Brooklyn-based
Red Piano Records is proud to announce the release of STREAMING from
pianist/composer Ran Blake and vocalist Christine Correa. This recording is the latest yield from Blake
and Correa's remarkable friendship and superlative musical collaboration that
has thrived for over three decades.
Blake and
Correa are a united force in presenting this material. There exists between
these two singular and incomparable artists an uncanny, inventive rapport, an
aura of inevitability that emboldens and challenges their audiences' sonic
imaginations. Together they capture an intensity in their interpretation of
"No More", "Don't Explain" and "Lonely Woman",
lightness and frivolity in "Bebopper" and "Ah El Novio",
and introspection as in the three solo piano versions of George Russell's
"Stratusphunk", and the vocal solo on "Wende".
According to
Larry Livingston from the Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, Blake,
"is in a category all his own. He plays from the inside out, owes no
absolute allegiance to a particular style or approach, and makes an art of
restraint." Mumbai-born and New York based Correa sings with her own
singular style and timbre. Her voice has been described as, "controlled,
confident, and jazz inflected...".
The creative
imprints of their long-enduring and endlessly fascinating musical journey are
nowhere more evident than in their two remarkable tribute CD's celebrating the
contributions to the jazz canon of the late Abbey Lincoln, and on their current
recording, "Streaming".
The material
on "Streaming" draws from diverse sources including selections from
the American Songbook, classic jazz compositions, traditional Sephardic folk
pieces, Brazilian songs and original compositions. What they have in common is
that they all are part of the Third Stream repertoire and included in Blake's
groundbreaking concept of a system of artistic development. For the past 50
years he has been sharing his ideas with young musicians at New England
Conservatory and beyond. This wide-ranging repertoire has become a de facto
lingua franca with these songs serving as portals for musical communication,
interaction and self-discovery. The term streaming refers to a process; a way
of finding one's own artistic path.
In his book,
"Primacy of the Ear", Blake states, "the type of introspection
we are concerned with encourages you to examine things that are already a part
of you - the style that is already your own, your feeling of heritage or
nationality, a passion for a certain historical time period or geographical
region, an intellectual bent and/or an emotional need to express. It could be
your sense of fashion, or a deep commitment to a social/political movement. It
can be as specific as one color you like to wear, and as broad as your sense of
reality or view of life. What the critic within each of us tells us about our
playing and composition is important. It is a start. But if we are to break
through to the inner fires of creation, it will be the ear that will lead us to
greater heat and finer focus."
More on Ran
Blake and Christine Correa:
In a career
that now spans five decades, pianist Ran Blake has created a unique niche in
improvised music as an artist and educator. With a characteristic mix of
spontaneous solos, modern classical tonalities, the great American blues and
gospel traditions and themes from classic Film Noir, Blake's singular sound has
earned him a dedicated following around the world. In the tradition of two of
his idols, Ellington and Monk, Blake has incorporated and synthesized several
otherwise divergent styles and influences into a single innovative and cohesive
style of his own, ranking him among the geniuses of the genre. Ran Blake is a
recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" grant. He was the founder and
long-time chairperson of the Third Stream Department (currently called
Contemporary Improvisation Department) at the New England Conservatory in
Boston, MA.
Christine
Correa, originally from Bombay, India, has been involved in a variety of
improvisational contexts and is currently on the faculty of The Louis Armstrong
Jazz Performance Program at Columbia University in New York City. She has been widely recognized as a leading
interpreter of the works of a range of modern American and European poets as
set to music by some of today's most innovative jazz composers, such as Frank
Carlberg, Nicholas Urie, Sam Sadigursky and Steve Grover, among others. Correa
has also recorded and/or performed with artists such as Steve Lacy and John
LaPorta and appeared at numerous festivals, concert halls and clubs in the US,
Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America and India. Correa is a long-time resident of Brooklyn,
NY.
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