69.00 PLN

CD:

Nr kat.: MAC1122
Label  : MackAvenue (USA)

Four-time Grammy® Award-winner Billy Childs remains one of the most diversely prolific and acclaimed artists working in music today. Childs' canon of original compositions and arrangements has garnered him an additional 10 Grammy Award nominations, the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009). An accomplished symphonic writer, he has also amassed a career's worth of jazz originals that can swing hard, dazzle with intricacy, touch you with direct simplicity, or mesmerize with crystalline lyricism. On his new Mack Avenue debut album Rebirth, Childs reaches back to the start of his almost astoundingly varied musical experience-leading a small jazz band of state-of-the-art musicians with his piano playing. Saxophonist Steve Wilson is central to Rebirth. "I met Steve in 1995," Childs explains, "when we played a tour of Japan with bassist Buster Williams. I didn't even like the alto at that time but on the first song where Steve played, I said, 'Who is this guy? I don't know what they're calling modern jazz these days but this is modern jazz!' I knew I wanted to work with Steve on one of my own projects." Vocalist Claudia Acuña, who co-composed the title tune, is another of the album's stalwarts. Childs produced her 2002 Rhythm of Life album, arranged and orchestrated, and played piano on it. "She went out on a limb and entrusted me to produce that album," he says. "My mother was dying and it was an emotional time for me. I did a lot of writing at her deathbed; it was therapeutic. So Claudia and I just decided to call the song 'Rebirth.'" Singer Alicia Olatuja sings on the soulful, minor key ballad "Stay." "Dianne Reeves told me about her," Childs says. "She sang on my Laura Nyro project and I knew she'd be perfect for the angular melody of 'Stay.'" Hans Glawischnig takes the nimble pizzicato bass solo on "Tightrope;" drummer Antonio Sanchez referred him to Childs. "A lot of drummers really like to play with me," Billy notes with pride. "I jump in there with the drums. I really like to write the rhythmic concept and find the people who can make it sing." “You’re hearing something on this album that I love doing but that I haven’t done a lot of lately: having musical conversations as a member of a group. That’s what I love.”