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Kurt Elling
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Kurt Elling Talks Working With Danilo Pérez kurt-elling-talks-new-album-secrets-are-best-stories-collaborating-pianist-danilo-p%C3%A9rez

Kurt Elling Talks New Album 'Secrets Are The Best Stories' & Collaborating With Pianist Danilo Pérez

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The outstanding jazz vocalist and prolific lyricist speaks up about pressing issues in America
Lily O'Brien
GRAMMYs
Apr 2, 2020 - 10:39 am

Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling's craft goes way beyond singing. A deep thinker inspired by the prose and the preaching of great poets and philosophers, past and present, he has carved out his own rightful place among them with his heartfelt lyrics—poetry that often searches for answers to important universal questions—about life and death, love and hate, and right and wrong.

With a deep, warm, rich baritone voice and an astonishing four-octave range, Elling sings straight from his heart, drawing you into whatever story he is telling with an authentically emotional and compelling style. His musings both onstage and off reveal a man with genuine humility, compassion for others, and a spiritual proclivity, likely developed in his early years as a divinity student.

Set to release his latest album, Secrets Are The Best Stories, on April 3, Elling's new work is a collaboration with Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Pérez. Elling's original lyrics are paired with several tunes penned by Pérez, and a few feature just the two of them, reflecting their intimate and creative communication.

Every song tells an engaging story, with several adapted from the work of renowned poets Franz Wright, Robert Bly, Francis E.W. Harper, and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. The stories are all different; some are esoteric, some are optimistic, and some are deeply introspective and reflective. And there are some that break new ground for Elling, delving deeply into social and political issues, boldly speaking out about critical topics like human rights and immigration. Pairing with Pérez, who is renowned not only for his music but for his worldwide activism, made for a perfect match.

The album also features tunes by jazz giants like saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bassist Jaco Pastorius, and a celebrated list of musicians: Clark Sommers on bass, Jonathan Blake on drums, Brazilian percussionist Rogério Boccato, Cuban percussionist Román Díaz, Chico Pinheiro on guitar and Miguel Zenón on alto sax.

With a career spanning more than 25 years, Elling has garnered 13 GRAMMY nominations and a win in 2009 for Best Jazz Vocal Album for The Gate. And early in his career, in 1999, Elling did a six-year run with the National Recording Academy, first as a National Trustee, and later as a Vice Chair for two terms. During that time, he helped create and host the first two annual Recording Academy Salutes to Jazz. "There are all kinds of ways that the Recording Academy is really trying to serve the music community," said Elling. "I was proud to be a part of it at the time."

The Recording Academy caught up with Elling by telephone about what went into the making of the new album.

Did you start out with a particular theme or idea that you wanted to convey on this record?

No. The only theme that I had in mind when I started making the record was, "I wonder what Danilo and I will create together."  I had some number of lyrics in mind, but everything else was either inspired by Danilo—the way we interacted and the work that we were doing together.

How did your collaboration with Danilo Pérez come about? 

Our relationship started many years ago. He would come to Chicago and hit the jazz showcase and I would come out to hear him. Then we'd go out and have coffee and talk about philosophy. When you're out in the world making the scene at all these different international jazz festivals, you see each other time and again.

How long was the new record in the making?

It's been a long time coming—six months of in-earnest writing and arranging and working together, well before we went into the studio. We did a couple of duet concerts to experiment on things and to feel out where it could go, and those were very inspiring occasions.

"Beloved" is a very powerful and disturbing piece. What inspired you to write it?

"Beloved" was written to honor Toni Morrison. It came about because Danilo and his wife were establishing a relationship with Toni Morrison, close to the end of her life. He wrote that composition for her, and then held it in trust, hoping that I would write a lyric for it, and that ended up working out very well. We had a very close communication about what specifically was driving that lyric, and where he wanted to put it. Toni Morrison was inspired to write "Beloved" from a series of abolitionist poems that were written in the 1850s by an African-American woman who was trying to rally people to the cause. To tell that story anew in our piece called "Beloved," I adapt one specific piece of her poetry to fit the contours to tell that story anew.

"Gratitude" was dedicated to the great poet Robert Bly. Was it adapted from one of his poems?

Yes, but when I take a poem like that, now it has to fit the contours of the melody. There will not only be individual word and rhyming differences, but the story might change as well. I think of it as collaboration between the poet and me and the composer.

"The Song of the Rio Grande" is a powerful and wrenching tribute to Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his young daughter Valeria, Salvadoran migrants who died trying to cross the Rio Grande in Mexico to get to the U.S. What inspired you to write about that?

I continue to struggle with what my appropriate response to the events of the world are. They're always on my mind, but I've had to mature as a person and as a writer into a place where it's time to start saying that stuff. We need to hold people accountable, because human beings are suffering and dying at this point because of the actions of those who represent us, whom we've elected. And that is a disgrace on every level.

