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Jazz Articles about Berta Moreno
About Berta Moreno
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
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by Giulia Bianchi
Simona Smirnova is a Lithuanian-born and New York-based vocalist, composer, and classically trained kanklės (a Lithuanian chordophone folk instrument belonging to the Baltic zither family) virtuoso. After obtaining her BA in jazz vocal performance from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, she moved to the USA to study contemporary writing and production at Berklee College of Music. There is an aura of mystique to Smirnova's Bird Language, a stunning blend of Baltic folklore, jazz, pop, and rock, ...
read moreBerta Moreno Afro-Jazz Soul Project: Tumaini
by Troy Dostert
Tenor saxophonist Berta Moreno released her promising debut, Little Steps, in 2017. It signaled her debt to forbears such as Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson, and displayed an impressive command of bop language. Tumaini, her engaging follow-up, moves in a rather different direction. Time well-spent in Kenya gave Moreno a wider focus for her compositions, as she adroitly melds jazz, R&B and Afro-Latin idioms into an enjoyable musical synthesis. Tumaini" is a Swahili word for hope," and there ...
read moreBerta Moreno: Little Steps
by Troy Dostert
When first seeing the title of Berta Moreno's debut record, one might be tempted to interpret it as a self-effacing gesture. Perhaps the tenor saxophonist is acknowledging her debt to the giant steps of the master of the tenor, John Coltrane himself? Upon further investigation, however, Moreno makes clear in her notes to the album that the piece after which the record is named is really just a reference to the chromaticism behind the song's harmonic and melodic structure (as ...
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