Jody Redhage Ferber

Jody Redhage Ferber, passionate advocate of creative new music and chamber music, is a "a new music dynamo...Redhage is cultivating a growing repertoire of indie art song that breaches genre boundaries and makes for stirring listening" (MusicWorks magazine). Praised for her “exceptional technical command,” (Steve Smith, Night After Night), Redhage Ferber has premiered over 100 works, including almost 30 that she has commissioned for her voice, cello, and electronics from some of today's most talented composers. An active composer herself, she writes mainly for chamber jazz ensemble Rose & the Nightingale, and co-arranges and performs new repertoire for the unique instrumentation of cello/voice, trombone, & drums/percussion with her husband, Grammy-nominated trombonist and composer Alan Ferber, and his twin, drummer Mark Ferber. As a multi-style cellist, Redhage Ferber is a busy recording session player and a mainstay performer on several groundbreaking scenes, contributing to the ever-increasing 21st century blur of musical boundary lines.

AS A MULTISTYLE CELLIST

Although classically-trained, with studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, University of California Berkeley, and the Manhattan School of Music, Redhage Ferber began playing nonclassical styles as a teenager. When she settled in New York City in 2003, her adventurous and open nature led to musical exploration across a spectrum of styles, and Redhage Ferber quickly garnered attention as an "Adventurous cello songstress (Time Out NY)," commissioning new solo works for her voice, cello, and electronics, and is hired as a double-threat cellist & backing vocalist for pop and jazz artists. Redhage Ferber has performed on five continents in venues including Carnegie Hall (Stern and Weill Halls), Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, Merkin Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music opera house, the Whitney Museum of Art, Mass MoCA, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits. The Ferber Duo recently premiered their own chamber jazz-inflected arrangement of the C Major Bach Suite at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in March 2020. From 2010 to 2015, Redhage Ferber toured with Best New Artist Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding's Chamber Music Society, performing worldwide at the Montreal, North Sea, Montreux, Cape Town South Africa, San Francisco, and Portland Jazz Festivals, and in the Barbican and Queen Elizabeth Halls in London, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Symphony Hall in Chicago, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, a week-long residency at Tokyo's Blue Note Jazz Club, a week at the Village Vanguard, on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert Series, and for Holland and France's NPR stations. She has performed and recorded with jazz luminaries Fred Hersch, Ron Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Andy Milne, and the New York Voices, with new music luminaries George Crumb, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Lois V. Vierk, and Julia Wolfe, and with pop icons Neil Diamond, Sufjan Stevens, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Meatloaf, the Roots, Clay Aiken, Enya, Duncan Sheik, Guster, Hem, My Brightest Diamond, Fall Out Boy, Chromeo, and Sara Bareilles, among others. Jody has appeared on TV playing on ABC's The View, the CBS Early Show, NBC's The Today Show, the Rockefeller Christmas Spectacular, Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The David Letterman Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and BET's Mo'NiqueShow. She has recorded for Sesame Street, and on many albums, commercials, and films, and can be heard on the soundtrack of HBO documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.

AS A COMPOSER

Jody composes for & leads chamber jazz ensemble Rose & the Nightingale, a quartet of improvising multi-instrumentalists. The ensemble includes Grammy-nominated violinist Sara Caswell, Juno Award-winning pianist and singer Laila Biali, vocalist and trumpeter Leala Cyr, and cellist & vocalist Redhage Ferber. Her original art songs feature the words of living 20th and 21st poets as lyrics, and meld the sensitivity and detail of chamber music with the freedom and expressivity of jazz improvisation. Rose & the Nightingale's first album, Spirit of the Garden (Sunnyside Records), features a song cycle celebrating the sublimity of botanical gardens through poetry and song, and the ensemble has performed the song cycle at botanical gardens across the country, including the United States Botanical Garden (D.C.), Magnolia Gardens & Plantation (SC), Old Westbury Gardens (NY), Mount Auburn (MA), the Green Bay Botanic Garden (WI), the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers (CA), Bloedel Reserve (WA), the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden (CA) and Descanso Gardens in Los Angeles (CA). Redhage Ferber’s compositions have been aired on NPR stations including WFMU and WNYC, including play on "Evening Music", “New Sounds,” and “Spinning on Air.” WNYC’s Spinning on Air host David Garland remarks of Redhage Ferber’s compositions: “Really interesting stuff that encompasses everything from art song to jazz. It’s not easily pegged in terms of style or genre, but all for the better...because it takes us to unexpected places. Quite an ensemble...quite a sound.” Redhage Ferber is the recipient of grants from Chamber Music America, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the NY State Dept. of Cultural Affairs, and the Hertz Fellowship.

AS A NEW MUSIC ADVOCATE

Since 2005, Redhage Ferber has commissioned new works from almost 30 talented composers for voice, cello, and electronics. Two albums have resulted from this project, "All Summer in a Day (2007)," New Amsterdam Records' first-ever release; and "of minutiae and memory” (2011 New Amsterdam Records), a collection of eight electro-acoustic works that have become mainstays of Redhage Ferber's solo repertoire. "All Summer in a Day" has been called “a freewheeling, slightly edgy and altogether "different" kind of musical experience...highly rewarding and worthwhile” (Dave Lewis, All Music Guide). "of minutiae and memory," distributed nation-wide by Naxos, has garnered much critical praise including reviews in the NJ Star Ledger, voted one of the top 10 albums of 2011 by Textura magazine, and was album of the week on New York's WQXR Q2 station. Recorded commissions include compositions by Anna Clyne, Missy Mazzoli, Paula Matthusen, Joshua Penman, Judd Greenstein, Ryan Brown, Derek Muro, Wil Smith, and Stefan Weisman. WQRX's Q2 says, "Jody Redhage's sophomore album comes with a bracing autumnal burst tempered by a soulful warmth that is wholly seductive and charming..."Of Minutiae and Memory" is sure to be one of the season's standouts."
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