Becoming Human (Sony Music Latin)
Roxana Amed
Released May 2, 2024
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2024
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About:
Latin GRAMMY® nominee, NARAS® and LARAS® member, Gardel Award winner Roxana Amed is an Argentine-American jazz artist born in Buenos Aires based in the US. Amed is a singular singer-songwriter whose music blends South American folk traditions with art rock and modern jazz. An award-winning vocalist, producer, songwriter and educator, Sony Music recording artist, Amed has been praised by GRAMMY.com for her “artistic vision and understanding of her place in the canon”.
Amed is considered by colleagues, audiences, and critics as one of the most important voices in South American music.
Amed has earned acclaim for her albums with fellow Argentine multi-instrumentalist and former Pat Metheny band member Pedro Aznar, including 2004’s Limbo and 2006’s Entremundos. More albums followed, in 2010’s Cinemateca Finlandesa a duo album with pianist Adrián Iaies (Latin GRAMMY® nominee), Inocencia in 2011, followed by 2013’s La Sombra de Su Sombra with pianist and composer Frank Carlberg featuring the poems of Alejandra Pizarnik. In 2019, she produced Instantáneas an album with live-in-studio performances, including her rendition of Joni Mitchell’s Blue.
In April 2021, she released Ontology which featured her American group with pianist Martin Bejerano, Mark small, Edward Perez, and Ludwig Afonso and found her interpreting songs by Wayne Shorter, Alberto Ginastera, Miles Davis, and original repertoire. It had a significant impact on the international jazz media scene collecting excellent reviews.
In August 2021, she was awarded the “New Jazz Works” grant supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through Chamber Music America. On September 28th, 2021, her album
Ontology received two Latin GRAMMY® Awards nominations for Best Latin Jazz/Jazz Album and Best Arrangement categories. A few months later, this album would won the Gardel Award for Best Jazz Album in 2022 in Argentina, first time in 19 years that a vocalist, female producer receives this award.
On September 16th, 2022, she released Unánime an album dedicated to Latin Jazz with brilliant collaborations by Chucho Valdés, Pedro Aznar, Niño Josele, Chico Pinheiro, among others. It has collected so far fantastic reviews from international jazz media and also received a new Latin Grammy Nomination for Best Latin Jazz/Jazz Album, awards celebrated in Seville, Spain in Novembre 2023, where she also received attention by different international media and was invited to give away awards.
Last June 9th she released Los Trabajos y Las Noches with composer pianist Frank Carlberg, second part of a project based on music written for poems by Argentine Alejandra Pizarnik. It was successfully presented in Joe’s Pub NY last August. This album collected great reviews worldwide and Downbeat gave it 4 stars. Amed worked on a special project for the CMA grant, that resulted in Becoming human her eleventh album. It is a 10-song cycle that illustrates the human journey and her own experience as an artist.
Track Listing:
1. A Prayer (Roxana Amed) 02:54
2. Pequeña Voz (Roxana Amed) 01:39
3. Un Destello (Roxana Amed / Mark Small) 01:22
4. Our Days of Summer (Roxana Amed) 03:52
5. Those Horses Running in the Mist (Roxana Amed) 04:28
6. Climbing Up My Spine (Roxana Amed) 03:33
7. Wild (Roxana Amed / Martin Bejerano) 04:22
8. Then We Built a Home (Roxana Amed) 06:15
9. In this Lonely Room (Roxana Amed) 04:09
10. Una Plegaria (Roxana Amed) 02:50
11. Epílogo (Roxana Amed / Mark Small) 01:38
Personnel:
Roxana Amed: vocals
Martin Bejerano: piano, synthesizers (5, 7) and arrangements (6, 7)
Mark Small: tenor saxophone (1, 4, 5, 8, 11), soprano saxophone (3, 7) flute (6), clarinet (2, 4, 10), bass clarinet (4, 9, and arrangements (3-5, 11)
Kendall Moore: trombone (1, 4, 9), and arrangements (1, 9, 11)
Edward Pérez: double bass
Ludwig Afonso: drums
Recorded October 2023, at Criteria / The Hit Factory Studios
Produced by Roxana Amed.
Engineering and Mixing: Carlos Alvarez
Mastering: Paul Blakemore
Photos: Omar Cruz
Artwork: Pablo Vallone / Daniel Arano
Review:
Argentine vocalist Roxana Amed envelopes you in a warm, poetic atmosphere on her 11th album, 2024’s Becoming Human. On past albums, the Miami-based Amed has explored her distinctive blend of post-bop with South American musical traditions. Along with jazz, she has also studied Spanish Literature and film and brings a broad-minded set of influences and creativity to bear on her music. Here, she crafts sculptural songs loosely conceptualized around the theme of an artist’s life from birth to death. Helping her achieve this heady vibe is her longtime collaborative ensemble featuring keyboardist Martin Bejerano, saxophonist Mark Small, trombonist Kendall Moore, bassist Edward Pérez, and drummer Ludwig Afonso. This is the same group Amed featured on both 2020’s Ontology and 2021’s Unanime, and very much feels like a continuation of the sound of those recordings. Blessed with a warm, dusky voice and knack for composing lyrics that feel like sung poems, Amed is the central focus of the music here. That said, she often blends into the ensemble like a lead instrument, even singing in wordless vocalese as on “Destello,” where she duets with saxophonist Small on the dewy melody. Elsewhere, she explores a variety of jazz sounds, leaping into the driving modal hard bop style of John Coltrane on “Then We Built a Home” and embracing a more contemporary blend of synthy fusion and EDM-esque rhythmic grooves on “Those Horses Running in the Mist.” The rest of the album follows suit as Amed splits the difference between the precise tone poetry of Norma Winstone and the earthy jazz lyricism of Abbey Lincoln. The evocative combination is particularly evident on cuts like “Climbing Up My Spine” and “Our Days of Summer,” angular, noir-ish ballads that, as with much of Becoming Human, balance the cerebral atmosphere of a black box theater performance with a jazzy, night club sensuality.
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
