Motéma Music's tenth anniversary year is in full swing, and as the summer heats up, the Harlem-based label has much cause for celebration. The month of July kicked off with vibraphonist Joe Locke's May release Lay Down My Heart, spending two weeks in the #1 slot on the Jazz Week chart. For the week of July 1, Motéma held the distinction of having the most albums of any label on Jazz Week's chart, with six of the top 50 albums receiving the most airplay on jazz radio around the US. Locke's Lay Down My Heart led the pack, joined by five additional Motéma releases, an assembly of music that's fully representative of the label's eclectic roster: Grammy®-nominee Eldar Djangirov's Breakthrough, the David Murray Infinity Quartet's Be My Monster Love (featuring Macy Gray & Gregory Porter), Living Color drummer Will Calhoun's Life in this World, pianist Marc Cary's tribute to Abbey Lincoln, For the Love of Abbey, and veteran saxophonist Bob Mover's My Heart Tells Me.
The airwaves are not the only arena where Motéma is shining brightly this summer. The cover of DownBeat's September issue features Gregory Porter, whose now skyrocketing career initially took off in 2010 with the release of his debut recording, Water, on Motéma in 2010. Water's Grammy® nomination for best vocal jazz CD kicked off a steady career rise that included multiple top ten international chartings and another Grammy® nomination for his 2012 Motéma Release, Be Good, which continues on its course as one of the top selling jazz albums of the year. Porter, now named DownBeat's Rising Star Jazz Artist and Rising Star Male Vocalist of 2013, also was voted Jazz Vocal Artist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Porter is but one of many label artists earning kudos from tastemaker outlets around the world this summer, including DownBeat's distinguished poll of 165 critics. Included among the DownBeat Poll finalists this year were The Cookers, whose Motéma release, Believe, was among the top ranked in the Jazz Albums and Rising Star Groups of the year. The Cookers' founder/arranger David Weiss was named among the Rising Star Arrangers while label artists Marc Cary, Geri Allen, Joe Locke, Pedrito Martinez, David Murray, Rene Marie, Roni Ben-Hur, and Tessa Souter all were recognized for excellence on their respective instruments. It's no wonder, then, that Motéma itself was also recognized as a top ten label by the DownBeat critics.
Read more: http://news.allaboutjazz.com/news.php?id=105472#.Ufi94BbhEhQ
0 Comments:
Post a Comment