You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 2023 Grammy Recap

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Adam and Peter check out the recent Grammy Award Ceremonies and offer their insight to what when down this year. Check out Samara Joy and keep up to date with what she's up to. Listen to Open Studio artist Geoffrey Keezer and buy his latest album right here. Don't forget to check out Robert Glasper's latest album as well right here with this link. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Yo, Adam. Yo. What is the most engaging, yet still improvised segment of things we could say during this pithy intro? Hey, yo, Peter. What's up? I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast.

Daily jazz advice coming at you. Daily jazz. That's the OG slogan. That's OG. And we're going to go, although this podcast is not released every day anymore, you can consume it every day. You could consume it every day. In fact, we've heard from many of our. dear listeners that they love us but only in short segments.

So they might listen to 10 minutes on their commute and then they say, I'll come back for the next juicy morsel tomorrow. Tomorrow. And hence, daily jazz advice coming at you. That was the original tagline. Yeah. And we've had several since. You know what else is coming at you? What? Memes from four or five months ago, Peter. Really? Yeah, like the Good Boy Noah. The Hey, oh, Peter. Yeah. If anybody who doesn't know, go check out the Good Boy Noah on Instagram. Shout out to a very funny recipe. Okay, why is that a meme? See, my understanding of memes is so, aren't those

reels or videos? It is a, it is a real or video, but it's in mean territory in that it's, uh, culture. Yeah, and that we're saying it to each other. We're using it as a way to express something. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's very creative. It's good stuff. Today is our Grammy wrap up. That's right. Grammys are a little bit for me, Peter, I don't know about for you, but they're a little bit like the world series. I don't watch it all the time. Right. But I kind of want to know the outcome. That's right. Same with me. It's a little bit of FOMO with the Grammys because I'm always sort of like, oh, I don't care. I'm not there this year. Or I'm not up. It's just a horse race anyway. Exactly. But then I see these

uber talented folks, several of which are part of the Open Studio family. That's right. Several more of which are friends of the pod or friends of ours. So it is kind of a cool thing. And to me, it sort of restores a little bit of hope when, you know, it's, a Jeffrey Kieser winning or Nicholas Payton as opposed to a millie vanilli or something like that. But or say a Robert Glasper instead of a Chris Brown. Chris Brown. Yeah. We'll get into that a little later.

Wait, who's Robert Glassper? Exactly. Who the bleep is Robert Glow? Yeah, yeah. But this is kind of cool. And I was just looking. Maybe I'll even throw this up. Big shout out to YouTube.

We're on the tube. The YouTube. Did you know that? We'll see how far this one goes because we'll be playing some music here on Spotify. That's right. Look at that. Jazz winners. And maybe we should start right here.

with the lovely and talented young Samara Joy who won. You talk about talented. Holy smoke. Is this not the story of the Grammys, at least, for all jazz lovers? Yeah, she won Best New Artist, not Best New Jazz Artist, best new artist total. That's right. Which is incredible.

And well deserved, because she is an electrifying new artist. That's right. She won also Best Vocal Jazz Album with Linger a While, and I thought we could start with Round Midnight. Have you heard this, Peter? This is unbelievable. Oh, it's fabulous. This is Samara Joy's version of Round Midnight.

The amount of textures and colors she has in her voice is astounding. As I've shed today, waiting until tomorrow, dreams of what could be. There's a brand new midnight. You are just one of the minor players. Look for what you. love the day to get your eyes at that time. It's amazing. Beautiful.

This is a hard tune. It's a hard tune to sing. I kind of, I mean, the range of it. It's every day. The phrasing. This was not written as a vocal originally. So take what you can. She makes it a story.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Fears don't chase away To smite Let your spirit I just want to skip to the end because the end is haunting Yeah So we're

The outro Yeah For in a while This old day will be yesterday Alone at midnight On the sharp 11 on the minor chord That's gorgeous man It's so haunting

As opposed to some kind of authentic, you know, holding it on with studio trickery. She's the real deal. Yeah, she's the real deal. Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, she, I can say, I haven't heard, well, I've heard her, well, I got a chance to play with her once, actually. Oh, cool. Maybe six months ago, so I for a private thing in New York.

