NY DAILY NEWS feature:
July 3, 2023
Slideshow of the article online
with extra pics:
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Spring/Summer, 2023!
For the UPPER WEST SIDE LOVE STORY double CD visit our Etsy store HERE: Etsy store
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CD cover photo by Warren B. Lee
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Upper West Side Love Story: a song cycle
a double CD of his 16 movement song cycle featuring an all-star nonet.
Look for the release of these singles before the CD drops on July 7th!
KID’Z RHYMES – April 20
STREAM NOW on SPOTIFY
We Used to Dance – May 11
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His Bed is a Box – May 25
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Roses and Rubies – June 9
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Love Can’t Live on Nostalgia – June 23
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Central Park Life – June 30
STEAM NOW on SPOTIFY
Double CD release – Upper West Side Love Story – July 7
PRESS RELEASE:
A Profound, Resonant Musical Journey Through the Gentrification of the Upper West Side,
as Envisioned by a Lifelong Resident;
Composer/Lyricist/Guitarist Freddie Bryant Readies Epic Piece for Chamber/Jazz Ensemble
Double CD ‘Upper West Side Love Story’ Set for Release July 7th
Featuring:
Steve Wilson, Donny McCaslin, Regina Carter, Carla Cook,
Gwen Laster, Akua Dixon, John Benitez and Alvester Garnett
“A love story is about beginnings, about excitement and nurturing growth – love through joy and adversity over many years. And sometimes it’s about growing distant, rejection and the search for the magic that seems to fade into distant memories. Either way, change is ceaseless and forever and love hopes to survive. This piece is a love story dedicated to the neighborhood that raised me from birth to where I am now.” Freddie Bryant
“A crowning achievement in his career”
“A monumental work”
photo by Warren B. Lee
Every neighborhood in New York City has a story to tell, but few have as eloquent and soulful a musical narrator as composer, lyricist and guitarist Freddie Bryant. On his upcoming double CD ‘Upper West Side Love Story’, Bryant crafts a profound work of art – deep, textured and resonant – written from the perspective of someone, from childhood to adulthood, navigating the simple joys, increasing confusion, and, ultimately, the simmering resentments of growing up in a neighborhood that is changing before his very eyes.
Bryant’s opus, an ambitious work for chamber-jazz ensemble, takes the form of a 16-movement song cycle, constructed as hiakus and long form poems, each of which tells a vivid and authentic tale of the beloved neighborhood where he lived most of his life. From childhood memories of his local playground on 87th Street (actually an abandoned space between two buildings,) to post-gig middle-of-the-night walks up Columbus Avenue, to living across the street from legendary artists, to witnessing homelessness and the uprooting of families due to gentrification, ‘Upper West Side Love Story’ spans the emotional spectrum, with music and lyrics by an artist with a tangible, visceral knowledge of the neighborhood and its idiosyncrasies. At times a wistful valentine and at others a melancholy break-up note, the song cycle is ultimately a complicated love letter to the home Bryant lived in for fifty-four years, from birth until 2019, when he moved to the Bronx.
Commissioned by Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program, ‘Upper West Side Love Story’ features an all-star nonet: Carla Cook – vocals, Regina Carter – violin, Donny McCaslin and Steve Wilson on saxophones and flutes, Gwen Laster and Akua Dixon filling out the string section on viola and cello with the rhythm section of bassist John Benitez and drummer Alvester Garnett. The project is set for release on July 7th by Tiger Turn, and is a tour-de-force, conceived by Bryant and executed brilliantly by his remarkable band.
Veteran critic Bill Milkowski, in his companion essay to the upcoming release, describes the diversity of Bryant’s compositions:
“Musically, Bryant’s song cycle ranges from Afro-Cuban bembé and changüí rhythms (“We Used to Dance,” “Love Can’t Live on Nostalgia”) to jaunty swing (the Thelonious Monk-inspired medley of songs based on “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Bright Mississippi and “Green Chimney’s on “A Walk in the Hood”) to soothing ballad to bossa to climactic power ballad (“My Home Sings”), crackling uptempo swing (“High-Rise Kiss”), Afrobeat (“Kidz’s Rhymes: Remember This?”), Brazilian samba groove (“Roses and Rubies: The Cost of What We Lost”), earthy blues (“His Bed Is a Box”) and reggae (“Central Park Life”). Elsewhere, he channels a searching, latter day John Coltrane spirit on “Moses the Pharaoh: Who Will Stay and Who Will Go?,”, then conjures up a Chick Corea-like Latin vibe on “Finale — Spoken Word” and summons a Trane-like “Naima” vibe on the wistful ballad “Last Song: It’s Time to Say Goodbye.” Taken as a whole, Upper West Side Love Story stands as a crowning achievement in his career.” Full text of Milkowski’s expansive essay is below.
