
Beautiful Life (Mack Avenue)
Jimmy Greene
Released November 2014
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2016
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2014
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nrvlQmdhbTOp3nBx4Lbk86NYfW23zN8jU
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7IkPlzdTCEmWXDua73Ugjp?si=zmIKD86TTsC2QYVMV1zSYw
About:
Jimmy Greene’s new release, Beautiful Life on Mack Avenue Records, is a celebration of the life of his 6-year-old daughter, Ana Márquez-Greene, whose life was tragically taken, along with 19 other children and 6 educators, on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“I want the music to reflect the way that Ana lived,” Greene says. He fulfills that mandate with an intense, cohesive, genre-spanning program–juxtaposing the hardcore instrumental jazz for which he is best known with traditional spirituals, contemporary Christian music, standard ballads and three original songs framing his own lyrics. Animating the repertoire is a gold-standard rhythm section (Renee Rosnes, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Lewis Nash, drums), augmented at various points by guitarists Pat Metheny and Jonathan DuBose, Jr.; pianists Kenny Barron and Cyrus Chestnut; vocalists Kurt Elling, Javier Colon and Latanya Farrell; spoken word from Tony Award®-winning actress Anika Noni Rose; a 13-piece string ensemble from the Hartford Symphony Orchestra; as well as an accomplished children’s choir.
Track Listing:
1. Saludos/Come Thou Almighty King (Felice Giardini / Charles Wesley) 5:12
2. Last Summer (Jimmy Greene) 6:37
3. When I Come Home (Jimmy Greene) 3:21
4. Ana’s Way (Jimmy Greene) featuring: Linden Christian School Early Years Choir 7:13
5. Your Great Name (Michael Neale / Krissy Nordhoff) 5:20
6. Where Is Love? (Lionel Bart) 4:34
7. Seventh Candle (Jimmy Greene) 6:15
8. Maybe (Martin Charnin / Charles Strouse) 3:05
9. Prayer (Jimmy Greene) 4:02
10. Little Voices (Jimmy Greene) featuring: Linden Christian School Early Years Choir 3:23
Personnel:
Jimmy Greene: tenor saxophone (1-4, 6, 9, 10), soprano saxophone (5, 7, 8, 10), flute (10)
Kenny Barron: piano (6, 8)
Cyrus Chestnut: piano (9)
Javier Colon: vocals (3)
Jonathan DuBose, Jr.: guitar (10)
Kurt Elling: vocals (4)
Latanya Farrell: vocals (9)
Linden Christian School Early Years Choir, Brenda Johnson: director (4,10)
Ana Márquez-Greene: vocals (1)
Isaiah Márquez-Greene: piano (1)
Christian McBride: bass (2-5, 7, 9, 10)
Pat Metheny: acoustic guitar (1)
Musicians of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra: violins, violas, cellos (3, 9)
Lewis Nash: drums (2-5, 7, 9, 10)
Anika Noni Rose: spoken word (10)
Renee Rosnes: piano (2-5, 7, 10)
Recorded at Engine Room Audio, New York, NY; Systems Two, Brooklyn, NY; Linden Christian School, Winnipeg, CA; The Hartt School, West Hartford, CT
Review:
Phoenix-born
jazz drummer Lewis Nash was the drummer on tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene’s newly released tribute
album, A Beautiful Life (Mack
Avenue Records, 2014). The CD is a remembrance celebration of Greene’s
6-year-old daughter, Ana Márquez-Greene, who was among the 20 children and six
educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, on December
14, 2012.
The rhythm section has Nash on drums, Renee Rosnes on piano
and Christian McBride on bass. Guest musicians are guitarists Pat Metheny and
Jonathan DuBose Jr.; pianists Kenny Barron and Cyrus
Chestnut; vocalists Kurt Elling, Javier Colon and Latanya Farrell; spoken word
from Tony-winning actress Anika Noni Rose; a 13-piece string ensemble from the
Hartford Symphony Orchestra; as well as an accomplished children’s choir.
Greene composed or arranged each selection, and plays tenor and soprano
saxophones and flute.
The Nash-Greene music relationship dates back to
the late 1990s in the Lewis Nash Ensemble, with Greene on saxophone, Steve Nelson on
vibraphone, David Finck on bass and Steven
Kroon on percussion. The group had a two-year stint in the
Jazz at Lincoln Center Program that included performances in the New York
public school system.
