Venissa Santi and her Quartet appears in a beautiful setting on Sunday Oct 14 @ 2:30 PM
Venissa Santi Quartet to Perform at Christ Ascension Lutheran Church
8300 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19118
SUNDAY, OCT 14, 2:30 PM
tickets: $12 in advance $15 door
website for tickets: www.emusictime.com
Artist website: www.venissasanti.com
In 2009, the Cuban American jazz singer, Venissa Santi beguiled
critics and fans alike with her magnificent debut recording,
Bienvenida (Sunnyside Records). So well-formed and mature was that
recording that it seemed more like a musical miracle than a “first
album” of songs. Now this amazing chanteuse has finished what is to
become a stunning new album which has the working title, Big Stuff:
Afro Cuban Holiday. From the very first note it is clear that nothing
will be obvious at her hands for Venissa Santi is an artist who
delights in the sound of surprise.
Here is an album of songs that celebrate both Afro-Cuban as well as
Afro-American rhythms in the richness and fullness of both tradition
as well as in celebration of the contemporary melding of the two
musical streams as a single lifeblood of Ms Santi’s vocalastics. The
tracks were chosen with the help of her close friend and the iconic
promoter, Dick Lapalm (Nat Cole) who also discovered Peggy Lee. In the
conceptual and musical arrangement, Ms. Santi was aided and abetted by
long-time collaborator and Cuban born drummer/composer, Francois
Zayas. The album is a collection of song-narratives that are set in
the complex, alluring and unforgettable rhythms of Afro Cuban musical
heritage.
Clearly Venissa Santi is no longer the so-called newcomer to the art
of vocal music. With songs here such as Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy
Fields’ “On the Sunny Side of the Street” here turned into a
brilliant, lively guaguanco and reprising Billie Holiday’s legendary
“Strange Fruit” as a bolero, among others, Ms. Santi casts a
bewitching spell on anyone close enough to hear her alluring vocals.
She inhabits the art of song like, very few artists who dare to
practice its tradition in the modern context. Ms. Santi can retell a
story in song. Her penchant for weaving a narrative from the
bare-bones of a lyric is stupendous. What is more, her ability to
convey emotion even wordlessly in the sigh of a dying note is
breathtaking. In this regard, she recalls the epic work of a long line
of great blues and jazz vocalists from Billie Holiday to Abbey
Lincoln, or in the world of Latin vocal music, where she also belongs
– from Elis Regina to Luciana Souza.
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