We're in a jam. We need to really find our way because the ideals that the Founders were trying to live up to, that generations of American leadership has at least tried to live up to, are all in very serious danger right now. I'm preoccupied with the way history reverberates and echoes, and I'm concerned with what my proper response to that echo is supposed to be. 

How did Danilo create the amazing special effect sounds on that song?

He "treated" the piano—he took his beautiful Steinway at home in his own studio, and he got some paper clips and he put pieces of paper and some clothespins and nuts and bolts and screws on it. I think Danilo must have spent a couple of days trying to get exactly the kinds of sounds that he wanted in exactly the places that we wanted them. 

You've been steadily creating your art for decades. What is it that inspires you to keep going and have any of those reasons changed over the years?

I think I'm less interested in fame for its own sake. When I was young, I was just busting to get out to make a mark for my ego's sake. Now, it's about gratitude. My goal every night is to give the highest quality performance that I can, and to be faithful to the quality of the music that's within me to make.

Do you think your writing, in general, will be taking on more about world events?

It's not going to be a super hard right or left turn. It's just that my preoccupations are different. I'm not preoccupied with finding romantic love these days. I'm preoccupied with the future of what kind of world my kids and everybody's kids are going to live in. And I'm concerned to make, produce and sing compositions and musical events that are for the highest good.

Jeff Goldblum On His Lifelong Passion For Jazz And His New Album

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Blu & Exile

 

Miles cover photo by B+

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Blu & Exile Talk Reuniting, New Album 'Miles' blu-exile-talk-new-album-miles-were-hoping-music-heals-people

Blu & Exile Talk New Album 'Miles': "We're Hoping That This Music Heals People"

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The L.A. rap duo talks to GRAMMY.com about their latest venture, working with old friends like Aloe Blacc, Fashawn and Miguel, and the "purely electronic album" they never released
Noah Berlatsky
GRAMMYs
Jul 5, 2020 - 9:40 am

"Left a hole in the speaker/stepped in the stu, no shoes, but got more soul than sneakers," Blu declares on "Miles Davis," the lead single from the new album Miles: From An Interlude Called Life with producer Exile. A cool piano loop plays around the dusty beat, with what sure sounds like a sample from a trumpet solo by the man himself. The track has spiritual soul even as it's got its heel on the blacktop. It's been eight years since Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them, Blu & Exile's last full album together. But their new release shows they haven't missed a step.

Though it's been a long time since the last full-length, the duo hasn't been idle. Exile has worked with everyone from Snoop Dogg to Open Mike Eagle to Aloe Blacc in the duo Emanon. Blu's laid-black syllable twisting flow ("my tongue is a machine" he says on one recent track) has worked with Madlib, Pete Rock and Nottz. But the two will probably forever be linked to their debut, 2007's Below the Heavens, an album with soil under its fingernails and its eyes up above.

Miles, which runs two hours and 15 minutes and drops on July 17 via Dirty Science Records, is a welcome return to the same vibe, with two LPs of Blu tying smooth lyrical loops around Exile's jazzy production. The album is laden with the duo's old friends and collaborators, including Aloe Blacc, Fashawn and Miguel, who provides one of his patented silky-voiced hooks for "American Dream."

When you talk to Exile and Blu together, you can hear a bit of the album's chemistry. They toss questions to each other, finish each other's sentences and riff on each other's answers. They obviously enjoy being together, on the phone or on record. Miles is a chronicle of the figures who have inspired and influenced them, whether it be Monk, Mandela or Bernie Mac. It's also about getting the band back together. For Exile and Blu, some of their best roots are each other.

How did the two of you meet and start working together?

Exile: It was around '02 or '03. My longtime friend Aloe Blacc had met Blu, and I kept hearing about him and how I needed to work with him. And eventually Aloe took me to go see a show where Blu was performing. I think he was probably too young to even be in the club. He just had to perform and leave.

I guess he had heard my music before then, and when I met him after the show. I invited him to come work with me. I was working on an album called Dirty Science at the time with a bunch of different artists. And we got together to record our first song and we hit it off. And basically right after that after we made the song, we're just probably having a cigarette in the car or something and really just talking about what we wanted our album to sound like.

Blu: Definitely, yep. That was the spark right there. And that was before the first album. That was that first song, and we knew we wanted to do an album.

What do the two of you like about each other's styles? 

Blu: Well, I think Exile has many, many styles. He fits well with many different artists. But I think our chemistry works well just because of the friendship behind it. Exile's hella versatile. And I try to stay the same way with my catalog in collaborating with other producers.

Exile: I think at the time when we met, I just really loved how hungry Blu was. It just created a good energy to explore where we take our art.

It's been eight years since you worked on a record together. What made you decide to team up again?

