Barbie Anaka's third album, "Speechless" is an original, sultry blend of smooth, contemporary jazz vocals over r&b, hip hop and latin grooves. The album features multi-intrumentalist and producer Donyea Goodman (co-producer), as well as Kenny G's guitarist John Raymond, sax man Jon Goforth, bassist Garey Shelton and keyboardist Eugene Bien. Barbie penned 7 of the 10 tunes, rounding out the album with 3 covers: Sade's "The Sweetest Taboo", John Clayton's "That Night" (Barbie's long time teacher), and the song "Star" by the late Carly Henley (one of Barbie's students). The recording illustrates the artist's growth over the past several years since her last release, as she's kept a busy performance schedule throughout the Northwest since release of her first album, "in Love With a Memory". The single, "Speechless" is enjoying airplay on smoothinseattle and on internet radio in the UK. Recently, Barbie capped off the album's release with a standing room only show featuring her 10 piece band at Seattle's Triple Door. ~ CD Universe
The highly-anticipated debut album, "Simple Beauty", from New York City based saxophonist Adam Larson is set to release mid-January 2013. The ten original compositions featured (eight to Larson's credit), comprise the foundation of the Adam Larson Quintet repertoire; having been developed, re-vamp and nit-picked during his time as an undergraduate student at The Manhattan School of Music. Embracing a "chemistry above all" attitude, Adam enlisted his most trusted musical sidemen for the undertaking of recording this set of music. "it's something I thought about a lot when preparing to record this album. I've been very fortunate to work with and develop relationships with several amazing musicians over the past few years. I picked the individuals who I knew were deeply invested in the music, the bands vision, and were right for the job", says Larson. Those right for this project were pianist Can Olgun, bassist Raviv Markovitz, drummers Jason Burger and Guilhem Flouzat, and Larson's most like-minded musical cohort; guitarist Nils Weinhold. Intertwining a number of musical influences, the material on this record reveals Larson's intrigue for use of compositional devices such as mixed-meter and elongated song form. "Like many artists, I want my music to connect with as many people as I can. I'm hopeful that the music on this album will have a little something for everyone-that being said, I don't feel we sacrificed anything artistically speaking, in the process of attempting to appeal to a larger number of people; music is music and I'm excited to share this music, and these fantastic musicians with the world!". ~ CD Universe
The evolution of Naima is a declaration of their musical intention as are their album designs. The live robust sound of Naima's songs is remarkable throughout the record and touches a raw nerve in thelistener's brain. The album is the result of a thorough and meticulous production as we can hear from theimpeccable level of instrumentation. Another remarkable characteristic of this record is the band's ability toproduce excellent covers; in "A Trio Conspiracy" we find an amazing one of Eliott Smith. ~ CD Universe