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African Union Names Angélique Kidjo a Peace Ambassador

IMN

July 28th, 2010 – IMN Update:

from Paste Magazine

The African Union Names Angélique Kidjo a Peace Ambassador
By Ani Vrabel

Benin-born musician Angélique Kidjo has been named a Peace Ambassador by the Commission of the African Union (AU). She—and 25 other ambassadors, including African musicians Manu Dibango, Youssou N’Dour and Salif Keita—will be present at celebrations for International Day of Peace on Sept. 21.

Peace Day is part of the Commission’s 2010 Year of Peace and Security in Africa program. It will be a day to emphasize non-violence in Africa to show citizens and government officials that living in peace is possible on the continent.

Find the original article here

Angelique Kidjo Performs on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

IMN

July 27th, 2010 – IMN Update:

from Shore Fire Media

Angelique Kidjo Performs Live With John Legend And The Roots On Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

International recording star Angelique Kidjo has made 2010 her year. The first single off of her album, “Move On Up,” is a passionate cover of Curtis Mayfield‘s 1970 hit featuring Bono and John Legend. Originally recorded with only Legend, the duo teamed up once again and performed with The Roots on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon July 27th for a memorable performance. She went back to her musical roots and inspirations on her April 2010 Razor Tie release, OYO, a collection of original songs combined with covers of classics all infused with her distinctive international sound.

The duo recently performed “Move on Up” to a worldwide audience during the FIFA World Cup Kick-Off Celebration Concert held Johannesburg, South Africa. Angelique Kidjo performed as part of a lineup that included the Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys, Vusi Mahlasela, Amadou and Mariam and others as the world celebrated the first-ever FIFA World Cup held on the continent of Africa. The concert was shown on broadcast television and streamed on Vevo.com.

To read the original article click here

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July 27th, 2010 – IMN Update:

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REVIEW Afro Celt Sound System at WOMAD

IMN

July 26th, 2010 – IMN Update:

from The Independent

Last Night: Womad, Charlton Park, Wiltshire
By David Taylor

Earlier Afro Celt Sound System tore up the Siam Tent with their cross-cultural mash up of world music – the perfect band to sum up what Womad is about. At one point a kora player, dhol drummer, talking drum maestro and bodhran player jammed over squelchy acid keyboards and a breakbeat. Awesome stuff – and amazing to witness live. On CD it’s hard to apprecciate that everything is live, not Mac trickery.

Read the entire article here

NPR Calls Dave Holland "A Jazz Bassist's Bassist"

IMN

July 26th, 2010 – IMN Update:

from NPR

Dave Holland: A Jazz Bassist’s Bassist
By Karen Michel

Jazz bassist Dave Holland is known for the lyricism of his playing, for his mentoring of younger players and for his humility as a bandleader. Holland began his career in England as a teenager and moved to the U.S. on the promise of a gig with Miles Davis. Since then, he’s stayed put on these shores, developing a solid career as a jazz bassist’s bassist and releasing a prodigious stream of albums.

. . .

By the time he was 19, Holland was playing with the house band at Ronnie Scott’s, a legendary jazz club in London, where he got to play with Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. It was there that his friend Philly Joe Jones helped Holland get his first big gig. That was the night Miles Davis walked into the club.

“As I was getting on the stand for the last set, Philly Joe came up to the bandstand, grabbed my arm and said, ‘Miles has got a message for you: He wants you to join his band,’ “ Holland says. “I said, ‘Come on, you’re kidding me,’ because Philly Joe is a bit of a prankster. ‘No, no, it’s serious.’ “

To read the full article click here

Vote For Your Favorite Jason Moran Remix!

IMN

July 24th, 2010 – IMN Update:

Indaba Music is holding a contest to see who can come up with the best remix or cover of “RFK in the Land of Apartheid” off of Jason Moran and the Bandwagon’s latest album, Ten. The entries are in, and now it’s time for you to vote for your favorite. Polls close on July 28th.

The grand prize winner will receive digital copies of Jason’s current Blue Note catalogue, a signed piece of sheet music, a copy of the book Blue Note Records: The Biography, a signed copy of the album Ten, a vintage Blue Note album tee shirt, a DVD of the new documentary RFK In the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope, a phone call from Jason, a year long platinum membership to Indaba, and will have their track streamed on Jason’s website. Runners up will also receive various prizes.