Exile: We've always worked with each other. All the projects I've put together always have Blu on them. I think Blu had other personalities that are very much Blu to explore, also, but I think I tend to encourage him to draw a lot more from his emotional side .

Also, we had created a purely electronic album. But we didn't release it.

Blu: It wasn't really answering the call for Blu and Exile.

Wait, you have a whole album you didn't release? And that's the reason it's been so long between your last album?

Blu: Yep. Yes. We have a couple.

The cover image for this new album is the two of you standing with a giant tree with exposed roots. Why is black history and black musical history important for this album?

Exile: I think that actually personifies the album. Exposing our roots.

Blu: We were just on the path to speak more vocally about revolutionising through music and reflecting on our roots at the same time. And all that just happened right before the quarantine and right before the upheaval for racial justice, you know.

We're hoping that this music heals people. We hope that it touches people because it does relate to the times. Songs like "Troubled Waters" and "Roots of Blue" and "True and Livin'." They're for the people that are here today.

Exile: We had a conversation about what we wanted the album to be about, which was healing or exposing. We wanted it to be something that's more than just flexing style. I felt like the music that is important to us has more of a message. And that's what we were trying to do with this album.

Read More: Fight The Power: 11 Powerful Protest Songs Advocating For Racial Justice

Were you thinking about Trump in particular? He gets mentioned a couple of times.

Blu: Yes, we are definitely thinking about Trump. Some Trump songs got left off the album. We don't want to overload the people with the Trump invasion.

The album is named for Miles Davis in part. Why is he important to this record?

Blu: Yeah, one of my favorite people on this earth is my grandfather. And my grandfather's favorite artist is Miles Davis. And growing up, he would play Miles Davis a lot. But I wasn't really hip to it until later on when I got older and I started digging for records in my early 20s. So he gave me all his Miles Davis records. That really set me on a path to listening to jazz, and really getting into jazz music opened my eyes.

I eventually read [Davis'] autobiography and listened to all his great records. It was tough to understand jazz completely right at the beginning, but, but after five years of listening, Miles Davis is one of my favorite artists of all time.

Exile: There's also a double meaning for the word "miles" aside from Miles Davis. In terms of a journey and appreciation for our journey, and of how long we've been gone.

Blu: It's also a representation of that we feel like we've [traveled] miles beyond our last album. So this album was catching the people up.

There are a couple of songs on the album, "African Dream" and "American Dream." Could you talk about how those two are related?

Blu: They're a contrast. The songs are close to each other on the album to show the difference between the two. One is like a personal dream, and the other is what I'd like America to be. The African dream is me wanting to be in Africa. And the American Dream is me wanting a better life in America.

Could you talk about how you're hoping to respond to COVID? With people not touring now, did you have ideas about how to promote the record?

Exile: We did have plans to do some live shows and whatnot online. It's funny because the tour that we were going do in June was going to be Below The Heavens vs Boy Meets World [the 2009 Fashawn album produced by Exile], which was also dubbed a classic. And it's funny because Timbaland and Swizz Beatz did this online verzuz battle. And I thought damn, people are probably going to think we're just doing an extension of that, because we were thinking of doing it live on Instagram.

But since the [protests], I've reevaluated my plan for that. I still want to do it, but it didn't seem like the right time [because of the protests]. But at the very least I know we'll do a live performance of the album, Miles. And beyond that, we'll have to see how this whole thing plays out.

Run The Jewels Are Ready To Pierce Your Heart Again

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Gerry Gibbs

Gerry Gibbs

Photo: Joan Carroll

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Inside Chick Corea's Final Recordings gerry-gibbs-terry-gibbs-songs-from-my-father-jazz-album-chick-corea-final-recordings

Gerry Gibbs Assembled Jazz Legends To Honor His Father's Music. The Result Contained Chick Corea's Final Recordings.

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Jazz drummer Gerry Gibbs drove 15,000 miles around America to make 'Songs From My Father,' a homage to his dad Terry Gibbs’ music. One of the greats who contributed was Chick Corea—and unbeknownst to everyone, these were the last recordings he’d ever make
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Aug 13, 2021 - 10:58 am

North, south, east and west on the interstates of a pandemic-gripped America, Gerry Gibbs drove 15,000 miles to make some music. In the evenings, he and his wife, Kyeshie, camped out in the car and dozed off to DVDs of Kojak, Starsky and Hutch and The Mod Squad. They were too apprehensive about COVID-19 to board a flight or sleep in a hotel. So, with his record label's financial assistance, they drove and drove and drove.

"I'm not touring. I'm not working. I just sit at home every day wondering what's going to happen," Gibbs told GRAMMY.com back in 2020 while driving through the middle of the desert. "Everything I ever had doesn't exist anymore." So he hurtled between New York, California, Texas and Florida throughout the first wave. "All to make this stupid record," Gibbs says in 2021, cheekily and modestly. Because what he and his associates made is a doozy.

