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| Venissa Santi to Celebrate Release of New Album, “Big Stuff” Vocalist Venissa Santi is set to perform at Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia on Saturday, September 14 at 8:00pm. The album release performance will support Santi's new project, Big Stuff: Afro-Cuban Holiday, which pays homage to Billy Holiday. The performance will feature trumpeters Chris Aschman and Tim Thompson, pianist John Stenger, bassist Jason Fraticelli and percussionists Francois Zayas and Cuco Castellanos. Just what is so special about the vocalastics of Santi - just what is so singularly unique – is so eminently clear on Big Stuff: Afro-Cuban Holiday (September 10 on Sunnyside Records), the brilliantly innovative follow-up to her 2009 label debut, Bienvenida. If at first blush this record appears to be a mere tribute to the great Billie Holiday, it is clear that first impressions can be somewhat deceptive. True, this is Santi's homage to the legendary singer. However the music on this record comes from the very depth of her soul that this is so much more than a tribute: it is more like an anguished cry, rich in the metaphor of Afro-Cuban-Blues, cry of sisterhood that is lifted up in elevation to the celebrated ghost of Ms. Holiday. Just as she was on her first album, Santi has once again channeled her ideas through percussion-colourist and long-time band mate François Zayas, who is responsible for the majestic arrangements of 12 songs with which Santi, in turn, re-imagines the heartfelt repertoire of Billie Holiday in an idiom that melds the heartbeat of bata and offbeat of clave with African-American deep song. Also joining the vocalist on this musical odyssey are trumpet and flugelhorn players Tim Thompson and Chris Aschman, the late guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, pianist John Stenger and bassist Jason Fraticelli. Special appearances are also made by bassists Paul Klinefelter and Madison Rast, clarinetist Jon Thompson and percussionist Cuco Castellanos. The origins of this music are vividly recalled by Santi, who remembers how Danilo Pérez invited her to share the stage in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center with such luminaries as Kurt Elling, Sheila Jordan, Lizz Wright and Claudia Acuña among others on a gig that was designed to present a series of homages to Billie Holiday in May of 2010. For Santi to be included in a playbill that comprised of such stellar artists was both a privilege as well as a chance to do something truly special. She and Zayas, went to work on selecting an appropriate Billie Holiday repertoire; then transferring it to the landscape of danzón, guaguancó and bolero. All this happened about a year from May 2010. Next came learning the challenging arrangements that Zayas came up with, swirling from out of the fiery cauldron of Afro-Cuban music. This took the musicians close to six months to master; a memorable effort that, together with the fact that this homage was written in Afro-Cuban idioms, made the project so distinctive. The memory of a show that played in Billie Holiday's birthplace, and was later broadcast on WRTI radio on Mother's Day a couple of weeks later, lingered long and hard with Santi and Zayas. They concluded this was music worthy of a longer life vis-a-vis a record that would preserve both the beauty and authenticity of this Afro-Cuban odyssey into the heart and soul of Billie Holiday. A musician of rare and unbridled genius, Venissa Santi was born to parents who filled her life equally with the music of Celia Cruz, Maurice Ravel and Michael Jackson, and numerous other musicians. Her musical heritage goes further back: to a grandfather, Jacobo Ros Capablanca, a Cuban composer. She honored his memory by playing one of his songs on Bienvenida. Santi was born in Ithaca, New York, but moved to Philadelphia after she graduated high school. There, through the study of her grandfather's compositions, she re-connected with her Cuban roots and majored in Jazz Vocal Performance at the University of the Arts. She was a vocal instructor at the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos. In 2008, Santi won the Pew Fellowship for Folk and Traditional Arts. In 2009 she was signed to Sunnyside Records. She went to Cuba specifically to study Afro-Cuban song, dance and percussion as well as to prepare for this project. Reflecting on the past three years, Santi reflects, "It's sort of intense to think how close I've been to this repertoire and Billie's story. It's been an extremely existential experience." write your comments about the article :: © 2013 Jazz News :: home page |