[Gbrooks-promo] Tomorrow in Berkeley w/ Leni Stern @ Freight and Salvage 11/28
CALIFORNIA
lsr at lenistern.com
Tue Nov 27 12:35:07 PST 2007
Leni Stern in Berkeley, CA
playing music from her new release
Africa
Nov. 28th
Freight and Salvage
8pm
1111 Addison Street
Mamadou Makan Kouyate - calabash
Edwin Livingston- bass
Brahim Fribgane - oud
Barbara Higbie- piano and violin
George Brooks - reeds
Tamara Turner, CD BABY
In a day and age when music has grown into an industry, a profit-
driven machine with multiple parties scrambling for their share, it’s
deeply heartening to take respite in songwriters like Leni Stern, who
haven’t lost the spirit and connection from which music stems: the
quiet and not-so-quiet voice of the soul, the cries and laughter and
clumsy or elegant footsteps of humanity as we stumble to not just
exist, but thrive in this world. Stern is one of those rare
songwriters with the gift to cut through all the fluff in the music
business and reach the heart of her audience with songs so
exquisitely honest, innocent, vulnerable and human that a bridge is
created between the music of our ancestors and that which hasn’t yet
been written. This exciting new EP takes us to the sands of Mali,
sharing songs with Bassekou Kouyate, Ami Sacko and Haruna Samake.
Joined, in addition, by the likes of the late Michael Brecker, Mike
Stern, Mah Soumano, Dally Kouyate, Omar Kouyate, Moussa Bah and many
more, Alu Maye was recorded at Salif Keita's Moffou Studios in
Bamako. While it’s not surprising to find oneself so fully moved by
another one of her projects, there is always an element of freshness
and unexpected beauty blossoming from her work. Leni has always
impressed us with her ability to seamlessly weave folk, jazz and
world; the colors of her musical imagination are delicate but
resilient; there is a sense of frostiness, of otherworldly subtlety
with a heart of profound strength. Everybody knows that it takes the
most strength to be gentle and vulnerable, that it’s the cruel who
are weak. Leni’s music brings this concept to mind by reminding us
that within the most sensitive music lies humanity’s greatest hope,
strength and ability to not just survive the future, but to find love
for each other in the journey. The only thing wanting in this album
is more of the same; that will soon be provided in an upcoming full-
length release, now under way in Mali. If you’re like us, you won’t
want to wait for the full-length before sampling and living with this
gem. Go ahead- this will be the most satiating appetizer you’ve had
in some time.
THE WASHINGTON POST
LENI STERN"Love Comes Quietly" Friday, June 9, 2006
LATE LAST YEAR singer-songwriter and guitarist Leni Stern released a
four-song EP called "10,000 Butterflies" that pointed at intriguing
things on the horizon. Now comes the payoff: a new CD featuring those
tracks and nine others that will only enhance Stern's reputation for
creating music that radiates a haunting power and beauty. These days
it's impossible to neatly sum up Stern's sound. Elements of folk,
pop, jazz, soul and funk clearly inspire her, along with an
increasingly strong current of world beat influences. On "Love Comes
Quietly," a collection of songs and instrumentals, Stern embraces
everything from Motown grooves to Indian modes, and yet there's
nothing that sounds fashionably eclectic or the least bit showy.
Instead, a chamber-like intimacy often prevails, a quality enhanced
by a series of imaginatively woven arrangements featuring Stern's
yearning voice, poetic imagery, liquid guitar lines and the nimble
support of bassist James Genus, slide guitarist Stephen Bruton,
violinist Ernesto Villa-Lobos and others. A sense of wonder and hope
marks some of the ballads -- the album's title cut and "Have Faith in
Me," for starters. But that doesn't mean that Stern's songwriting
lacks a sharp, ironic edge. Just listen to "Beauty Queen," a
perceptive vignette about Manhattan street life, or "10,000
Butterflies," the album's foreboding highlight, or "The Road to
Hell," which sounds like something Rickie Lee Jones and guitarist
Bill Frisell might have concocted. In the end, though, it's hard to
imagine anyone but Stern pulling all of this together with as much
charm and conviction. The WASHINGTON POST - Mike Joyce
"The New York-based guitarist and singer-songwriter has been on a
roll for several years now, producing a series of widely acclaimed
and highly personal CDs. Her soulful and poetic music is best
appreciated in this kind of intimate setting." The Washington Post 6
2 06, Blues Alley Preview
For more information about Leni Stern, or a review copy of 'Africa',
contactSethCohenPR at earthlink.net or 212-873-1011.
new album available now
a "chamber-like intimacy often prevails, a quality
enhanced by a series of imaginatively woven arrangements featuring
Stern's
yearning voice, poetic imagery, liquid guitar lines...."
