Due to be released on April 22, Ithamara's extraordinary follow-up CD Love Dance: The Ballad Album will certainly establish her artistry on these shores in the most convincing possible terms.
Love Dance is dedicated to the memory of the legendary Luiz Bonfa, and contains two tracks from the guitarist/composer's last recording sessions -- “April in Paris" (a guitar/vocal duet) and “Man Alone" (on which John McLaughlin is the guest soloist). The latter track is also graced by the presence of Joao Palma, who's heard as well on the Jobim composition “Ligia" (Palma was the drummer on Jobim's original recording of that song on Urubu in 1975).
Koorax and her producer Arnaldo DeSouteiro have assembled a phenomenal international cast -- including Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Azymuth, Marcos Valle, Dom Um Romao -- and an inspired repertoire (by Jobim, Bonfa, Valle, Ivan Lins, Claus Ogerman) sung by Ithamara in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and German.
“I'm very proud of this album," says Ithamara. “It was a very demanding project, considering the high quality of the material and the challenge of interacting with so many great players I've always loved, as well as with promising young artists like Jurgen Friedrich" (the German pianist/composer who won IAJE's Gil Evans Fellowship Award in 1998).
Koorax will be appearing 5/2 - 18 at Mistura Fina, Rio's top jazz club, with her trio -- Paula Faour (keyboards), Jorge Pescara (bass), Cesar Machado (drums) -- plus special guests Marco Antonio Monteiro (harp) and the Finnish guitarist Jarkko Toivonnen.
This October, Koorax, who occasionally performs classical concerts with symphony orchestras in Brazil, will perform a work by Claus Ogerman entitled “Tagore Lieder," a piece based on texts by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Sir Rabindranath Tagore. The concert will take place in Cologne, Germany.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