And she was just, it was very informal. And I had met her before. She came to Cesar the Vanguard. That's right, the year before, and came back and hung. and with McBride and everybody. It was just super, like, humble but present and just, like, kind of one of the guys and gals. And I hadn't heard her at that point,

but this private thing that we were both doing, she was like, oh, I'm really excited to, she's, you know, she was kind of asking me, what do you want to do? I was like, no, what do you want to do? It was just duo, one song. Yeah. And she's like, well, do you know Stardust?

And I was like, oh, yes, I do know Stardust. But I was just thinking, I'm like, she's 22 years old. I'm like, how good is her star, That's going to be. Yeah, I mean, I knew she could sing. Yeah. I knew she could sing, but that's a hard.

I mean, in different ways than round midnight. It's a grown-up song. It's a grown-up song. Yeah. I feel like I'm just getting grown up and up to play it. Agreed. You know, and she did it in some, I don't remember what key it was, but it was the right key for her. Yeah.

And she knew her key. Yeah. And we did the, I just kind of laid out the first chord on the introduction. And she came in, and I was like, oh, yeah. It was like, it was very much, you know, she was, she was, she was, an old soul yeah you can feel that in her music yeah but not in like a corny throwback i'm gonna go do the the old school dance and put on a weird outfit kind of thing there was that youthful energy and exuberance and discovery yeah they came

through in her voice you can hear that here on round midnight as well and and not coming from like an academic corny place either like oh i'm a student of the i mean yes she's a student of the music i'm sure but not in a way that i think some of these singers feel like they have to copy different things. And a lot of people are saying like, oh, I've heard some criticism already. Like, oh, she's just copying Sarah Vaughn. I'm like, first of all, that's not a, that's not a put down. Yeah. That's not a, that's not a bug. That's also not directly possible. It's not directly possible. And if it were possible, what you're trying to insult her with is a compliment. Right. Like that's what I'm saying like, oh, it's just another Stevie Wonder or something. It's a feature. Another wane shorter. Yeah, okay. Cool. Yeah. And to me, she's really, if you're going to say anyone like on that track and like, I, I remember. I. I. I. I. It's a. I. I. I. It's. And. I. And. I. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. remember when we did the Star Dust, I would say more Ella Fitzgerald coming out of that to be accurate anyway. But there's enough different influences. And I think enough lack of influences as well, which I think is important. Like when you're a young vocalist or just a young musician that's like horn player vocalist out front or piano player or whatever, but especially a vocalist because your instrument is right

there. You always have your instrument with you. Yeah. To be able to avoid the pitfalls of being like, I'm going to be the next Ella Fitzgerald or Diane Reeves or whatever. You have to have a certain openness and not to be like attached to any one artist in a way that you're trying to do that. I think she just, you know, the type of singer and because her instrument is so robust, her range is so big, it's such a beautiful instrument and she has so much control and kind of education and how to play that instrument, you can really get, that can be used for kind of some corny things. And she's definitely avoided that.

So big shout out to Samara. I'm a fan. Yeah, me too. No, she's got it all. She's got the voice for it, all the technical stuff you would want, all the musical stuff you would want. But you're right. What she, her probably biggest strength is there's a real genuineness, a real authenticity, a real comfort that she obviously has already at this young age that is inspiring.

I'm inspired by her sound actually. I listened to this album yesterday all the way through and it inspired me to pay more attention to my own sound. production because you can tell like her sound is such a distinctive part of her voice and a part of making her music effective right and I was like oh yeah sound is the most important thing absolutely sound you get and this record was produced by Matt Pearson who I guess I saw him relatively recently but I mean we used to work with him back in the 90s because he was the Warner Brothers he produced live of the vanguard

Joshua Redmond, Freedom in the Groove, mood swing. I believe all those records. Ever heard of it around that time? Classics now, yeah. As well as a bunch of other Warner, Brad Meldow's first records. The Art of the Trio records. Yeah, good stuff. And so, you know, I'm sure he had a lot to do with the sound on this record.

It's a beautiful sounding album. Yeah. Like just the right amount of space on the drums. The voice is rich, obviously. And I've heard some, can we talk about a little bit of the mutterings in jazz Twitter and other places that have been happening since she won. because she won for the best new artist and for jazz vocal album of the year.

Yeah, not the jazz new artist, but like, there is no jazz artist. There is no jazz artist. But like overall, that's new artist, which is incredible. Did like Olivia Rodriguez won last year and like Millie Vanilli won many years. Not that we're comparing her to me.

