makeover 1, July 31 with news of Pauline Jean’s appearance with the E.J. Strickland Project at the Jazz Gallery today
Morningside Park in Harlem came to life on Thursday night, July 08 with the sounds of Haitian saxophonist Buyu Ambroise. Ambroise’s performance was hosted by Friends of Morningside as part of the six-day Harlem International Jazz Festival, which started on July 06 and ended July 11.
Ambroise joined Haitian vocalist Pauline Jean for a conversation about their homeland on closing day, Sunday, July 11 at Temple M on Broadway and Hamilton from 03:00 pm. The panel discussion was under the heading “Haiti (Re)Created” and included visual artist Francks Décéus.
In between, Jazzmobile Inc. hosted Cuban saxophonist Yosvany Terry at Marcus Garvey Park on 124th & Madison Avenue on Friday, July 09. Then on Saturday, July 10, Jazzmobile teamed up with Central Park Conservancy to bring Dion Parson and the 21st Century Band at Central Park West in Manhattan.
Earlier in the week, Arturo O’Farrill stomped on Grant’s Tomb at 122nd & Riverside Drive.
Pauline Jean was twice in action across New York this past June paying tribute to Jazz/soul icon Nina Simone. Jean’s “A Tribute to Nina Simone” was presented free to the public by Queens Library at St. Albans on June 07 and at Queens Village on June 19.
As expected, Jean & Her Ensemble played songs that have become synonymous with and indistinguishable from Simone herself; songs like Four Women, Keeper of the Flame, Do I Move You, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and My Baby Cares for Me.(Source: Pauline Jean’s Photos).
On July 17, Jean teamed up with bassist vocalist Mimi Jones and alto saxophonist Lars Haake to do music written and arranged by the three of them. Supporting the trio at the Chelsea Art Museum’s summer Jazz-Brunch were drummer Shirazette Tinnin and pianist George Burton who rank among the finest musicians on the New York Jazz scene.
Pauline Jean’s feature performance in the Museum’s exhibition space is one in a series being put on by the museum in collaboration with Haake. World of Jazz, as it is called, features talented, emerging New York Jazz artists whose focus is on the international character of contemporary Jazz.
The E.J. Strickland Project boomerangs to the place where it all began for E.J., the Jazz Gallery at 290 Hudson Street, New York, NY on Saturday, July 31 2010. In 2005, E.J., a drummer, composer and band leader, formed The Project, an octet with vocals that played various venues around New York City for two years running.
Three years on, the E.J. Strickland Project is now a septet with two vocals. One of these voices is that of Pauline Jean.
So if you are on Pauline Jean’s trail, she can be found in front of the E.J. Strickland Project at the Jazz Gallery starting at 09:00pm Eastern. Writing in the August issue of Pauline Jean’s Newsletter, Jean states that “The group will feature fresh new compositions and arrangements of…Enoch Jamal Strickland(that) is truly pleasing to the ear as it is to the soul.”
The other members of the band are Charenee Wade – vocals; Jaleel Shaw – alto sax; Marcus Strickland – tenor & soprano saxes; Tom Guarna – guitar; and Ben Williams – bass.
Jean is one of the greatest new Jazz vocalists in New York today. Her repertoire includes original compositions, unique arrangements of standards and traditional Haitian music fused with Jazz, sung in both English and her parent’s native tongue, kyeyòl.(Source: World of Jazz 111, A summer Jazz-brunch concert series at Chelsea Art Museum)
Every so often, an artist jumps out at you and there is no logical reason why. It just is. Pauline Jean, a New York Jazz singer, born of Haitian parents is one such artist.
Jean is a Berklee alum who, like practically every other artist born of the West Indies, has been willed into invoking the ancestral rhythms and patois as an emotional cushion. In Jean’s case, it is traditional Haitian music, sung either in English or the Haitian patois called kweyòl, that informs the Jazz standards and the Blues that make up her repertoire of original compositions and covers.
Jean can do whatever she pleases with the voice that was cultivated by Berklee’s Vocal programme. However, she chose to channel the spirit of Nina Simone on her six-day UK tour, which ended on Sunday, March 07, 2010.
The “Remembering Nina” tour was supported by the Alex Webb Trio of Webb on piano with either of three configurations, Gary Crosby on bass and Rod Youngs on drums; Steve Thompson and Alex Eberhard; or Fulvio Buccafusco and Andy Chapman.
The artist’s debut CD, a thirteen track anthem entitled “A Musical Offering” (Sekonsa Jazz Records), dropped during the tour.
Pauline Jean could have been found on any one of the following dates:
March 15, 2010
at il Casale Cucina Italiana and Bar, 50 Leonard Street, Belmont, MA 02109 for Heritage & Heart for Haiti Benefit concert featuring Pauline Jean and Her Sisters in Jazz.