A comprehensive accompaniment to the project, including lyrics, artist notes, images and more, is here: https://upperwestsidelovestory.com/.
On the official site, ‘Upper West Side Love Story’ is further described as “a personal history of memories from Bryant’s youth and upbringing as well as a commentary on development and gentrification that is happening world-wide. It covers children’s playground rhymes, the world-renowned musicians and artists who have lived there, the culture and joys of community as well as the challenges of homelessness and crime throughout the 70s/80s until today. It also contextualizes the development and gentrification that has been underway since the early 60s when Lincoln Center was built, discussing issues of race and class.”
In conversation, Freddie Bryant is quick to shine a light on his performers, whether to celebrate Regina Carter’s 2023 NEA Jazz Masters Award or to praise the contributions of McCaslin, Wilson and his full roster of musicians. However, when it comes to vocalist Carla Cook, Bryant can’t contain himself: “She’s like the MVP for bringing this huge amount of music to life. Her performances are powerful, deep and expansive – from poetic, sensitive and childlike to dramatic, gripping and impassioned, with her range going from a low baritone-like alto to soaring soprano. Every song hinges on her singing and storytelling. I don’t know of many vocal performances like this one on a CD or even in a show – what she does here is, to me, very much like a one-person Broadway show. I spent a year writing with her voice in my head, and when we finally met after the Covid quarantine was over she didn’t change a note and tackled 16 diverse songs. She’s Grammy-nominated yet still under-recognized – maybe this could be her moment!”
Bryant also commissioned album art: a mural illustration of the makeshift ‘playground’ that was on his corner from 1968-1972. The playground had a real (abandoned) fire truck, an eight passenger life-boat, a tugboat propeller, handball courts and two bollards (body-sized cleats for boats,) which were painted as sailors. Its surrounding building walls had murals of a sailboat, the Puerto Rican flag and the Puerto Rican revolutionary flag.
The beautiful playground illustration, by Zoe Matthiessen, is showcased on the back of the CD as well as in Bryant’s extensive 16-page booklet of lyrics:
‘Kid’z Rhymes’ will be the first track released from the project premiering on April 20th.
Watch a new video, here:
https://youtu.be/ELxRd7rcUjc
Freddie Bryant shares these song notes on www.upperwestsidelovestory.com :
“My memories of playing on the street as a child, from 6 to 16 roughly…remember that Fire Engine playground mentioned above? Kids of all ages, hanging in packs, parents down the block seeming miles away…The music is inspired by West African and Malian griot music, specifically the beautiful mode of the pentatonic scale that the melody draws from – so simple yet not in our “western” vocabulary. Half way through you’ll hear a transition to the U.S. with an African-American hambone-like a capella/hand clap jam of rhymes of memories from childhood. The same five notes are the building blocks of this section but in a more familiar form before we return to the African version.”
photo by Warren B. Lee
Full Companion Essay, written by Bill Milkowski: An active player on the New York scene for more than 30 years, guitarist-composer Freddie Bryant has worked with a Who’s Who in jazz, including Max Roach, Ben Riley, Eliane Elias, Tom Harrell, Randy Brecker, Claudio Roditi, Sheila Jordan, Dee Dee Bridgwater, Chris Potter and Brad Mehldau. A longtime member of the Monk Legacy Septet and the Mingus Orchestra, he has released seven albums as a leader that showcase his love of jazz, Brazilian and classical music. But nothing that he has done to date is as profoundly personal and affecting as the New York City native’s latest undertaking. A song cycle based on eight haikus and eight long form poems, Upper West Side Love Story is Bryant’s aural reflection on the vibrant neighborhood where he grew up on West 87th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, near the fictional setting of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
Throughout the 90-minute song cycle, Bryant expresses fondness and heartfelt nostalgia for his old ‘hood while also addressing the darker side of drugs, crime, redlining, homelessness and emerging gentrification. Commissioned by Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program and funded through the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, this monumental work captures a slice of New York City history that is both personal and life-affirming to the composer.