They took that away from them. They took it away from them. Grammy low point. But there's been some simmering, maybe resentful kind of things I've heard where people like, well,

this is going to be the last. jazz record she ever makes now that she's best new artist she's a star and kind of some like oh too bad we're going to lose her and i would just say that that may or may not be true i think samara has a lot of different things to say her she comes from from my understanding of it more of a gospel um background her family yeah like her grandparents had this famous gospel group out of philadelphia i remember mcbride talking about that and like i don't know how directly she was involved with that but her dad you know as a gospel and other things other types of style bass player and stuff i don't think she came up in this strict jazz thing you know and i don't i don't see that as a bad thing either obviously

she can sing jazz yeah but i'm very excited to see if she wants to and has an ear for it the other things that she wants to do well remember this time last year we were talking about john batiste and yeah his sort of like shifting gears a little bit to still definitely like jazz influence he's a jazz pianists, but like, you know, exploring other forms of music and winning the album of the year. Right. Jump into some other lily pads, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm fascinated by the talk around Samara Joy and about the next artist will listen to Robert Glasper about if they're deserving of these major Grammy Awards because they're not mainstream pop acts, you know, people were kind of, there were mutterings on Twitter about, you know, who's Samara Joy, famously mutterings on Twitter

about who the F is Robert Glasper. Right. Because Robert Glasser won. Best straight ahead trio record, right? No, best R&B album with Black Radio 3. And I believe this is the... This is the third time he's won in that cat. I know, I know. And famously Chris Brown took to Instagram to be like, who the F is Robert Glasper,

which is hilarious. Right. Because how are you a professional musician? I want him to say, what the F is that you'll hear a podcast. Can we anger him to the point of doing that? That would be great. That would really help the podcast.

But no, and some people were saying, you know, for Samara Joy. And some people... Who is Chris Brown, though? On a serious, though. I know. I mean, it's not good, man. It's not good. The whole thing is not good. I mean, the only reason I know him is from headlines of with Rihanna or whatever.

And then Bonnie Rate won, I believe, Song of the Year. She's back. And she beat like Taylor Swift and all these, all these people, right? All the Swifties are coming on. And there were a lot of people like, who the F is Bonnie Rate? Ten-time Grammy Award winner, like 30 million records sold or something like that. And won the Lifetime Achievement Award last year. You know, Bonnie Rade, alleged.

What is this when they say like, oh, everyone's got Wikipedia and a computer in their pocket? Yet we still fall into who is this? Google her. It brings up a good, a good, you know, there's never this kind of talk around the Oscars. When there's like an art house film that does really well, people are like, oh, yeah, it's just a great film. Who the F is Martin Scorsese? Nobody's like, Stephen Spielberg is 70 years old. He shouldn't even be in the conversation.

It's not relevant. You know what I mean? But people say that about Bonnie Raid. I think young people take for granted that music is not just a sort of like fashion competition or even like a style competition. Right. But it is there can be great art made well into a popularity thing. Or yeah, it's not even a popular thing. Like where you're just social media star.

Also, I don't think people understand how the Grammys are voted upon. If they knew the music nerds that are voting on these things, because have you ever been to a local Grammy chapter meeting? I've been to several. I voted for years. I did too, yeah. And it's just musicians, like studio musicians, professional musicians. of course they're going to vote for Bonnie Raid and Samar Joy. Like, they know what's up.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, and I think the intersection between this award and also, like, album of the year that has, you know, the Venn diagram between jazz albums and these really big time awards is only every few years. I think Esperanza Spalding was the last time a so-called jazz artist won the best new artist. And that was probably 10 years ago.

At least 10 years ago, yeah. But then you have, like, Herbie Hancock with, River. Was that River? Yeah, for the album of the year. Album of the year. Yeah. John Batisse.

John Batiste. I mean, it happens. Robert Glasper is poking his head in and out with the black radio stuff for the R&B category. With the R&B category, right. So, I mean, I like it when artists and not just that we know, but we know our talented musicians that have a following, but they really care about their art and their craft. Like what we're about to hear next with Robert Glasper. And it's just kind of a fun edition that there's the jazz crossover

But this is not like one of his jazzy records No, it's Black Radio 3, man It's Black Radio 3, which is just like Black Radio 3 You know what you're getting at this point Which is just like Black Radio 2, only a little better Which is just like Black Radio 1 Well, let's listen to a play better than I imagine Featring Her and Michelle and Degliocello

Her Just a little taste, you'll get the vibe It's really good The Glass forever here, Dilla? Jay Dilla, you think? I wonder. I'm a sentiment. I'm going to text him a track

So you can. I wonder if Chris Brown's ever heard of Chris Dave. I know. Her is really good. I'm going to send Glasper, Chris Dave's number, too. I think they could hook up and really do some cool stuff together. So I don't, we don't have to play this.