March 19, 2010
for the 1st Annual Harlem Arts International Arts Festivalpresented by the Harlem Arts Alliance under the banner, “Harlem: Our Shared Global Culture”,at the Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem 2309 Frederick Douglass Blvd, 2nd Floor of the Magic Johnson Theater, New York NY 10027 and featuring the Pauline Jean Trio presenting “Haitian Jazz” with Pauline Jean (vocals), Elio Villafranca (keys) and Mimi Jones (bass) and Bodoma Garifuna of Honduras among others.
April 18, 2010
WOMEN IN JAZZ FESTIVAL 2010at Barnes & Noble 1972 Broadway & W. 66th St. NYC, featuring Kate Cosco, Pauline Jean, Cynthia Holiday, Mimi Jones.
April 23, 2010
Performing at the HABNET Conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York.
May 1, 2010
Live performance by Pauline Jean Quintet at the National Association of University Women Flushing-North Shore Branch Scholarship Luncheon, The New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott Hotel, 102-05 Ditmars Boulevard, East Elmhurst, NY 11369.
for an evening of JAZZ! SWING! BLUES! HAITIAN FOLK SONGS! AFRICAN RHYTHMS and more at Kitano Hotel, 66 Park Park Avenue (East 38th Street), New York, New York 10016 with a live performance by the Pauline Jean Quartet featuring Pauline Jean (vocals), Miki Hayama (piano), Corcoran Holt (bass) and Shirazette Tinnin (drums and cajon).
Emeline Michel is the reigning queen of Haitian song, beloved for combining traditional rhythms with social, political, and inspirational content. A captivating performer, she is a member of a new generation of Haitian musicians who emphasize complex themes, conscious lyrics, and a broad palette of musical styles, including the native Haitian compas, twoubadou and rara along with jazz, rock, bossa nova and samba. The New York Times called her a “dancing ambassador with a voice serene and warm like a breeze.” (Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinitebody.blogspot.com)
Ambroise, Michel and Jean at Lincoln Center (photo credit: Teq Minsky)
The world now revolves around Haiti as peoples from the four corners of the globe mobilize in response to the tremendous human suffering wreaked upon it by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 12, 2010.
Central to this outpouring of support is music. Artists from across all genres have already begun to lend their talents and star power to draw in support, in cash and in kind, for our brothers and sisters who occupy one-third of the island of Hispaniola that they share with the Dominican Republic.
Not to be left out of the loop, Jazz artists are no more swinging their axes, blowing their horns, wielding their sticks, beating their drum heads and exercising their pipes just because, but rather for the cause.
For instance, Haitian Jazz artist Pauline Jean, instead of preparing for her tour to Haiti for the International Festival de Jazz de Port-au-Prince, was otherwise engaged with Project S – “Sisters in Jazz” in putting on a Benefit Concert for Haiti Earthquake Relief. The Tuesday, January 19 Exclusive that resulted from this collaboration was held at Tutuma Social Club, New York, NY.
Joining Jean were five other lead females, drummer Shirazette Tinnin, bassist Mimi Jones,keyboardist Miki Hayama, saxophonist Camille Thurman and percussionist Paula Green with support from Luis Perdomo on keys and Obed Jean Louis on guitar.
The Pauline Jean Quintet and other Talented Artists United for the Cause, performed at MIZIK POU AYITI/Music For Haiti Benefit Concert on Friday, January 29 at the Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture, Brooklyn Public Library.
The evening of music in support of relief efforts in Haiti also featured Buyu Ambroise (with Paul Beaudry, Steeve Belvilus and Allan Mednard in the Blues in Red Band), Mozayik, Jean Caze,Markus Schwartz (Tanbou Nan Lakou Brooklyn), Chardavoine, Melanie Charles, The Altino Brothers, Lou Rainone, Tiga Jean Baptiste and more…
Jean gets back to her charitable ways at il Casale Italian Bar, Belmont, Massachusetts on Monday, March 15 2010 with Her Sisters in Jazz band (Pauline Jean (vocals), Mimi Jones (bass), Shirazette Tinnin (drums), Miki Hayama (keys) and Paula Green (percussion).
Heritage and Heart for Haiti will celebrate the vibrancy and history of Haitian culture through its music and art. Pauline Jean and the Sistas will perform classic Haitian music while narrating the long-term needs of the Haitian people who have become victim to the devastating earthquake of January 12.
Part proceeds are earmarked for the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
Canadian flautist Jane Bunnett, who was due to perform at the International Festival de Jazz de Port-au-Prince from this weekend, had a cause of her own to fulfill on January 28, 2010. Bunnett organized a fundraiser for that day at the Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St. W, Toronto to, as she told InsideToronto, “…make as much money as we can…to go to Doctors Without Borders.” Her assemblage comprised of the Spirits of Havana with special guest Hilario Durán and others.
