Jazz Articles about Lola Danza

Lola Danza on her Evolver Label and Evolver Fest

by Lola Danza
October 7, 2015

Event Alert! Wednesday, October 7th, 2015 at 8 pm at the Roulette. Special guests include Matthew Shipp, Fung Chern Hwei, George Spanos' Quartet, Lola Danza “Korean Shaman Rites" and Ben Stapp: Myrrha's Red Book Act II will perform their latest works. About Lola Danza: Exquisite, Unique, Extraordinary, Honest and Passionate are the ways to describe Lola Danza as a vocalist and composer. Ms. Danza's music is innovative and the result is the creation of a new ...

Lola Danza: Life of Luxury

by C. Michael Bailey
September 26, 2012

Singer/composer Lola Danza has a pan-cultural and artistic vision expanding well beyond the traditional singer's role as performer and interpreter, though these facets do exist large in her art. The singer began a personal trend on Vision Quest (Evolver, 2005) employing a rhythm section of only two bassists. This format, with an occasional splash added by brass or reeds, produced a free, three- dimensional space within which to sing. Danza's beyond the avant-garde Live Free (Evolver, 2009) ...

Lola Danza: The Island

by Dan Bilawsky
April 18, 2012

Vocalist Lola Danza has always been an original thinker, but that doesn't get you very far in a field crowded with people fitting that description. What makes Danza stand out is her strength of vision and steadfast commitment to following her muse, no matter how non-commercial it may be. With Janya (Evolver, 2011), Danza and her fellow female band mates explored Korean-influenced avant-garde avenues of expression, creating far-reaching fantasies that could alternately fascinate or frighten. On The Island, Danza takes ...

Lola Danza: The Island

by C. Michael Bailey
April 2, 2012

Singer/composer Lola Danza is not a multicultural artistic presence, she is a pan-cultural artistic presence. This is fully exploited on her ensemble recording, Janya (Evolver, 2011). Her singing and songwriting hover in the neighborhood of jazz because terms like “new age" and “world music" don't seem to quite cover it. Live Free (Evolver, 2009) was exactly that, a freely expressed vocal recording taped live with a quartet at Boston's Ryles' Club. Danza demonstrated amply the depth and breadth of her ...

Janya: Janya

by Dan Bilawsky
August 3, 2011

Janya's sound is all about Korean-influenced music for the free jazz-loving soul. The members of this female foursome are all of Korean descent, and bring a free yet flowing sensibility to this seven-song program of original music. While the presence of instruments like gayageum, daegeum and janggo--a zither-like string instrument, bamboo transverse flute, and hour-glass shaped drum, respectively-- give this group a decidedly Eastern sound veering toward the mystical and mysterious, Lola Danza's vocals bring diversity and, ...

Lola Danza: Vision Quest

by AAJ Staff
December 28, 2010

Lola DanzaVision QuestEvolver 2005 New York jazz singer and composer Lola Danza has a background in avant-garde jazz and, before that, in classical singing. Active on the New York scene since 2007, when she arrived from Boston and Berkelee School of Music studies, the singer has immersed herself in predominantly free jazz performance. Already attracted to the idea of free improvisation in Boston, Danza  progressed to completely free expression with an album ...

Lola Danza: Free To Sing Free

by AAJ Staff
February 25, 2009

Free jazz has wound its way through many permutations since arriving in the early '60s. An important custodian of its new directions is vocalist and composer Lola Danza, of Brooklyn.

Danza is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, Boston, and stayed in Boston for a few years after graduating, developing her approach to music before becoming completely “free" over the last three years.

Her latest album, Live Free (Evolver, 2009), is a live ...