- Washington Post, Mike Joyce
WASHINGTON POST
"Creating Music That Radiates a Haunting Power and Beauty"
JAZZTIMES MAGAZINE
Love Comes Quietly
German-born New Yorker Leni Stern’s blues, jazz and rock licks on
seven CDs in the 1980s and ’90s gained her a following among guitar
aficionados, but in 1997 she abandoned instrumental music to flower
into a singer and songwriter. On her fifth vocal effort, Stern’s
songs take on a greater urgency, with part of that surely a result of
her worldwide travels, most recently to Africa, India, Cambodia and
Thailand. “Inshaallah,” for example, is a richly layered song—with a
beautiful oud performance by Brahim Fribgane—written and performed in
Africa for the people in the desert of Essakane. Stern’s descriptive
images of a wandering woman concludes with her “tall gun [that] never
leaves her side.” Stern’s world-music influences come to light again
on the traditional song “Reseke Bare Tore Nain,” which offers
Dhanashree Pandit Rai’s almost chilling vocals. The CD’s title speaks
to the overall mellow quality of musical expression offered by Stern
and main band members James Genus on bass and Keith Carlock on drums.
But like all of Stern’s work, there’s plenty of texture to stick to
your ribs: her Enya-like vocals and Ernesto Villa-Lobos’ violin on
“Cheyenne,” her folksy timbre combined with electric guitar solos
sounding like a cross between husband Mike Stern’s edgier stuff and
Pat Metheny’s mellower side. And Stern can charm as well with a tune
like “10,000 Butterflies.” by Brian Soerge JazzTimes July/August 2006
issue
TIME OUT NY
"Singer-guitarist Leni Stern was mixing elegant jazz moves with adult-
pop balladry long before most of today's best-selling stars had
appeared on the scene, and continues to do just that with her latest
self-released CD, 'Love Comes Quietly'." 5/06
LA WEEKLY
'IT'S PERSONAL' 7/19/06
BY GREG BURK All over the world, Leni Stern is the instrument
Learning, learning. Leni Stern wants to know and grow and hoe that
row. Her thirst has pulled her all over Africa, India and Asia to
absorb the rhythms, the scales, the feelings into her voice and her
electric guitar, to make herself into that universal translator in
the pink capris. In a way, she’s learned to learn. “I was always a
bad student,” says Stern, brow knit and lips pursed as if remembering
rapped knuckles in Catholic school back in her native Bavaria. “I
have a really emotional connection with music that makes me hard to
teach. Because it’s . . .” She lets go of a laugh, high and piercing.
“It’s personal!” Personal, yeah, but Stern didn’t shut herself up in
a cave to plumb her soul; she kicked open all the doors. It seems she
can be Leni only by plugging in the many natural connectors that
stick out of her, much like her hair — always going in some stray
direction. In chemistry, they call that polyvalent bonding. New
molecules form every day. “Wherever you are, the place makes the
music sound different,” she thinks. “Because you are the instrument.”
Stern, who’s known mainly as a jazz artist, has reconstituted herself
in amazing ways over the past decade. The process has had much to do
with breast cancer — surviving it, loving others who did not survive,
recognizing that, hey, we’ve got things to do here. Friends in Nepal
said confronting her own demise was a blessing. “They told me, ‘Now
you get free of the feel of death. And should you survive, you’ll be
a much happier person.’ ” Having gotten hitched to American fusion-
guitar prince Mike Stern after a rather high-profile career on the
German stage, the former Magdalena (Leni) Thora earned her oats
through most of the ’80s and ’90s stirring up atmospheric, sometimes
funky Strat sounds with the likes of Bill Frisell and Paul Motian.
Then, spinning outward from her collision with mortality, she
rediscovered her voice (literally), adding vocals to her tool kit.
“Things need to be spoken about,” she says, “to be in the
consciousness of everybody.” Anyway, she ain’t the silent type.
Different thoughts emerged, borne by Stern’s delicately teetering
vocal melodies, which cling in the head like burrs, but not as
scratchy. There were heart-wringing words of hope after an Italian
terrorist explosion, flowing within the extended orchestration of “I
See Your Face” (2000’s Kindness of Strangers). There were the polar
expressions of “Love Everyone” and “Where Is God?” (2002’s Finally
the Rain Has Come). There was a trembling flashback to a former
addiction on “Dancin’ With the Devil” (2004’s When Evening Falls).