He was driving all over creation to make Songs From My Father (released August 6), a homage to the songbook of his dad, the pioneering vibraphonist and bebop luminary Terry Gibbs. It features four permutations of his Thrasher Dream Trio, drawing from a Rolodex of cream-of-the-crop musicians: bassists Ron Carter, Christian McBride and Buster Williams, and pianists Chick Corea, Kenny Barron, Patrice Rushen, Geoff Keezer and Larry Goldings.

By now, in music, the anecdotes about recording in lockdown are starting to bleed together. Plus, jazz is a Möbius strip of lineages, so a son paying tribute to his father is as natural as can be. That said, Songs From My Father stands out for multiple reasons. 

First, it sheds light on Terry, an underappreciated architect of America's music. Second, it’s a testament to Gerry's indefatigable creativity. And—perhaps most enticingly—it contains the final recordings of the late pianistic legend and 25-time GRAMMY winner Chick Corea.

Terry Gibbs

Terry Gibbs with bassist Eddie Safranski and the 1953 Metronome All-Stars. Photo: PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images​.

The Swinging Mastery Of Terry Gibbs

At almost 97, Terry is a hilarious fount of stories, and his 2003 memoir, Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz, is a treasure trove of Brooklynite musings. The man born Julius Gubenko in 1924 had a front-row seat to bebop and big band at their peaks, playing with Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and scores of other household names.

Gerry was born in 1964, and his father didn’t steer him toward becoming a musician at all. "He's had his own mind since he was a kid," Terry tells GRAMMY.com. "I never told him what to like. He went from liking Buddy Rich to liking Elvin Jones, and that's a big jump going from straight-ahead to a guy who was playing pretty far out. But he liked it. That's where his head was."

Gerry Gibbs & Terry Gibbs

Terry and Gerry Gibbs. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

Read More: 10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

Gerry became a music obsessive by his own volition. "You remember those blue-jean-colored folders you put all your manilla folders in when you were in class?" Gerry asks GRAMMY.com. "On the front, I would just put 'Chick Corea. Ron Carter. Freddie Hubbard. Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Kenny Barron.' And I would just stare at the names on the books and say, 'These are my heroes. These are the people I want to play with one day.'"

Terry didn't just play with the titans of bebop; he provided a platform for brilliant Black female pianists. One, Alice Coltrane (née McLeod), is experiencing an overdue reappraisal. Another, Terry Pollard—an equal talent on vibraphone who performed alongside him in swinging mallet contests—remains bizarrely obscure given her considerable skills.

About Alice Coltrane, "Before everything she had done with John, she was a swinging bebopper, playing in all these Detroit bands and in Terry Gibbs' band," saxophonist Jeff Lederer told GRAMMY.com in 2020. "She was a great, great bebopper." As for Pollard, "I feel like it's really important to acknowledge her when talking about this music," Geoff Keezer tells GRAMMY.com.

Terry Gibbs & Terry Pollard

Terry Gibbs and Terry Pollard. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

Read More: 'Ptah, The El Daoud' At 50: How Alice Coltrane Straddled Heaven And Earth

Terry played from age 12 until his retirement at 92. In that time, he made more than 90 solo recordings and was the musical director on "The Steve Allen Show" for more than 20 years. However, he's mysteriously still not an NEA Jazz Master, despite many musicians far younger than him—and with fewer bona fides—receiving the honor.

Plus, his infectious compositions, like "Kick Those Feet," "Bopstacle Course" and "Pretty Blue Eyes," aren't as widely known as they should be in the 21st century. That is, unless Gerry has something to say about it.

The Creative Whirlwind Of Gerry Gibbs

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Gerry Gibbs is as loquacious and driven as his father. Moreover, time is elastic on Planet Gibbs: What would typically be a half-hour conversation might stretch to more than three times that length.

"When he's explaining stuff, his mind is going 20,000 miles an hour," Patrice Rushen tells GRAMMY.com. "He might skip a lot of information that it would be of value for you to try to keep up with where he's going." For example: "'There's no bass player in this session.' [Pauses.] OK. 'Well, you'll be playing with [pianist] Larry Goldings.' [Pauses even longer.] OK? 'Larry's going to play the organ.' OK, got it. Now I'm piecing it together."

Put a man like this in pandemic house arrest, and he'll do something like write and record an entire song every day in an 18-day spree while playing all the instruments. And that's what Gerry did. He sent the resulting album, Emotional Pandemic, to 500 people on his email list. One of them happened to be Corea, who he'd been friendly with before but never worked with.