To vote click here

INTERVIEW Jairo Zavala of Depedro

IMN

July 23rd, 2010 – IMN Update:

from Gozamos

By Jose Luis Benavides

Thrilled by his native Spain’s World Cup win, Jairo Zavala apologetically jokes, “I’m the one responsible for Depedro.” After his recent show at Schubas in Chicago, Zavala talked with me about his early musical influences, his global principals and perspective, and of course, the music.

Like his world music record label, National Geographic Music, Depedro’s sound comes from his global family. Jairo’s grandfather lived in Equatorial Guinea, “a Spanish colony,” he notes. His family later emigrated to Spain, where Jairo was born. Raised by “hippy parents” in Madrid under dictatorship of the 70’s, listening to the stories and records of his families life in Africa, he spoke of his mother’s struggle to assimilate to Spanish culture, arriving from Africa “to a grey, closed country, a conservative country, in contrast to her oasis,” in the former Spanish Guinea. These early introductions to globalization and postcolonial observations inspired much of the style and intent behind Depedro. In college Jairo studied painting and started playing local bars and clubs. The music, Zavala notes in jest, “started taking a wrong turn, but it was good music anyways.

The conversation predominated in Spanish, but I interestingly noticed how after reciting the name of an English band (like Chicago-based friend, Andrew Bird and The Cat Empire who he had the fortune of playing with in Winnipeg, Canada for the Winnipeg Folk Festival) Zavala would start speaking in English, as if his brain hadn’t made the switch yet. Jairo would catch himself and switch back to Spanish. I asked why he sings songs for Depedro in English and Spanish, thinking he would speak to the bilingual nature of the diasporic Latin American communities in and outside of the Spanish speaking world. Jairo wittingly responds, “The album was recorded with a group from the U.S. (Calexico of Arizona) in order to ‘trick them’ and keep them more involved.”

Read the entire interview here

U.S. Pledges To Speed Up Visa Process For Artists

IMN

July 23rd, 2010 – IMN Update:

from The New York Times

U.S. Pledges To Speed Up Visa Process For Artists
By Ben Sisario

Addressing years of complaints about slow and inconsistent processing of visa applications for foreign performing artists, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services told arts groups this week that it was making an effort to speed up and improve its visa operations.

In a meeting on Tuesday in Washington, at the headquarters of the agency — a division of the Department of Homeland Security — officials said that standard applications for O and P visas, the types most often used by performers and athletes, would be adjudicated within 14 days. In some cases it has taken up to 120 days, arts groups say, with delays and demands for information that can seem arbitrary.

“What this means is that we are establishing for ourselves and our customers a standard by which our success and failure is to be measured,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the agency, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. (He was not at the meeting on Tuesday.) “One thing is to deliver the adjudications in rapid time because of the needs of the community, and another is to ensure that we achieve fair and just adjudications.”

Read the entire article here

Depedro To Release "Nubes de Papel" on October 26

IMN

July 23rd, 2010 – IMN Update:

Depedro will release Nubes de Papel on October 26, 2010 on NatGeo/EMI Spain

Spanish Harlem Orchestra's Oscar Hernandez Reunites with Paul Simon

IMN

July 23rd, 2010 – IMN Update:

from The New York Times

Reborn in Central Park, Concert ‘Capeman’ Sets Its Cast
By Dave Itzkoff

The Public Theater’s coming concert performances of “The Capeman” will look increasingly familiar to audiences who caught that Paul Simon-Derek Walcott musical collaboration during its original short-lived Broadway run. On Thursday the Public announced a round of casting for its concerts (scheduled for Aug. 14 through 16 at the Delacorte Theater) that includes several veterans of the Broadway production, which ran for just 68 total performances in 1998.

Newcomers to the show include Anthony Lee Medina as the young Sal Agrón (the role played by Marc Anthony on Broadway), Obie Bermúdez as Umbrella Man, Nicole Lequerica as Aurea Agrón, Abraham Rodriguez as Santero and Jorge Maldonado as Reverend González.

Natascia Diaz (who will play Esmerelda Agron) and Élan Luz Rivera (who is cast as Bernadette) are both veterans of the Broadway production, as are Luba Mason (who is reprising her role as Mrs. Krzesinski) and the ensemble members Frankie Negrón and Myrna Lynn Gomila.