More than that, Bunnett has pledged to do a whole series of such fundraisers for the people of Haiti. Thus, the same soprano sax that would have wowed the Port-au-Prince Jazz fraternity from January 23-30 sounded a clarion call to Jazz Fans in Toronto to reach out on January 28 and lend their helping hands.
Jane Bunnett has a history with Cuba, which serves as a hub of sorts for her Latin forays. Several collaborations with Cuban and other Latin musicians have resulted from that relationship. Interestingly, she became inadvertently tied to the Haitian experience through musicians of Haitian origin who migrated to Cuba.
Now we go across the waters to Jamaica for an example of Haitians helping Haitians. Singer, songwriter and producer JeanPaul Solomonoff, born to a Haitian mother and a Russian Polish Jewish father, performed with Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander at the 2010 Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival, Jan. 28th. All proceeds are destined for the Clinton/Bush Haiti Fund.
JeanPaul teaming up with Alexander was not an ad hoc pairing by any means. In fact, Alexander appears on JeanPaul’s début single Eyes for You from a forthcoming album entitled Introducing JeanPaul. The single drops on iTunes on February 14, 2010. I figure it might well be a Valentine for Haiti.
Heading further south into the Caribbean Sea, Barbadian musician/artists undertook a massive Relief Concert and Telethon on Saturday, January 30 from mid-morning til nightfall. From first glance, one would think that every single singer of songs and player of instruments were lined up backstage at Farley Hill to touch nerves and coax the goodness out of the pockets of their country folk.
Haiti, Barbados Loves You – Relief Concert and Telethon was an eight-hour marathon featuring 114 local Barbadian artistes and 7 bands. David Rudder, the special guest for the occasion, was no doubt a must-have on the strength of his “Haiti” apology.
These hundred plus artists ran the gamut of Gospel, R&B/Alternative, Spouge, Reggae/Dancehall, Calypso/Soca and, yes, the Jazz of Kellie Cadogan, Arturo Tappin, Nicholas Brancker and Marisa Lindsay.
The other women and men of honour are:
Allison Norville, De Warrior, Hozia Hinds, Kareem Clarke, Lillian Lorde, Mya Daniel, Paula Hinds, Shane Forrester and Sister Marshall from the Gospel field;
Carolyn Leacock, Dwayne Husbands, Kirk Browne & Strategy, Omar McQuilkin, Philip 7, Ria Borman, Richard Stoute, Rosie Hunte, RubyTech, TC, Toni Norville and Kim Derrick from the R&B/Other Alternative field;
Kirtorah, Mike Grosvenor, Mike Thompson and Tony Grazette from the Spouge field;
Albert Olton, Brimstone, Buggy, Danielle, Fully Loaded, LRG, Oracle, Prosperity, Ras Al-I, Seth Billy, Super Ruben, Tabitha, Black-Clay-Soil from the Reggae/Dancehall field;
Adrian Clarke, Allan Sheppard, Colin Spencer, Edwin Yearwood, Gabby, Grynner, John King, Khiomal, Little Rick, Mikey, Mr. Dale, Natalee, RPB (Red Plastic Bag), Merrymen, AC, Dazzle, Sir Raule from the Calypso/Soca field;
The MCs for the marathon are Ferdinand Nicholls, Peter Coppin, Admiral Nelson, Jamar Browne and Mac Fingall.
From Barbados in the middle of the Lesser Antillean arc, we make a great big loop to the north-western end of the Caribbean region. We land in the Cayman Islands where the Rotary and Rotaract Clubs of Grand Cayman organized Cayman’s Jazz musicians for Haiti.
The island’s Grand Old House, on Wednesday, February 03, was ground zero for a silent auction Haiti Relief effort featuring saxophonist Gary Ebanks and Leyannes Valdes, Chris Bowring, Big Eye Squirrel and Cool School.
Swedish Jazz musician Ed Epstien, a friend of the Woodshed Collective from early, has mobilized the Jazz fraternity over there for a Haiti benefit tentatively scheduled for February 13 at Martas Cafe in Lund, Sweden. Weeks in the making, Ed tells us that “it looks like it is finally going to happen.” We do hope it does, Ed.
Coming back around from the Caymans, we touch base with the Haiti Community Support (HCS) of the United States Virgin Islands. The HCS had been active in their support of Haiti for seven years before the earthquake struck and were already in the habit of mounting an annual Fundraiser and Family Fun Day to fund the school that they built, a hot lunch programme for the 200 pupils at that school, a medical clinics that has been treating quake victims from day 3 and water projects.
