By Stephanie Jones, Downbeat During the past decade, vocalist Aubrey Johnson has explored different chambers of her artistry and performed with an array of musicians, including singers Bobby McFerrin and Sara Serpa, as well as Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra. Johnson’s leader debut, Unraveled (Outside In)—a program featuring original compositions and new sextet arrangements of … Read More
By Stephanie Jones, Downbeat On a chilly January night in New York City, drummer-composer Antonio Sánchez plays a full-body phrase. He hangs back in the measures before repeating it—a provocation. Alongside saxophonist and EWI artist Chase Baird, vocalist Thana Alexa stretches vowels around quarter-tones in extended moments of dissonance on the Blue Note stage. She … Read More
By Stephanie Jones, Downbeat Inside Bronx Music House, standing lamps bloom like roses. Percussion instruments hang like ivy on the walls. A stone’s throw from Yankee Stadium, the apartment and practice space provides emerging artists a place to shed and session together—and now, a place to quarantine. Read the full feature here.
By Stephanie Jones, Hot House Few artists challenge perceived limits of their own medium as earnestly as Thana Alexa. The Queens-based vocalist and composer of Croatian lineage creates expanding blankets of sound with her own voice, using effects pedals and processors. Read the full review here.
By Stephanie Jones, Downbeat Peer groups serve as vital incubators for artistic development, but equally critical are intergenerational relationships among artists. They provide new perspectives, as well as a means to hand down information and evolve the music. These relationships also manifest potently on the bandstand. Read the full feature here.
by Stephanie Jones, Hot House Listeners have come to love Richie Goods as an artist who’s gathered sound and sense from an expansive lineage, and created a heavy vibration all his own. A master of the feel-it-deep feel on both upright and electric bass, the artist, composer and producer has been a sound architect for … Read More
Brent Birckhead Ginny’s Supper Club/August 23rd Stephanie Jones, Hot House In Brent Birckhead’s music, listeners find past, present and future expression. Baltimore born and raised, the alto saxophonist and multi-woodwind artist is part of a talented generation that cross-pollinates art forms – an emergent collective whose identity is at once passionately collaborative and defiantly individualistic. … Read More
by Stephanie Jones, Downbeat
Stephanie Jones, Downbeat Harpist and composer Brandee Younger often faces a curiously inexhaustible question: What kind of music do you play? And she’s given it a lot of thought: “I dislike [genre labels] for a number of reasons. [What I play is] such a combination of different things and styles that are mixed together. It … Read More
