Tag: classical guitar

Press Release: New Album Frances Livings’ Ipanema Lounge

Posted on by Frances Livings

 

 : : FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : : MOONTRAXX, LOS ANGELES, SEP. 2016 : :

Capturing a rich atmosphere of cultural diversity, this sensual, multi-lingual world jazz album, with songs in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, guarantees to carry you along on an emotional journey.

Moontraxx Records & Music Productions proudly presents the release of Frances Livings’ new album, Ipanema Lounge. The official release party and live show will take place on Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 7pm at Genghis Cohen, Los Angeles. If you are a member of the press please contact us here to receive a free copy and a VIP spot on the guest list.

                      Whenever I meet a new song, I fall madly in love with it. I think, why haven’t I met you before?

                                                                                                ~ Frances Livings

The multi-lingual world-jazz album Ipanema Lounge, produced by the artist Frances Livings in collaboration with the composer, arranger and guitarist Greg Porée for Moontraxx Records Los Angeles, captures a rich atmosphere of cultural diversity.

As a vocalist and a songwriter, Frances Livings has always been drawn to the unique crafting of a song, to its rhythm, melody, texture, linguistics and story. Frances discovered early in her career that you don’t have to be a native of any country to become attached to its culture. Another source of inspiration were her travels, like extensive stays in Southern Europe, and from having lived and worked in the multi-ethnic melting pot Los Angeles for the last decade. Bringing to this album even more than her deep love of these cultures, she choose a foreign language repertoire. She selected songs written by artists native to countries such as France, Mexico and Peru, whose tunes with their unique phonetical sounds evoke a very classy and lush atmosphere.

The cello is considered to be one of the most expressive and satisfying instruments to listen to. Its ability to speak beautifully whether in a low or high register makes it a joy for composers to write for. Frances’ alto voice resonates in the same manner. With her richness of overtones, she brings a wide range of emotion and passion to each song, truly a gift for the listeners.

COVER_Ipanema Lounge Frances 600x600The album’s thirteen songs, in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, guarantee to carry you along on this emotional journey. With each new melody, you are immersed into a new locale, yet never fully leave the last one. They will transport you to the contemporary bars and lounges of urban metropolises, where French art house chansons, soulful American standards and groovy Brazilian music have had their undeniable impact on today’s global music and art culture.

The musical ensemble succeeds in bringing out the colours of these tunes, which range from contemporary to classical – the oldest song being from 1946. The jazz standard One Note Samba is a perfect example of the musical imagination and refreshing engagement that was brought to the production.

On Corcovado, Waters of March, Aganjú and One Note Samba, Greg Porée re-harmonized and restructured their arrangements, giving a brand new perspective to these familiar songs. Joey Heredia created an enticing drum pattern that possesses the dramatic nuances of a New Orleans march and that compliments Trey Henry’s moody bass in the intro and his syncopated patterns in the verse and bridge. These killer grooves Greg contrasted with steel string acoustics that were used to create dissonant pads for Frances’ playful vocal.

Rhythmically, Sandro Feliciano (percussion) and Isaias Elpes (electric bass), originally from Brazil, contributed very fresh cultural perspectives in developing their parts: On Jardin d’Hiver they were playful and danceable, on Aganjú and Come Closer the percussion and bass underpinnings were in a contemporary, sultry and passionate Nu Jazz style, and on Hoy they captured the flavours of Peru and Mexico. The exotic flairs of Argentina and Paris were brought to Hoy and Jardin d’Hiver by Mariano Dugatkin with his bandoneon.

On the ballads Dansez Maintenant, La Puerta and Pour te Plaire, the accompaniment for Frances’ intuitive vocal delivery required the highest level of experience, technical skill and sensitivity. The jazz veterans Jeff Colella on piano and Trey Henry again on double bass, along with Frances’ vocals, took these ballads way past the generic renditions one normally hears. Joe Ayoub played with similar musical insight on double bass on Sway and Waters of March. Darrell Diaz, a Los Angeles veteran, went way beyond the norm with his creative solos in Tell Me All About It and Waters of March, including his tasteful keyboard support on Jardin d’Hiver, Come Closer, Hoy and Sway.

For Dindi, Waters of March, Hoy and Corcovado Greg Porée created signature parts on the classical guitar that are elegantly cohesive in nature and especially impactful on Waters of March. Instrumentally, this set the stage for Frances’ and the band’s superb performance. On Dindi her beautifully crafted vocal was complimented by the linear sounds of an almost whimsical archtop guitar. For Dansez Maintenant and Pour the Plaire the atmosphere was the intimate, late night jazz club that also suited the sound of that guitar.

