As we reflect on our eighth season featuring distinguished alumni from Berklee College Music, one theme becomes immediately apparent: jazz is flourishing internationally, especially among younger artists.
As we unveil in this episode, Sarah McKenzie may have been born in Australia, but she finds inspiration in classical songbook from America. Here the triple threat singer/pianist/songwriter, recently signed to Impulse! Records, performs her Cole Porterish original “Paris In The Rain.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wxNL7FuzJs
The live electronics artist Mark de Clive-Lowe hails from New Zealand but has lived in London, and now resides in Los Angeles, where he’s currently delving into his Japanese Heritage. And Daniel Rotem, an Israeli saxophonist with Iraqi ancestry, is enamored by jazz’s legacy of tenor players. Watch him tap into a few of them — Wayne Shorter and Coleman Hawkins come to mind — on his original “Who Is It?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=subKuXDHU7M
Finally, Harlem-born alto saxophonist Godwin Louis, whose parents are from Haiti, takes on his African ancestry with a grand totality, tying together many different African musical diasporas on his recording debut, Global, with his sextet.
Join uson March 6 for The Checkout at Berklee season finale, with Grammy-winning Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, a young collection of international musicians woven together by its artistic director, pianist Danilo Pérez. (This concert will likely sell out, so act now.)
All of the performances by these artists were captured live at the Cafe 939 The Red Room in Boston.
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Video: Berklee Video Services and Corey Goldberg
Audio Mix: David Tallacksen