Corea took to Gerry immediately and emailed him, eager to learn about his creative process. "I was pretty freaked out," Gerry admits. "Friends of mine hadn't had time to listen to it, and here's Chick, who's so busy, and he listened to it numerous times." Gerry sent Corea his phone number; they talked for two hours and became fast friends.

"One time, at almost 3:00 in the morning, the phone rang, and it was Chick," Gerry says. "My wife sees the phone and I say, 'He must have butt-dialed me.' I answer the phone, and he says [loudly] 'Guess whooo!' I don't care. Chick could have woken me up every night, and it would be fine. It's Chick."

After Corea listened to Journey to Parts Unknown, another album Gerry made during lockdown—this one comprised of solo piano compositions—he inquired about adapting the tunes to include bass and drums.

"Then I realized, 'My label can't afford him,'" Gerry says. He offered to put his people in touch with Corea's people; Corea waved it away. "He was just like, 'No, no, no. Don't worry about that. I don't care about that. Let's just do it.'"

There was another potential wrinkle: Gerry's compositions are incredibly elaborate, so much so that Corea requested advance time with the charts. Plus, with COVID as a factor, lengthy rehearsals weren't possible. So rather than composing streamlined, improv-friendly music, Gerry decided to play his father's music instead.

"It's a tribute to my dad, but it's not a tribute because he's my dad," he says. "His music was some of the most important music for me growing up. It was my way to put my take on something that I grew up with that had a huge influence on me." While on a stroll through his neighborhood, he called everyone who ultimately would be involved with the record. They were in.

Gibbs told Corea he was going to change direction and play his father's music instead. Corea took to the idea enthusiastically, even asking to write an original song for the record: "Tango for Terry."

"All of us had so much faith in his judgment and his ability to work out the situations that were beyond everyone's expectations and experience."    —Ron Carter

When it came time to track the music in various locations, none of the musicians were rusty after being housebound for months. "I was a little apprehensive about going into the studio, but I needed to play," Keezer says. "I was very happy that he called me for the project, especially with Christian on bass." 

Gerry's curatorial and leaderly acumen struck all the musicians involved. "All of us had so much faith in his judgment and his ability to work out the situations that were beyond everyone's expectations and experience," Ron Carter tells GRAMMY.com. Barron adds, "Gerry is very creative in terms of coming up with different kinds of projects. It's not always the same thing, which I love about him."

For "Chick's Tune," a spin on Terry's "Hey Jim" with nine out of 10 of the musicians taking a solo, Gerry matched the tempo to a 1961 recording of his father and spliced his vibraphone solo to the music. "Gerry's very good at [working with] pre-recorded elements to play to, as far as the production side," Larry Goldings tells GRAMMY.com. "Gerry's very clever at editing."

Notably absent from his namesake song, however, was Corea.

The Final Musical Fires Of Chick Corea

By all accounts, Corea was strong and upbeat during the sessions. However, when it came time to tackle "Hey Jim," "Chick called me and said, 'I can't play on it because I'm not feeling good. I've got a pain in my ribs. Can we postpone this for three or four weeks?'" Gerry recalls. "I said, 'Of course, Chick.'"

"And then I spoke to his management," he says. "Chick was gone."

In a massive shock to the global jazz community, Corea passed away on February 9, 2021, from a rare form of cancer. He embodied energetic creativity for a musician in his autumn years; the internet was full of his recent videos and masterclasses. With about a month left, Corea got his affairs in order and wrote a statement to the world.

"I want to thank all of those along my journey who have helped keep the music fires burning bright," he said. "It is my hope that those who have an inkling to play, write, perform or otherwise, do so. If not for yourself then for the rest of us. It's not only that the world needs more artists, it's also just a lot of fun."

"My dad always said, 'People remember the very beginning, and they always remember the end. They don't always remember everything in the middle'... That's what I try to remember: What are the bookends? Are they really memorable?" —Gerry Gibbs

"I was so hurt and disappointed that, finally, I got to hook up with Chick and that we were going to get together and play after COVID," Gerry says. "It's a little eerie. When you're a little kid, you don't think, 'One day I'll play with Chick and when it happens, it'll be the last thing he'll ever do.'" 

Gerry suggested they repurpose the track to be a tribute to their fallen friend. Terry agreed and proposed a new title—"Hey Chick." The music sounds as radiant, eager and playful as its namesake.

"My dad always said, 'People remember the very beginning, and they always remember the end. They don't always remember everything in the middle,'" Gerry says. "That always struck me as very important with a lot of music that I love. That's what I try to remember: What are the bookends? Are they really memorable?"

Terry Gibbs & Gerry Gibbs

Terry and Gerry Gibbs. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

A Father's Verdict

One critical question remains: What did Terry think of the final product?

"There's nothing greater than to hear someone play a song you wrote and interpret it their own way," he marvels. "You're talking about the heavyweights of heavyweights. Everyone is a bandleader."