One of the four guest soloists was Paul Cartwright on violin who added an imaginative and atmospheric solo to the already haunting track Come Closer. John Nau did the same on electric piano for Corcovado. The studio veteran Nolan Shaheed’s trumpet ad libs on Sway take you right back to Cuba of the 1950’s, and when faced with the challenge of playing a solo over completely new chord changes for One Note Samba, Nolan rose to the occasion and took the song to new heights. On Aganjú, the interplay between Robert Kyle’s multi-layered flute and saxophone tracks and Frances Livings’ vocals brought a unique sensuality and Nu Jazz feel not previously heard on this Latin hit song.

The song sequence reflects the cycle and harmony of a day. Its moods flow through us as we awake, engage, dance, mourn and love. Some songs convey a playful attitude, like the staccato romance of possibility of Jardin d’Hiver that opens the morning. As the hours count noon, the poetic Waters of March followed by Dansez Maintenant meander us into the afternoon. Aganjú transports us into evening with its sultry tone. Come Closer, penned by Frances and the German bassist and songwriter Volker Schwanke, captures the intensity of longing and never attaining. The Portuguese ballad La Puerta exhibits a sensual flare for the dramatic and Corcovado evokes the serenity of dusk.

Sway, originally written by a Mexican composer and made famous by Dean Martin, is a flirtatious invitation for more. We transcend twilight with Pour te Plaire, an adaption of Glenn Miller’s famous jazz standard Moonlight Serenade. This French version is a perfect example of Frances Livings’ vision – how shifting language alters atmosphere, meaning and scenery. Passion flares our senses as we lay exposed, open to the magic of the night.

Each language is like a beautiful musical composition, made up of its own unique melody, rhythm and form.

                                                                                                ~ Frances Livings

PRESS CONTACT: by email Moontraxx@icloud.com by mobile phone (1) 323 719-0747

COMPANY WEBSITE: http://www.moontraxx.com

ARTIST’S WEBSITE: https://franceslivings.com

 

Frances Livings’ Ipanema Lounge ~ New Album Out Soon!

Posted on by Frances Livings

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Frances Livings’ Ipanema Lounge

I am very excited to announce that we have almost finished recording a new 12-song world jazz album called “Ipanema Lounge”. The songs range from dramatic and emotional, melancholic, to up-tempo, fun and groovy. Atmospherically, the recordings create a blend of Southern European sounding music and Latin jazz – I have not only sung in English but also in French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Co-produced with the guitarist, arranger, composer and producer Greg Porée, I feel very fortunate that we have been able to attract not only the best musicians in Los Angeles but also a great diversity. Please look at a list of the credits down below. We are hoping to have the album mixed and completed as a physical CD by the end of May 2015. I will be presenting the demo album at the internationally attended Jazzahead conference in Bremen, Germany this April 2015 to gain some support with booking, management and promotion.

Ipanema Lounge has grown as a project in an interesting way over the last few months. The project evolved from being a tribute to Antônio Carlos Jobim to becoming a repertoire of very unique and interesting, international songs. Originally, Greg Porée and I were seeking for some music that would allow us to perform together. Greg’s music is instrumental and guitar-oriented and mine is more piano based and rarely features the guitar. So I started searching for songs that would not only feature both the voice and the classical guitar but also represent some kind of special theme.

Suddenly I found myself emerged in a lot of music in foreign languages. For reasons I cannot explain, I felt very connected to songs in these romance languages, to their different sounds and colourings. This suddenly – being the word and language lover I am – became another new and exciting avenue to explore. One of the best compliments I recently received after one of our shows was someone saying that she had felt transported to all these different countries, as if she had just been on holiday.

Some of these songs were new discoveries but others I have been cherishing now for quite a long time. Like “La Puerta”, one of my all time favourite ballads. It was originally written by the Mexican songwriter Luis Demetrio (1931-2007) and made popular in Europe by the Dutch singer Laura Fygi. I later discovered that Demetrio co-wrote another favourite song of mine, “Sway” with the bandleader Pablo Beltran Ruiz (1915-2008) which is also on the album, half in English and half in Spanish. The English lyrics are by Norman Gimbel who became famous through his English lyrics of “The Girl From Ipanema”, an Antônio Carlos Jobim song I also sometimes sing live.

Greg Porée, who has worked for countless international artists, was also the lead guitarist in the orchestra of the BBC hit show Dancing with the Stars for eight years. The repertoire ranged from rap to classical. Greg’s spectrum of musicality therefore stems from so many areas. Live and on these recordings he delivers not only the harmonious tones of the classical guitar but also the inventive arrangements and creative grooves that make the recordings so unique. Our recording of the famous Jobim song, Waters of March stands in a way for Greg’s inventiveness. By creating a harp-like arpeggiated guitar figure, the notion of a flowing river was created.

I am a jazz vocalist with a background in pop, electronica and nujazz. It was therefore natural for both Greg and me to applied a creative fusion-approach with soul and pop influences to the songs. The infectious grooves on the fun and up-tempo songs, like Sway and Aganjú, are typical for Latin jazz and is very much coined by our drummer and percussionist. This world-jazz approach has already garnered us in Los Angeles a loyal audience of both jazz enthusiasts and those who have never considered themselves jazz fans.