This is 15 million listens on. Really? Yeah, this is a big song. That's a nice track. I mean, I've vibed out to that. And it's, you know, Glasper, we're big fans of, of, we're all with Glasper. Kind of whatever he does.

Like, he brings an authenticity to his music. what was the last thing we saw? We saw he was like introing oh Justin Lee Schultz on the thing that was like his gig and we were looking at

the OG's React to IG's thing and Glasper's there like you know recording him but like Glasper is a very you know I mean he's one of the most talented musicians of our generation that's coming from the piano

or anywhere and so we have a special affinity for him because we know him but also just because he's a jazz piano I mean just like some of the other artists we're going to Well, with Kieser, we're going to come across. It's been fun to watch Robert Gloucester's career.

We're about the same age because his thing is now copied so much. Yeah. That it's like part of the, like when you hear him play it, you're like, oh, that's the Glasper. Oh, that's Glasper himself. Like I was, you know, you're like, oh, that's that's that glassper. To see the world discover him kind of. And it hasn't really been slowly because he's had some breakout, these breakout really big

records. Yeah, yeah. But all of his, he's so he's a Renaissance guy. So like he's one of the funniest musicians, I think, that I've ever met. He's super... Easily. Easily. He's in the group. Top five funniest. You want to be in there, too?

Yeah, I want to be in there. And of course, that's a sure side that you're funny when you nominate yourself for being one of the funnier musicians. No, but he's also witty and, like, super quick. He is quick. Which we pride ourselves on as jazz pianists as being that. But that's been fun for people to see that. I don't know if they saw that fully until recently.

I don't know if you saw the Trevor Noah. And I would recommend that you can interview with Trevor Noah. Interview with Trevor Noah because... He can hang with Trevor Noah. He can hang. It's kind of like we're talking about musicians that play sports well. We think they're good until they get around real athletes. Musicians we think are funny and they get around real comedians.

He actually hung and that was a super funny, not only interesting interview. Yeah. But super funny too. And that's got to be intimidated being up there with one of the greatest comedians in the world. Oh, you see him, but you see him hanging. He didn't have a piano there. He can hang humor-wise with like real people who are good at this. Don Chiedel.

There's some great footage of him and Don Cheddle doing some bits. Even Chappelle and Chris Rock. There's footage of them hanging. And it's amazing, man. You're right. I love the speed thing because he's super fast. He's got just a quick wit and a quick mind. Musically and otherwise. Speaking of a beautiful mind, our buddy, open studio artists.

And this isn't just like he's made a course for us or whatever. Like he is regularly engaged with the open studio community and he's one of our primary artists. He is a brilliant pianist and one of our favorite people, Jeffrey Keeseer, won a Grammy. Won his first Grammy. He's been nominated a bunch. I didn't realize he had won, so this is cool. It's amazing, man, and he gave a beautiful speech. I don't know if you've seen it yet.

He just posted that late last night or last evening. Just for a variety too, because he won in this category that was part of their kind of re-enignment a few years ago. Where is the best instrumental composition? Yeah. And this is such a cool record. This is from Play-Dade, right? Yeah, we just actually, we listened to this a week ago today

in the Open Studio listing session. We listened to PlayDate. We had Jeffrey on the Zoom talking about making it. This is the opening track. This is Refuge. This is gorgeous. By the way,

featuring St. Louis's own, Shedric Mitchell here on the B3. Refuge. Check this out. I love the texture of the harp and the screams. I know that you like that transition.