This year, the HCS held its seventh fundraiser on Sunday, February 21, 2010 at Mt. Victory Camp in Federicksted, St. Croix, not as a one-off event, but with a special mission to raise US$80,000 over the entire year. This project, called “Eighty for Haiti” will go towards maintaining the clinics over the long run.
Of course, no fundraiser would be complete without music. So for the Jazz, in came the VI Rhythm Section; for the Quelbe/Fungi/Scratch/Folk (call it what you will), Stanley and the Ten Sleepless Knights, for a swing through Cuban Son, there was Seite Son…and the list goes on.
This is the plan: Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca lands in Haiti this weekend for Festival International de Jazz de Port-au-Prince 2010. Villafranca has been hired by Canadian saxophonist/flautist Jane Bunnett for her January 23 – 25 FIJPaP concerts. Bunnett then leaves Haiti, but Villafranca stays on at the behest of Haitian singer Pauline Jean.
Jane Bunnett
In such a strong genre as Cuban piano, (and I’ve been lucky to perform and record with some of the greats … Frank Emilio, Hilario Durán, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Chucho Valdés) Elio is the next great voice to check out! His compositions and his playing are extensions of each other (a little like Monk). He’s a thinking man’s Cuban jazz pianist and continually inspires and surprises me. His surprises often come where the lines of composition and performance are blurred into one, that is, when spontaneous improvisations sound like full pre-meditated compositions. (eliovillafranca.net)
Pauline Jean is booked for five consecutive nights including one at the Institut Francais d’Haiti at Port- au- Prince (January 27) and a second at Parc Historique de la Cannes à Sucre in Tabare (January 30). The venues for the other dates on January 26, 28 and 29 are not given at last check. Jean’s other band members for Festival International de Jazz are named. They are Mimi Jones (bass), drummer Shirazette Tinnin – whom I had the pleasure of meeting in May at Jazz on the Hill – and Markus Schwartz (percussion).
The Berklee trained Jean is a New Yorker, born of Haitian parents. It is that background that has fed her arrangements of Jazz and Blues with the traditional Afro-Haitian vibe that becomes her. The character she brings to the genre has in turn taken her to attractive opposites in the 2ndAnnual Women in Jazz Festival and the Haitian Jazz Festival as well as Reggae Vibes in St. Kitts and Nevis.
Her début CD, A Musical Offering (Sekonsa Record), is out since June. She describes this recording, backed up as she is by bassist Corcoran Holt, whom we last sampled on Luther Franςois‘ Castries Underground and Jean Caze, a fixture on the Haitian Jazz scene, among others as “swingin’, bluesy and soulful.” (Pauline Jean on MySpace)
Can you tell?
Jazz Vocalist Pauline Jean performing “Beautiful Friendship” at her CD Release Concert on June 21, 2009 at Metropolitan Room (NYC)
Riyel, Vanessa & Alex Jacquemin with George Mel as a special invited guest were the other invited Haitian artistes from the United States. Joining them would have been Dizwikara de Pierre Rigaud Chery and Natif Jazz Quartet de Claude Carré.
That was the plan.
This weekend was supposed to be a time to play songs of joy and laughter…something like this…
Instead it is a time of wailing, sorrow and tears…something like this…
Hmmm…
The world now revolves around Haiti as peoples from the four corners of the globe mobilize in response to the tremendous human suffering wreaked upon it by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 12, 2010.
Central to this outpouring of support is music. Artists from across all genres have already begun to lend their talents and star power to draw in support, in cash and in kind, for our brothers and sisters who occupy one-third of the island of Hispaniola that they share with the Dominican Republic.
Not to be left out of the loop, Jazz artists are no more swinging their axes, blowing their horns, wielding their sticks, beating their drum heads and excercising their pipes just because, but rather for the cause.
For instance, Canadian flautist Jane Bunnett, who was due to perform at the International Festival de Jazz de Port-au-Prince this month, has a cause of her own to fulfill on January 28, 2010. She has organized a fundraiser for that day at Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St. W, Toronto. More than that, Bunnett has pledged to do a whole series of such fundraisers for the people of Haiti.
Now we go across the waters from Port-au-Prince to Jamaica for an example of Haitians helping Haitians. Singer, songwriter and producer JeanPaul Solomonoff, born to a Haitian mother and a Russian Polish Jewish father, will perform with Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander at the 2010 Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival, Jan. 24th-29th. All proceeds are destined for the Clinton/Bush Haiti Fund. (As an added note, Claude Wilson of JamaicaMusic OFFBEAT has revealed that “…Etienne Charles joins Monty Alexander on main stage Thursday, January 28 at the Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival at the Greenfield Stadium just outside Montego Bay.”
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