As he wrote on upperwestsidelovestory.com:
“A love story is about beginnings, about excitement and nurturing growth – love through joy and adversity over many years. And sometimes it’s about growing distant, rejection and the search for the magic that seems to fade into distant memories. Either way, change is ceaseless and forever and love hopes to survive.”
Backed by a stellar crew of fellow New York musicians —saxophonists Donny McCaslin and Steve Wilson, Regina Carter on violin, violist Gwen Laster, cellist Akua Dixon, bassist John Benitez and drummer Alvester Garnett and featuring the radiant vocals of Carla Cook — Bryant leads this musical journey through the neighborhood where he lived for 54 years from birth until 2019, when he moved to Riverdale in the Bronx. His impressionistic brushstroke of his old ‘hood runs down a long list of children’s playground rhymes (“Kidz Rhymes: Remember This?”) and recounts the numerous world-renowned jazz and classical musicians from, Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller and Billie Holiday to opera singers Betty Allen, William Warfield and Leontyne Price, who lived there over time (“A Walk in the ‘Hood”). He revels in the culture and joys of community (“We Used to Dance,” “My Home Sings,” “Central Park Life”) while also pointing to the challenges of homelessness (“His Bed Is a Box”) and crime (“Always Be Aware”). The song cycle also contextualizes the development and gentrification that has been underway since the early ‘60s when Lincoln Center was built (“Moses the Pharaoh: Who Will Stay and Who Will Go,” which addresses developer Robert Moses, “the prophet for profit,” razing so-called slums and dividing neighborhoods in the 1960s). But Bryant’s final take-away, to this day, remains: “Growing up in the neighborhood was a beautiful thing.”
Though he had gotten his CMA grant in 2019 and wrote all the hiakus and long form poems and composed all the music for Upper West Side Love Story during the pandemic, Bryant wasn’t able to perform the piece in public, due to COVID, until March 24, 2022, when it premiered at Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity in Florence/Northampton, MA. It was subsequently performed on Sept. 11 at the Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock, NY and also at CCNY’s historic Aaron Davis Hall in New York City on Oct. 6. He described those riveting performances of Upper West Side Love Story as “the most important and unique events in my career.”
Bryant’s haikus that serve as cinematic interludes throughout the song cycle vividly capture a particular feeling about some aspect of his old neighborhood. “Columbus/Quiet” is an evocation of a gentle snowfall on Columbus Avenue at night while “Life of the Playground” conjures up the old discarded red fire engine that children used to freely play in. “Lost MJLP” recounts the feeling of despair that young Freddie felt after realizing he had left his copy of Michael Jackson’s first album, Got to Be There, on the Broadway M104 bus. Other nostalgic haikus recall his first kiss, the sight of a homeless man living in a box on the sidewalk, memories of kids smoking weed and listening to reggae in Central Park, and his harrowing 3 a.m. walk back home after a gig at Augies with his guitar and amp in tow. The long form poems deal with more complex issues happening in the ‘hood back in the day, both positive and negative. Robert Moses’ property grab is addressed in “Moses the Pharaoh: Who Will Stay and Who Will Go?” while “Roses and Rubies: The Cost of What We Lost” finds Freddie choosing to look back at his neighborhood with a glass half full attitude rather than half empty. The finale has Bryant resolving to leave his dear old ‘hood: But now I look within/My heart is the ‘hood I must live in and saying a final goodbye: You’ve gone and left me now/Memories more beautiful each passing day/Our life was a vow/That faded as we turned to grey.
As the guitarist-composer-lyricist explained, “I did interview several people before I wrote the lyrics so it’s not entirely 100% biographical about me. And it’s not meant to be an absolute historical account of the neighborhood. It’s just personal and kind of what came to mind when I was writing during the pandemic.”
