by PATRICK JARENWATTANANON
February 09, 2014 6:00 AM
This past week, the bassist and vocalist Mimi Jones released three albums at once. They weren't all her music, but they were her work: As the founder and producer of the record label Hot Tone Music, she brought all three albums to fruition.
Jones has been on the New York City scene for nearly two decades; Balance is her second album as a bandleader. Her labelmates, however, are newer to the area. Drummer Shirazette Tinnin recently moved east after years in Chicago; her new album is called Humility: Purity of My Soul. Born in 1986, saxophonist and vocalist Camille Thurman is a native of the city, but only decided to pursue music full-time after earning a college degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences; her new album is called Origins. Both Tinnin and Thurman are putting out their debut recordings.
Hot Tone Music is not a collective — each artist brought her own individual concepts and performing career to the table. But having pulled together Kickstarter campaigns and cutting package deals with publicists, recording engineers, photographers and graphic artists, Hot Tone Music is a collectively operated enterprise. "In a sense, this release is sort of a celebration that if you can come together as a community, you can get it done, and everybody wins," Mimi Jones told me over the phone.
Pictured together, the three bandleaders also cut a striking profile: All three are black female instrumentalists, curiously among the least visible intersections of today's jazz community. Wondering if this was a conscious decision — and about the modernity heard on all three records — I gave Jones a call to talk about her fledgling label and her music. We discussed the origins of Hot Tone, her first big break and the lingering issues around "Women in Jazz."
Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2014/02/09/273154247/when-the-bus-for-the-record-label-comes-by-behind-hot-tone-music?ft=1&f=1039
0 Comments:
Post a Comment