I love this so much, man. Is that something that would interest you? It's so interesting. It's Ron Blake on the Tener Science Farm. some teaserism right there. How good is that? I just want to give a quick shout out to an old friend,

Aaron Davitzi, who is the mixing engineer on this. We went to college together at the new school way back in the day. He's a great guy, one of the founders of the bunker studio in Brooklyn, one of the great studios in New York City currently. And I think he did a phenomenal job, which must have been just a monstrous mix to deal with. I mean, think about it, you got a full string section, you got a horn, you got a harp, you got piano, bass, drums, percussion,

and B3 and tenor saxophone on top of it all. Like that's a big deal. The record is beautiful and all the string mixes are gorgeous. And the writing too on this, the string writing is as good as it gets, in my opinion, of blending the rhythm section with the strings and how it works. I think Jeffrey did a brilliant job

with the whole album actually, but this tune, rightfully so, deserve the Grammy for the best instrumental song. Yeah, and I just want to jump back to here. You can go pick this up on, you better do this quick because this should and will change but play date this fantastic record

you can download this right now for $6. Go do it. That is the bargain of just do that. On band camp. You can get the CD and the vinyl which we have here right. We do have the vinyl here. All the money with band camp goes directly to the artist or a very, very small fee taken out so it's kind of the most

efficient way to get your funds to support. And you get these high quality, you know, flak it's not just MP3s available on there. But it's a fantastic record. and, you know, big shout out the keys. Yep. Well, that's it. We're going to go out here with...

Wait, and we have one more. We have one more, but we're going to go out with the one more. It's respected destroyer. This was the best instrumental album. Oh, right, from Terry Lynn. From Terry Lynn Carrington. Yeah. Feathing Nicholas and...

Feathing Nicholas. ...feiting Nicholas. In front of the show. Yep. This is a great album called New Standards, Volume 1. But before we go out on that, wait, let me just pull this up here

because this was actually... No, this was Best Jazz Instrumental album. Best jazz instrument on. That's all right. Terlin with Chris Davis, Linda May, Han O, fantastic basses, Nicholas Payton and Matthew Stevens. Yep. Great group.

We just want to shout out a couple other folks here. We got Ulysses Owens, one of our favorite drum instructors here at Open Studio and amazing artist. Yep. Who won with Stephen Fifeke and the, what was that? The big band thing, right? Yeah, the Gap.

Generation Gap, Jazz Orchestra. Absolutely. I almost said the Gat band, which is a whole other thing, yeah. which Ulysses is an integral part of the process and everything with that band. John Beasley, who won for, so I'm just like, there's just too many people that are part of the fam here. What did he want for, arrangement for the Charlie Parker thing? Best arrangement, yeah. For Scrapple from the Apple.

Right, with SWR big band. So that's a cool thing. And John Beasley is actually, he's going to be doing a master class with us a week from Friday. You know one more thing with the Kieser thing with the Refuge. In his speech, he referenced, he thanked Wayne Shorter, Donald Brown, and Billy Childs, his biggest living compositional inspirations. Can you hear that? Can you hear some Billy Childs in that?

Absolutely. Orchestration and everything? Well, and it's such a cool thing because some people might be like, well, why didn't he win his first Grammy for, like, just a ripping jazz trio thing? Yeah. Which he certainly could and will and should. But I think that I love this when they kind of get something right. best instrumental composition. I didn't listen to everything else in the category, full disclosure. But I can tell you one thing.

There's good stuff. Miguel Zananon was nominated. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be great stuff. But I'm saying like, I mean, to say that Keiser is not one of our greatest instrumental composers out there doing this now, you know, on this fantastic self-produced, I believe it's self-produced record. And, you know, so that's a fantastic thing. Also, big shout out to Bobby McFerrin, who among many other folks got a lifetime achievement award. That's right. I mean, how did he not have it before now? Yeah, well, he got one now. I mean, he won record of the year.

Him and Nirvana and Hart. We saw it, Henry Mancini handing it to him. That's right, yeah. Snarky Puppy Puppy one for something. It's always fun to see them. Oh, best contemporary instrumental. At first I thought it was contemporary Christian instrumental album. They win a different route.

And who else? Oh, Terrence Blanchett. I'll just throw this up one more time. Oh, yeah, yeah. We played this opera. Absolutely. Well, you played it. I played at it.

Fire shut up in my bones. You played the premiere of it. I did play the premiere. Best opera recording. I believe that's with the Metropolitan Opera. Isn't that what he did it with the Met? Yeah. They did it with the Met.

I guess they didn't want to do it here. So these are more kind of, you know. Your loss? Yeah. Intersection of jazz and big time rewards. So that's cool. So we're going to go out on Terry Lynn Carrington, Nicholas Payton, Chris Davis.

This is Respected Destroyer. And yeah, until next time. We're Grammy positive. You'll hear it.