Musically, Bryant’s song cycle ranges from Afro-Cuban bembé and changüí rhythms (“We Used to Dance,” “Love Can’t Live on Nostalgia”) to jaunty swing (the Thelonious Monk-inspired medley of songs based on “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Bright Mississippi and “Green Chimney’s on “A Walk in the Hood”) to soothing ballad to bossa to climactic power ballad (“My Home Sings”), crackling uptempo swing (“High-Rise Kiss”), Afrobeat (“Kidz’s Rhymes: Remember This?”), Brazilian samba groove (“Roses and Rubies: The Cost of What We Lost”), earthy blues (“His Bed Is a Box”) and reggae (“Central Park Life”). Elsewhere, he channels a searching, latter day John Coltrane spirit on “Moses the Pharaoh: Who Will Stay and Who Will Go?,”, then conjures up a Chick Corea-like Latin vibe on “Finale — Spoken Word” and summons a Trane-like “Naima” vibe on the wistful ballad “Last Song: It’s Time to Say Goodbye.”
Taken as a whole, Upper West Side Love Story stands as a crowning achievement in his career. Watch for the upcoming release of a CD in early 2023 and accompanying music videos by filmmaker Heather White of each song from Bryant’s masterwork.
The son of professional musicians in an interracial marriage (his African-American mother, Beatrice Rippy, was a concert and opera singer while his white father, Carroll Hollister, was a concert pianist), Bryant was exposed to music at an early age, actually making his first appearance on stage at age six as page turner in New York’s historic Town Hall. He picked up guitar at age eight and later studied classical guitar with Jeff Israel and jazz guitar with Sal Salvador, Gene Bertoncinni and Ted Dunbar. Graduating Summa Cum Laude from Amherst College in 1987, he later studied classical guitar with Ben Verdery at the Yale School of Music, receiving his Masters degree in 1994. He has been on the faculty at the Berklee College of Music in Boston since 2011.
More About Freddie Bryant: https://upperwestsidelovestory.com/freddie-bryant/
Freddie Bryant received a master’s degree in classical guitar from Yale School of Music and is in demand in the New York jazz and Brazilian scenes where he has worked with Eliane Elias, Tom Harrell and many others. He was a member of Ben Riley’s Monk Legacy Septet and has played with the Mingus Orchestra for two decades. He leads his own group, Kaleidoscope, and has released eight CDs as a leader. His impressive array of guitar styles have been featured on numerous CDs showcasing his work on acoustic and electric guitars.
His touring has brought him to 55 countries where he collaborated with musicians from a variety of backgrounds, including Indian classical musicians, African singers, oud players, traditional Arab groups and klezmer bands. In 2006, Bryant spent a week in Cuba, performing solo and working with other Cuban musicians. As an impassioned educator, he has taught jazz to all ages around the world and is on the faculties of Berklee College of Music in Boston and Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen, Holland. 2017 saw the World premiere at the London Human Rights Watch Film Festival of Complicit with his music score.
He was a recipient of the CMA New Jazz Works Composition Grant and the resulting piece, Upper West Side Love Story: a song cycle was premiered in 2022 and will be released as a double CD in 2023. It is an epic work – 16 movements/92 minutes for a nine-piece jazz ensemble featuring the all-star cast of Carla Cook, Regina Carter, Donny McCaslin, Steve Wilson, Akua Dixon, Gwen Laster, John Benitez and Alvester Garnett.
His eight CDs include: Monk Restrung, celebrating the music of Thelonious Monk, Dreamscape: Solo, Duo, Trio featuring Chris Potter and Scott Colley, Live Grooves…Epic Tales with his band Kaleidoscope including Donny McCaslin and Yosvany Terry, Brazilian Rosewood, Boogaloo Brasileiro, Live at Smoke with Steve Wilson, Chris Cheek, Diego Urcola, Edward Simon, Edsel Gomez, Avishai Cohen and Jordi Rossy, Take Your Dance into Battle with Don Braden, Ira Coleman and Billy Drummond as well as Trio del Sol co-led with Misha Piatigorsky and Gilad.
‘Upper West Side Love Story’ – Album cover photo by Warren B. Lee
On September 11, 2022, Bryant previewed his upcoming double CD with a live performance at the Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock, NY. Read the concert review, here:
Extensive Song-by-Song Notes, by Freddie Bryant: https://upperwestsidelovestory.com/notes/
Visit: https://upperwestsidelovestory.com/
Visit: https://www.freddiebryant.com/
For more information about Upper West Side Love Story, or to request an interview with Freddie Bryant, contact seth@sethcohenpr.com, www.sethcohenpr.com