Read the entire article here

LIVE REVIEW Jason Moran, inolvidable en Pamplona

IMN

July 22nd, 2010 – IMN Update:

On Jason Moran’s European tour this month, he and the Bandwagon we’re joined by special guests Chris Potter and Ralph Alessi for an unforgettable performance in Pamplona, Spain.

For some pictures of the event and to read how it went, in Spanish, click here

INTERVIEW Dianne Reeves, Forever in the Moment

IMN

July 22nd, 2010 – IMN Update:

from the Colorado Springs Independent

Forever in the moment
by Sarah White

What happens when you grow up in a family drenched in music? One possibility is that you decide you hate music. Another is that you become jazz darling Dianne Reeves.

Reeves’ unique jazz sound stems in part from a confluence of musical styles that run in her family. She remembers watching her uncle’s hands as he performed in the Denver Symphony Orchestra. She also recalls stories about her two great aunts, who had their own piano-and-vocal act back in the vaudeville days.

Even Reeves’ mother, who wasn’t graced with musical talent, influenced her lifelong yearning to be a singer.

“I would listen to these Longines Symphonettes with her, which were kind of hokey, but, you know, they were cool,” says Reeves. “I kind of grew up in an atmosphere that if you wanted to be in music you could … thank God that that existed [for me].”

After living in New York and Los Angeles, Reeves returned to Denver, where she grew up and went on to study music at the University of Colorado.

Read the entire interview here

DOWNLOAD live at the North Sea Jazz Festival

IMN

July 21st, 2010 – IMN Update:

For the last couple of years Dave Holland has been working on a project with the great Flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela. At this years North Sea Festival Dave and Pepe were able to share this project with fans. Thanks to WetSounds.com they are now able to share their hard work with those who were not able to make it to Rotterdam this year.

You can download their set for only $0.15! here

If you’d like to learn more about the project visit Dave’s website here or our very own website here

You can also see what the UK newspaper “The Guardian” thinks about their latest release 2010’s “Hands” here

Montreux Festival Confirms Appetite for Live Music

IMN

July 21st, 2010 – IMN Update:

from Reuters

Montreux Festival confirms appetite for live music
By Jason Rhodes and Stephanie Nebehay

The small-scale but often exclusive concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival, now in its 44th year, continue to be packed even as shows in massive venues are feeling the economic pain.

Listeners are still paying top-dollar for tickets to hear big names play in the festival’s intimate halls, which boast exceptional sound quality and are set in idyllic surroundings on the shores of Lake Geneva with views across to the Alps.

The 16-day Swiss event ends on Saturday with a concert by filmmaker Roman Polanski’s wife, the French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner, who opens for Katie Melua, after hosting a diverse range of artists from rock, jazz and world music.

Seigner’s appearance is likely to attract heightened media attention as the Oscar-winning Polanski has not been sighted since authorities released him from house arrest at his chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad on July 12.

Polanski, 76, was held for 10 months while Swiss authorities decided whether to extradite him to face sentencing in the United States for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

As well as major headlining acts like Phil Collins, Roxy Music, Norah Jones and Keith Jarrett, the festival’s highlights included special events that gave audiences a chance to see famous artists play together on the same stage.

On July 9, Benin’s Angelique Kidjo led one such event, an all-star tribute to her idol, Miriam Makeba, who died in late 2008. Makeba, known affectionately to fans as “Mama Africa,” spent three decades exiled from her homeland, South Africa, after becoming a prominent voice against apartheid.

“She was a mother to all besides being Miriam Makeba and she would share things with you,” Faith Kekana, a singer who worked closely with Makeba, told Reuters, adding that the South African star would often cook for musicians at her home instead of rehearsing as planned. “She was humble.”

Read the entire article here

IMN plays Malta Jazz Festival

IMN

July 21st, 2010 – IMN Update:

The Malta Jazz Festival was held this past weekend on the beautiful Mediterranean island of the same name.

The festival was gracious enough to host a number of IMN artists. Check out these pictures of Esperanza Spalding, Joshua Redman, The Bad Plus and Richard Bona.

To see tons more pictures or to find more about the festival and how it went you can visit their blog here