"When he told me about all these guys he tried to get, I thought the COVID got to him or he was completely out of his bird!" he exclaims. "How did he get those guys, especially with this disease going around?"

Buster Williams has an answer: Despite the extraordinary circumstances, there was a "business as usual" vibe among the musicians. "We do record dates all the time, you know? You never know what's going to be the result of a record date," he tells GRAMMY.com. "You're sort of like, 'This is what I do.' But I was very pleased when I heard the complete record that they put together."

"When he told me about all these guys he tried to get, I thought the COVID got to him or he was completely out of his bird!" —Terry Gibbs

In a period of frustration over the perceived NEA Jazz Master snub, Songs From My Father proved to be a balm for the family. "[My father] said 'This is better than getting an award,'" Gerry says proudly. "He was really excited." 

And while this ultimate act of paternal respect touches Terry deeply as he approaches a century on this planet, he's not going to let his son off that easily.

"I used to be a boxer," he clarifies. "I can still beat the heck out of him if I want to."

In Remembrance: Chick Corea Played In More Ways Than One

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Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane in 1987

Photo: Frans Schellekens

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Inside Alice Coltrane's Rare Ambient Masterpiece alice-coltrane-kirtan-turiya-sings-inside-long-lost-devotional-album

Alice Coltrane's 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings': Inside The Unearthly Beauty Of Her Long-Lost Devotional Album

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Alice Coltrane only made a few hundred copies of 1982’s 'Turiya Sings,' but it has the ability to change your life. 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings," an unadorned variation of the record, draws you even deeper into its transformative power
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 14, 2021 - 10:05 am

Even if you don't know Alice Coltrane's music or feel compelled to check out a "jazz" artist, there's an ambient tape floating around YouTube that will break your heart. 

Turiya Sings, a droning 1982 cassette of chanted Sanskrit vocals, organ, synthesizer and orchestra, is not only a sad, haunted jewel but one of the most convincing available arguments for a higher power. But for Coltrane's son, Ravi, what sounds like a transmission from beyond was just a fact of life around the house.

"That's the sound I grew up hearing. That is the sound," the now-55-year-old saxophonist tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "I'd come home from school and she'd be at the organ, playing these songs, singing quietly to herself." This also extended to when he went to church—a.k.a. services at her Agoura Hills ashram—every Sunday, and Coltrane led the congregation in original devotionals like "Jagadishwar," "Krishna Krishna" and "Govinda Hari."

In both scenarios, Coltrane didn't have a rack of synthesizers nor an orchestra at her disposal, but a simple Wurlitzer. And that's the version of Turiya Sings that is finally getting a wide release, offering an alternative to the spectral tape rip hanging out on the internet. Kirtan: Turiya Sings, a fresh "reduction"—Ravi's word—of the original album, arrives July 16 on Impulse Records/UMe. Now, listeners worldwide—Hindu, Christian, agnostic, or atheist—can access the album's boundless spiritual riches.

Alice Coltrane is often discussed in the shadow of her towering husband, John. But the truth is, her marriage to the groundbreaking saxophonist only spanned a few years; her life and career stretched for years before and after him. When she and John met, the pianist was already a known quantity as a Detroit bebopper in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' band. And by the time she replaced McCoy Tyner in his group in the final year of his life, she was a downright veteran.

Read More: 10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

After John's 1967 death from liver cancer, she recorded a succession of albums for Impulse!, then Warner Bros. In the '70s, she moved out of the Long Island home she shared with John and headed out to California, establishing the Vedantic Center northwest of Los Angeles and adopting the name Turiyasangitananda. By the dawn of the '80s, she was through with the rat race of commercial music.

"By '81, she was just done with record contracts," Ravi says. "She felt that she had done everything she wanted to do in music and wanted to shift directions to a more spiritual life, so that's what she did."

Turiya Sings was her first functional rather than commercial work, serving as an offering for congregants rather than something meant for a wide release. Every Sunday, the group would sit on the floor, clad in white, for a kirtan service, shaking tambourines and bells as Coltrane sang and played. ("Kirtan" means "narrating, reciting, telling" in Sanskrit.)

"My mother, who we would call 'swami'—I still called her 'mom'—would sit behind the Wurlitzer," Ravi recalls. "The very same Wurlitzer you hear on the recording."

Coltrane recorded the album in 1981—mostly in first takes—at a studio near the ashram. Then, she overdubbed synthesizers and a self-conducted orchestra, pressed a few hundred copies under the Avatar Book Institute imprint, and sold it in the ashram's bookstore. "This is celebratory music of the highest order," the rear sleeve attested, calling it the product of "a soul that has already traversed far."