Greene’s
album combines jazz with spirituals, contemporary Christian music and ballads,
plus three original songs. The music was premiered in December at the Jazz
Standard in New York City and also in Danbury, CT
At the album’s release, Greene said, “Music
has a unique way of communicating and healing. I’m so thankful that music is my
profession, that I am able to write and arrange to create settings that convey
the emotions I experience, not the least of which is the pain that my family
and I have endured at a time when words fail.”
Greene added, “In the days after my
daughter was killed, playing and writing music wasn’t even a thought. I was
very much in shock, grieving deeply and trying to just function coherently.
Family and friends surrounded us and held us up, and we received 10,000
communications from people around the world—emails, texts, Facebook messages,
voice calls, letters. The community of musicians was front and center for that
support. When I called, they responded, ‘Whatever you need, just say the word,
and I’ll be there.’ ” In late January 2013, Greene returned to his former
regimen of practice and composing.
Soon after, Norman Chesky, co-owner of Chesky
Records and HDtracks, contacted the musician with an offer to donate the
production of any recording, and to give him complete ownership. Greene decided
to weave lyrics and singers into the music for the first time on one of his
recordings. He said, “Ana loved to sing and listen to singers, and had a
wonderful singing voice,” Greene said. “So, an album dedicated to her
memory needed to have singers and songs that were important to her, and to me
and my family.
“Many people have asked what they can do to
help, and this is my answer: Let’s remember what happened at Sandy Hook. We can
each hold up our end of the bargain, which is to somehow learn to love
ourselves, and then see past ourselves and love our neighbor. That’s pretty
simple, but if we all did it, I think our existence would be
different.”
The album opens with a recording of Ana singing
the traditional “Saludos” (“Greetings”) at a Christmas
celebration with the family of her mother Nelba Márquez-Greene in Puerto Rico,
recorded a year before her death, with her father playing in the background.
The next chart is Greene and Metheny performing “Come Thou Almighty
King,” followed by a family recording of Ana singing that hymn to her
brother Isaiah’s piano accompaniment.
“Last Summer” is a quartet track that
relates to the photograph of Greene’s children that appears on the album cover,
showing them from behind with their arms around each other’s shoulders. It was
taken in Winnipeg, Canada, where Greene taught at the University of Manitoba
from 2009-2012.
The next selection features the voice of Javier
Colon, Greene’s former classmate at Hartt School of Music, who won the 2011
edition of NBC’s “The Voice,” delivering Greene’s lyric for
“When I Come Home” accompanied by the quartet and string
ensemble.
Greene, 39, originally recorded “Ana’s
Way” instrumentally as “Ana Grace” on the 2009 recording Mission
Statement. Elling’s interpretation is backed by Greene and Rosnes, plus the
Linden Christian School Early Years Choir of classmates of Ana and Isaiah in
Winnipeg.
Pianist Barron joined Greene for renditions of
two Broadway-show songs, “Where Is Love?” from Oliver and
“Maybe” from Annie,
with Greene playing soprano saxophone. Greene said, “My daughter loved
‘Annie,’ and would sing ‘Maybe’ a cappella with great pitch and rhythm in the
back of the car when we were driving around.” Greene also included
“Where Is Love” in honor of Jackie
McLean, his musical mentor who played
that melody for a 15-year-old Greene during their first meeting at Hartford’s
Artists Collective.
Other album tracks include “Prayer”
that is Greene’s arrangement of the text of the “Lord’s Prayer,” with
Chestnut accompanying Greene’s tenor sax, also contralto Farrell (also from
Hartt), whose voice appealed to Ana as a toddler, her father said. Ana also was
a fan of Rose (a high school classmate of Greene’s in Bloomfield, CT), after
hearing her perform “Little Voices” in the role of Princess Tiana in
the animated film The
Princess and the Frog, backed by the Linden Children’s Choir.
“I wanted the music to reflect the way that
Ana lived,” Greene said.
A portion of the proceeds from CD sales will be
donated to two charities in honor of Ana. One is the Ana Grace Project of
Klingberg Family Centers, designated by Greene’s wife, a marriage and family
therapist, to promote love, community and connection for every child and family
through partnerships with schools, mental health providers, community
organizations and faith leaders. The other is the Artists Collective, where
families in the Greater Hartford area have access to training in the arts.
Patricia Myers (All About Jazz)