When she sings and when she cuts her guitar loose on untracked
mountainsides, the distinction between art and artist gets lost.
Music isn’t what she does, it’s what she is. Which has a lot to do
with where she’s been. Asked to draw some lines between her music and
her travels, Stern lists a bunch of raga-based songs, and names
compositions that came directly out of her knuckles being gently
rapped — in Naga, India; in Cambodia and Thailand; among the Samburu
tribe of Kenya; and among the Tuareg tribe of West Africa. She picks
up languages pretty easily, but the music, she says, is like learning
to walk again. Exhilarating effort. Stern’s insinuating new Love
Comes Quietly, the most varied album she’s ever done, wafts a
pronounced African aroma amid the sensually inflected strains of her
guitar. A hesitation beat that might remind you of its Jamaican
descendants prods “10,000 Butterflies,” a prayer in support of
refugees; its almost despairing lyrics are balanced by a hopeful
musical environment. The dancing casbah chorus of “Inshaallah,” about
a woman, her camels, her rifle and the desert, might become your
mind’s constant soundtrack. Three colorful instrumentals softly
convey a day’s baking heat fading into sunset. The city also finds
its place — the urban madness of Stern’s Manhattan home shadows the
menacing “Beauty Queen”; the street jugglers and magicians of “Have
Faith in Me” reflect the smile that comes so easily to her face.
Further abroad, the way the raga-derived “Love Comes Quietly” tiptoes
in and out, sexy and insistent, you’d almost think it was a dream;
Stern is at her finest here. That’s one of the things she says,
actually: that in the state between waking and sleeping, we come to
know ourselves. Stern’s itinerary this year has included a
collaboration in Mali with string player Bassekou Kouyate, and a
Gnawa trance-music festival in Morocco. Expect new fruit from these
seeds. So much of this “world” music has religious connections,
though — doesn’t a German of no particular faith feel uncomfortable
sometimes? A previous Moroccan lila (healing jam-ceremony) was one of
the few times she can remember, “not because of anything that was
actually happening, but because I knew that the participants would
eventually use their daggers to cut themselves and go into a trance.”
Obviously I’m a fan, and Stern puts up with my questions, so I catch
up with her whenever she’s in L.A. I’ve collected a few mental
snapshots.
1) Playing the Baked Potato in Studio City, Stern is deep in a solo,
her eyes closed with an expression of complete involvement; behind
her is the very sensitive and thoroughly amazing Texas drummer
Brannen Temple. Some of her notes come from especially interesting
places — mistakes, some would call them; I think of them as
inspirations. Listening, I notice that I’m breathing more deeply.
Later I ask how she feels about taking chances. “Maybe I should be a
little more cautious,” she says. “But it’s a conversation. Sometimes
with Brannen, it’s go-go boing-boing . . . you throw caution to the
wind. He has a thing. He understands the guitar, he really does. And
the people that play it.”
2) Stern is having an idea session at her hotel with songwriter Larry
John McNally, with whom she’s collaborated in the past; she still
likes to bounce ideas off him. She’s working on “The Road to Hell,” a
lazy blues with a twisty riff that will end up on Love Comes Quietly.
He suggests switching a couple of words for rhythm, and she likes
that. Then he wonders if she should change the lyric about Canal
Street; many listeners won’t know where that is. “The song needs to
be in New Orleans,” says Stern. “Even if people don’t know it,
they’ll feel it.”
3) Stern isn’t imposing, but she’s studied Shaolin martial arts, and
she’s strong — look at the way the Tibetan character tattooed on her
left arm ripples when she heaves her amp onto the stage. Some help
with the effects case? Sure. But I get the feeling she’d really
rather lug it all herself. It’s just one of the things she does.
4) Stern has ordered Japanese eggplant and guacamole: She needs to
watch her carb intake since the family diabetes flared up a couple of
years ago. The food comes, and she doesn’t even have to taste it;
we’re in America. She grabs a bottle of Tabasco. Turns it upside
down. And dumps it all over everything. Leni Stern, Sat., July 22,
7:30 p.m. at Genghis Cohen, 740 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.
THE NEW YORKER
"The guitarist Leni Stern is a New York City favorite who deserves
wider recognition." 6/06 "Jazz, blues and folk mingle nicely in work
of guitarist and singer Leni Stern." 5/06
www.lenistern.com
all photos by ebet roberts
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