Of this sumptuous sound-world, only various secondhand versions were available for years—at press time, even eBay doesn't turn up an original cassette copy. But when Ravi finally heard a stripped-down, Wurlitzer-and-voice mix in 2004, he felt the embellishment-free version was the most gripping and immediate. The only problem was that he couldn't find a 24-track master—until recently when he found it sitting in a closet for decades.

Kirtan: Turiya Sings

Photo: Courtesy of Impulse Records/UMe.

While the original subsumed listeners into its undertow, this bare-bones version bends the ear to its lyrics and melodies. And without the overdubbed atmosphere, you can hear more clearly the gospel-ish angles in the chords and click and clack of the Wurlitzer's pedals.

"As dynamic and bold as the original version is, hearing my mother sing and play in this stripped-down, intimate setting revealed the true heart and soul of these songs," Ravi wrote in a producer’s note. "In this form, I could hear every nuance and inflection in her vocal performance and feel the weight of her rock-solid pulse and timing and (dare I say it) groove on the Wurlitzer. And, most importantly, in this setting, I felt the greatest sense of her passion, devotion, and exaltation in singing these songs in praise of the Supreme."

"It's powerful in a different way," Ken Druker, the Vice President of Jazz Development at Verve Label Group, tells GRAMMY.com. "You can hear what she's doing on the organ. You can hear the gospel influence. As Ravi said, you can hear the Motown in her voice—things that weren't as apparent on the cassette where there were all these other layers going on."

Druker is quick to call Kirtan: Turiya Sings a "variation" of the album, not meant to supplant it. To that end, Ravi says the decision to release this unadorned music wasn't to insert his own agenda but to get at the essence of the work. "That's the primary motivation," he says. "It wasn't me trying to tinker with Alice's creative works. I'm a custodian of my mother's music, my father's music, and a guardian of this music."

As for the lyrics, you don't have to learn a foreign language to feel them—even as a Sanskrit-to-English translation in the booklet helps bridge that gap. "They're just praising the Supreme—the Highest," Ravi says. "They're songs to elevate the spirit, and I don't see this as religious music. I see this as devotional music. Music that is for everyone, from any religious background—or no religious background."

Indeed, Vedic Hinduism wasn't the end for Coltrane, but the means. Even as Kirtan: Turiya Sings is firmly hooked to that tradition, it's meant as a vehicle for universal God-consciousness. 

"People have heard this music and not heard the translations nor the Sanskrit, but they can feel it," Ravi continues. "There's something compelling about these chants and these songs in a way that's not pushing one specific religion's doctrine, but promotes the universal in all divine music."

Despite being just one stop on the long continuum of Coltrane's music, nothing else in her discography quite sounds like it—and now that it's out for real, its influence and impact have the potential to be as borderless as its spirituality. Will Sheff, the GRAMMY-nominated leader of the long-running rock band Okkervil River, found himself bewitched by the original version of Turiya Sings years ago.

"I feel like she's going down to this depth, and the depth is heavy. You're sinking down and down and down and down into the darkness, but I don't think of that necessarily as bad," he tells GRAMMY.com. "That's where everything comes from and where everything goes, or something like that."

For Sheff, the quality of the music—coupled with the fact Coltrane didn't make it as a capitalist object—makes Turiya Sings an incredibly rare bird. "I don't want to get into some kind of weird, purist state of mind, but I guess I just feel like there's something so beautiful about hearing a musician do something where their soul is reaching out to God and they put it out to people who share the same faith as they do as a prayer aid," he says. 

"At no point in that process does 'I want to be rich' or 'I want to be famous' or 'I want to be well-thought-of' come into that," Sheff adds. "That's very refreshing because those are the biggest prizes of our culture right now." This might hold true for the foreseeable future, as far as music is concerned. 

But we'll always have Turiyasangitananda, praising the Most High softly, solemnly, as if singing to herself.

'Ptah, The El Daoud' At 50: How Alice Coltrane Straddled Heaven And Earth

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Photo of Elaine Martone at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in 2020

Elaine Martone at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in 2020

 

Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

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Elaine Martone Talks Producing Career, Self-Doubt elaine-martone-interview-cleveland-orchestra

How Elaine Martone Overcame Self-Doubt And Became A Legendary Classical & Jazz Producer

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Women may be underrepresented in the production world, but one of its very best in classical and jazz is Elaine Martone—she opens up to GRAMMY.com about her life and career
Lior Phillips
Membership
May 14, 2021 - 10:56 am

Elaine Martone had her sights set on a life in the orchestra early on, but her quest to become a musician was missing one thing. With a degree in performance in hand from Ithaca College, while working her way into shape to audition for orchestras as an oboist, she took on a job at the classical music label Telarc as a way to earn a living while auditioning. She settled in Cleveland, Ohio, because the Cleveland Orchestra was there, and oboists with whom she studied.