Credits:

Frances Livings – vocals

Greg Porée – guitar

Jeff Colella – piano & keyboards

Darrell Diaz – keyboards

Trey Henry – upright bass

Isaias Elpes – electric bass

Joe Ayoub – upright bass

Joey Heredia – drums & percussion

Sandro Feliciano – percussion

Nolan Shaheed – trumpet

Mariano Dugatkin – bandoneon

Recorded at Nolan Shaheed’s in Pasadena, produced by Frances Livings & Greg Porée 2015

The Ipanema Lounge project gives you the sweet sounds of Brazilian music that are sure to please. ~ Paul Anderson, KJAZZ 91.5 

songwriting when love falls apart melancholy female jazz songwriters mp3

When Love Falls Apart ~ The Beauty of Melancholy

Posted on by Frances Livings

Songwriting about something painful can be cathartic but it also means revisiting pain. After the initial spark for the song When Love Falls Apart, it felt odd, even paradoxical, to want to write something beautiful about something so sad. Which is, however, ultimately, what melancholy is all about and that was the core emotion I wanted to express. After all, When Love Falls apart is about a break-up, which was very difficult and painful at the time. To this date, the song is still very emotional for me to sing. It can be like being transported back in time. So writing the song became quite a process.

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.  ― Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

How Co-writing Can Be A Way To Unburden Pain

I had almost completed the lyrics. I had a hook and was pleased with my melody for the chorus. But the verses were still incomplete. I was obviously procrastinating, trying to avoid getting in too deep. That’s exactly why I needed some support, some structure to build on. I needed to unburden myself from some of the pain. So I asked the classical guitarist and jazz composer Greg Porée for help.

Greg came up with some lovely additional chords. So using them as a base to lean upon, I wrote the rest of the melody. Rather, it then just wrote itself. Suddenly, the song was finished. Ironically, however, the song marked both an end and a beginning: “When Love Falls Apart” was the very first song Greg and I wrote together.

The next step was therefore to notate everything in a chart. Here’s a copy of the original:

songwriting when love falls apart melancholy female jazz songwriters mp3

The Magic of Handwritten Charts

Handwritten charts are per se something very personal and are frequently of sentimental value for songwriters. I always keep an original, handwritten manuscript of all of my songs, whether it’s one by a co-writer or one of my own. It’s like keeping a baby picture of your child although it’s already grown up. For me, a song has “grown up” when it has been professionally recorded. Once the song is on Spotify or iTunes that kid has basically moved out and has started a life of its own.

 

Collections of Music Scores and Charts

If you’re interested in music notation, I found a lovely visual collection of other composers’ music scores. The Morgan Library & Museum in New York houses one of the finest collections of music manuscripts in the United States. In addition to a large collection of musicians’ letters and first editions of scores and librettos, its collection of manuscripts (by classical composers like Mahler, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Schubert, and Richard Strauss) spans six centuries and many countries.

There are many other archives and libraries with collections of original scores worldwide but also some that have been scanned digitally and are available online.

Hand-writing music has been a tradition in jazz for many, many years. With Finale, a powerful and involved music notation software, a handwritten look using special fonts can even be emulated! Have a look at this article, which explains the principle.

 

Recording When Love Falls Apart

But I digressed slightly. The next step was to record the track as a demo, with voice and guitar. That’s where I kind of left it. It wasn’t until playing an unplugged show at the famous singer-songwriter venue Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles, that I felt I needed to also release it. Maybe because that evening, accompanying me on classical guitar, was my co-writer. We performed the ballad for the first time live.

The way the song came to life and people connected to it, motivated me to record it as a single to just “get it out there”. Although I was already working on songs for my solo album it just felt right to release that version as a single – just with voice and classical guitar.songwriting when love falls apart melancholy female jazz songwriters mp3

After recording it in the studio, I started designing the cover. I felt very much inspired by a very tender and touching quote by Virginia Woolf.

“The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.” – Virginia Woolf

Melancholy is one theme that runs rampant through her writing. Her image of a singing bird amidst a moonscape depicts this pensive emotion so well. It is interwoven with both sorrow and joy, profoundness and beauty – which is exactly what I had attempted to create in the song.

My ballad “When Love Falls Apart” grew out of exactly these feelings of deep sadness, which via beauty, gave way to melancholy.

I am my heart’s undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow.”
— Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)

Purchase an mp3 of When Love Falls Apart here:

Listen to the Song in this Playlist on Spotify:

Donating = Loving

You can purchase my music and spoken word – which I hope you will. If you find joy and inspiration in my words, would you like to provide additional support? Please be lovely and consider a donation of your choosing – from anywhere between a coffee and a nice dinner. I will deeply appreciate it.

 

Or, why not