Home » Search Center » Results: Andy Narell
Results for "Andy Narell"
Results for pages tagged "Andy Narell"...
Andy Narell
Born:
Andy Narell has spent more than a quarter century exploring the subtleties and complexities of steel pan and grafting them to the jazz idiom. He's one of only a small handful of steel pan players in the world who are playing jazz, and perhaps the only one among that coterie to commit an entire career—live and in the studio—to creating new music for the pan in that context.
In recent years, Narell has also explored the potential of the steel pan on an orchestral level. He enlisted the services of Calypsociation, a thirty-piece steel pan orchestra based in Paris, to record The Passage, his 2004 recording on the Heads Up label. That exploration continues with the release of Tatoom: Music for Steel Orchestra in February 2007. In addition to Narell playing all 22 pans in meticulously layered and carefully mixed orchestral arrangements, Tatoom also features three brilliant soloists: guitarist and labelmate Mike Stern, tenor saxophonist David Sanchez and percussionist Luis Conte. With drummers Mark Walker and Jean Philippe Fanfant driving the rhythm section Narell’s steelband sound has an unmistakable jazz groove.
Tatoom was recorded in various locales around the world, including Paris, New York, Boston, LA, the SF Bay Area, West Virginia, and Mississippi.
“This whole record was recorded one instrument at a time,” says Narell. “It was quite different from The Passage, where I recorded thirty pan players live. I started with the drums, the congas, the percussion and the iron, and then I put all the pans on one at a time. Then finally the soloists.”
This attention detail and commitment to creative perfection—no matter the scale—is nothing new for Narell, who has been almost singlehandedly ushering steel pan music into the mainstream since the 1980s. After a string of critically praised and commercially successful albums on Windham Hill Jazz throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Narell joined the Heads Up label with the release of Behind the Bridge in 1998, followed by Fire in the Engine Room in 2000. But in the midst of hammering out his career—recording in the States; playing festivals and other gigs around the U.S., Europe and the Caribbean; composing for the Panorama steel band festival in Trinidad; laying down tracks on albums, film and commercials—he was unaware of a grassroots movement taking shape in South Africa that would have a dramatic impact on his musical and cultural perspective.
The end of apartheid in 1994—which included a lifting of economic restrictions and a transition to majority rule in South Africa—allowed residents of the major cities and outlying townships easier access to recorded music from around the world. A network of “listening clubs” sprouted throughout the region as low-income South Africans pooled their monies to buy CDs of their favorite artists. By the late ‘90s, Narell had ascended to folk-hero status in a fan club he knew nothing about.
Narell collided with his own destiny in the fall of 1999 during a visit to South Africa for the Arts Alive festival, where nearly 80,000 people turned out for his performance (he’d only expected to fill a few 200- or 300-seat clubs during his visit). The response to his music was so powerful and inspiring that he returned to South Africa the following spring for an extensive concert tour that reunited him with the band he’d played with during his initial visit. Live in South Africa, released in 2001, chronicles his two-night stand at the Blues Room in Johannesburg at the tail end of the tour.
Ben Sidran: If You Can't Laugh At Life You're Through
by Leo Sidran
In a career spanning over fifty years and thirty five records, Ben Sidran has established himself as a philosopher poet. Equally celebrated for his precise, probing writing style as he is for his improvised spoken word jazz raps, he has carved out a truly unique space for himself. The Times of London aptly described Ben as ...
Can You Judge an Album By Its Label?
by Dave Hughes
This article was first published at All About Jazz in March 1999. For almost as long as there have been record labels, many labels have sought to build a reputation or a brand identity for themselves in terms of the genre of music presented on their labels or the technical quality of their product. ...
Parabbean Tales
Label: Blue Canoe Records
Released: 2022
Track listing: Parabbean Tales; Freedom, Cachete; Not Without You; 5th Avenue; Oasis; Brother Robert; DJoel &
Knippa; L.A. Jam; Spally
Vince Guaraldi, Houston Person & Kim Nalley
by Joe Dimino
From the jazz queen of the Bay Area we begin the 762nd Episode of Neon Jazz with vocalist Kim Nalley and music off her album I Want a Little Boy. We follow that up with her good friend and tenor Houston Person. We hear some great new music from Alberto Pibiri, Aaron Aranita and George Winstone. ...
Parabbean Tales
Album: Parabbean Tales
By Iwan VanHetten
Label: Blue Canoe Records
Released: 2022
Duration: 03:26
EHA Paris Rio New York
Label: Kwazil/Plaza Mayor Company Serg 250
Released: 2020
Track listing: 1984(Fanfare); Mars; Missie Didie; Nuits Magnétiques; 1984(Funky Cover); 2 Stars in my Skies; Celeste A; Toronto
Layover; Dudatjo; Plain
Dance; Queen of my Nights.
Adan Hagley: Insomnia
by Nigel Campbell
The Trinidad-born Nobel laureate, VS Naipaul, implied that Trinidad and Tobago was a country of mimic men, but its geographic location in the world and social history makes the pull of myriad sonic and rhythmic influences inevitable. Adan Hagley on his debut album, Insomnia, has made those connections from his wide listening palette. He cites Michel ...
Guitarist Tommaso Costa Debuts with “Too Far, Too Close”
For his 2019 debut Too Far, Too Close, Costa combines electric jazz, rock, and blues into his own guitar sound with European sophistication and style that resonates from his homeland of Italy. “My favorite thing is the sound of the record," Costa explains. “It's got a great modern tone with a vintage feel." Too ...
The Narell Brothers: Steelpan Music Merchants
by Nigel Campbell
Steelpan musician, Andy Narell and his older brother Jeff Narell represent a game change in the status quo of island music and the instruments born in the Caribbean. Originally created as an musical accompaniment to celebrate Trinidad Carnival, the steelpan has evolved over the years to become a modern acoustic instrument family that supplies a range ...