But although her musical talents ran deep, "I lacked self-confidence," Martone tells GRAMMY.com. "And if a musician doesn't have confidence in themself, nobody's going to give that to them."

Rather than let that hurdle be her downfall, she dug deeper into her work at Telarc to figure out how she could create and bolster that confidence in other musicians. Martone built a GRAMMY-winning career as a recording producer specializing in classical and jazz. "Funnily enough, I'm actually producing the Cleveland Orchestra's online season now," she chuckles. "My life has made a nice full circle."

At the time she joined Telarc, the label had been in business less than three years. Founded by Jack Renner and Robert Woods (who Martone later married), the label was built for audiophiles and passionately focused on its music niche. "This was before the advent of CDs, but we were already recording with digital technology. By the time CDs came out, we were poised with high-quality recordings. And it was in Cleveland, an unusual place for a record label," Martone says with a laugh. "I knew I was on the ground floor of something cool."

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Martone quickly grasped the intricacies of the recording process and learning to edit and produce recording sessions—an unusual role for a woman in the industry, both then and now. But Telarc was a new enough venture with plenty of opportunities, and its founders nurtured and encouraged her growth. Over time, the staff grew to about 50 and Martone ran the production department of 12.

"I never felt held back as a woman. I felt very lucky to grow a department and hire the right people," she says. "A key skill for my work as a producer is that I'm nurturing. I like being of service, including mentoring young women. Women represented about half of my staff."

Throughout her decades-long career, Martone indulged in her passion for orchestral music and produced essential records for legends in that genre and others. Due to her nurturing style, she made close friends along the way, producing the last 18 albums by jazz bassist Ray Brown. Since 2000, she also collaborated to great acclaim with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano and has worked with the GRAMMY-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, among many others.

Early on, Martone set her sights on winning a GRAMMY before she turned 50. "My husband has 13 GRAMMYs, and he started winning them when he was 30," she says. "So, I had a long way to go to 'catch up'.  In 2006, I won Classical Producer of the Year, which is the most coveted award in my field. I also have a Latin GRAMMY, and I won a jazz GRAMMY for McCoy Tyner's Illuminations. Especially as women, we denigrate ourselves thinking that if we hide a little bit, people won't take shots at us. But I decided I wasn't going to do that back then, that I was going to play full out, and that I was going to win. Five GRAMMYs later, it's a big honor and a privilege."

Martone's ability to build relationships has been particularly key to connecting through the pandemic. "The sense of community that I've felt through the GRAMMY organization and MusiCares has been incredible and has helped out a few friends that were really in need," Martone says.

Connection-building was necessary for her production career as well. Having produced the Cleveland Orchestra in the past, the organization reached out to Martone directly to produce their virtual season. "They're arguably the greatest orchestra in the world, and they're right here," she says. "They had the bonus of my 41 years of experience.  I've needed to use all of that. I have been so proud of all of us in this creative community because we kept hope and inspiration alive."

Taking that inspiration, Martone approached the Orchestra's virtual season seeing opportunities to create a new experience rather than seeing limitations. "Cleveland Clinic was advising the Orchestra, and that included not using winds or brass," she says. "So we started with 42 string musicians distanced nine feet apart. That's no way to make a very good ensemble, but the thing that's beautiful about the Cleveland Orchestra is their sense of blend and ensemble and being able to respond very nimbly. Producing what amounted to two records a week in this virtual season has been a production schedule on steroids."

Another of Martone's pandemic highlights has been producing new records from the GRAMMY-winning percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson. "Elisabeth messaged me and said she was interested in a record with all women composers, composers who were neglected like Amy Beach and Fanny Mendelssohn," Martone explains. "We worked remotely during the Pandemic. The Oregon Music Festival is also considering a recording at Abbey Road in November, also with all women composers and has asked me to produce. I feel inspired and energized by these projects."

Whether in her earliest recording sessions or the heart of the pandemic, the factor uniting Martone's experiences has always been her love of the creative process—and of being in the same space as people reaching their peak. "When I'm producing, I can't be thinking of anything else at the moment," she says. "I'm in the state of flow, almost an active meditative state. That's helped me work on over 200 records. Making a difference for others and having fun makes for a life well-lived."

For the past 60 years, the Recording Academy's Chicago Chapter has recognized and celebrated the creative accomplishments of our members across the Midwest, fought for their collective rights, and supported them in times of need. We are proud of our legacies and excited to continue looking ahead. Here's to the next 60.

How Female Classical Composers Are Encouraging Gender Equality

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Some of the content on this site expresses viewpoints and opinions that are not those of the Recording Academy and its Affiliates. Responsibility for the accuracy of information provided in stories not written by or specifically prepared for the Academy and its Affiliates lies with the story's original source or writer. Content on this site does not reflect an endorsement or recommendation of any artist or music by the Recording Academy and its Affiliates.