, Kyle Poole, and Sullivan Fortner. She has collaborated with Archie Shepp, Wynton Marsalis, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Renee Rosnes, Bill Charlap, Fred Hersch, Jacky Terrasson, and Darcy James Argue.

Radio-Kontakte

Media Promotion (Promotion Süd, West & Nord)

Rosita Falke
info@rosita-falke.de, Tel: 040 – 413 545 05

Musicforce
Anja Sziedat (Promotion Berlin / Ost)
anja.musicforce@gmail.com, Tel: 030 – 419 59 615, Mobil: 0177 – 611 5675