This is a big cultural integration project in which I am working together with my Big Band, “Movimiento Cultural Jazz a la Calle” and the U.S. Embassy in Uruguay.
At this moment I am writing music for my 20 piece Big Band that integrates the Uruguayan and U.S.A. cultures with which we have been performing for 2 years around Boston.
From January 9th to the 21st of 2009, thanks to the support of the U.S. Embassy, we traveled with some of the members of the band to perform some concerts and give clinics in Uruguay and we were part of the "Jazz a la Calle Jazz Festival", where the members of the band had the opportunity of interchange knowledge with other musicians from various parts of South America. At the end of the festival we put together a Big Band integrated by American and Uruguayan musicians with which we later performed some concerts in Montevideo.
It was such a beneficial experience for all of us, because the approach to the music is so different in both places and both have so many valuable things to share.
Now we have some more concerts during 2009 with the Big Band here in Boston and next Januaryof 2010 we are traveling again , this time taking even more members of the band.
I am really excited about this project!
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INTEGRATION
FLORENCIA GONZALEZ BIG BAND
This CD will be recorded during spring of 2009. Collaborating with me on this project is an amazing group of musicians with whom I will be doing several concerts next year.
I am really excited about this album which gives me the opportunity to compose for a 20 piece big band.
Here I have this HUGE palette of musical colors and I am in the process of trying to master all these great arranging techniques that I am learning from great musicians such as Greg Hopkins, Duke
Ellington and Gill Evans and incorporate them to my music which comes from another place. Now this is where it gets complicated. When I want to arrange a Tango or a Candombe for a Big Band formation, I still try to learn from Piazzolla, Gandini and Maria Schneider's experience but I want to give it my own personal approach, make it totally my own. One wants to be authentic, but at the same time effectively use this huge sound creature called Big Band.
Challenging………..
There are so many possibilities that only thinking about it makes me
not able to sleep!
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ENTRE DOS AMORES
(Between two loves)
This CD will be recorded at the beginning of 2009 and will include all tunes composed at the beginning of my life here at the States.
I came from Uruguay to pursue this love called music, leaving so many things behind. Having these 2 desires pulling from both sides……….. my love for my little country and all the people that I love too much, and on the other side the music, such a true love, too that I found it impossible not to go after it. I Felt that I was just floating in between these 2 loves, being able to feel 2 strong energies pulling from either side and I in the middle, floating without being able to go to one side or the other, at the mercy of them……
It was a very emotional moment in my life, very intense, very stressful, lots of joys, lots of blues, times in which I discovered parts of me that were asleep until that moment, and also times in which I had to pretend that other parts of me were asleep just in order to keep going.
These Tunes were very influenced by the rhythms brought from my country, but were also starting to incorporate elements of Monk’s Coltrane and Bartok’s music.
It comes from a period of searches, in which I learned a lot from an exhaustive analysis of great masters’ music and in which I learned a lot from the deep analysis of the music of my own country in order to be able to incorporate these new elements to my own music.
This CD will be recorded with people from here and from there, great musicians with which I play here in the States and great musicians with which I play there in Uruguay.
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CAMINO
(Track)
This CD will be recorded at he end of 2009 and will include tunes composed during my last term before finishing my studies here in the States.
I had been feeling much stronger as a composer and as a musician, and I knew for the first time in my life where I was headed in my musical search. I was aware that I had a long, long way to go, but I also had confidence that I was on the right track.
With the fear gone away, I entered a period of more confidence as I became adapted to this new life. I knew that I love my country with all my being, but that for the time being I could not return because I had so much to learn here. Going through a more stable period, where so many things had matured not only in the compositional sense, but also in the personal search.
Tunes became a little more jazzy. There is more freedom in the arrangements.
The Music became less prejudiced, a little more experimental, but more practical at the same time. This music Leaves aside for a moment Coltrane Changes to truly admire the beauty of a good melody and most of all, the strength of a good melody, and opens the mind to new techniques, such as serialism, sometimes leaving aside even tonality in order to try to discover the fundamentals of the music.
An exploration and delving into all the huge complexity that really exists under a simplicity that works, learning, in this sense, from composers such as Alban Berg, Billy Strayhorn, Wayne Shorter, Giuseppe Verdi and of course, Monk and Bartok.
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TABLEAUX DE PROVENCE FOR BIG BAND
FLORENCIA GONZALEZ BIG BAND
Tableaux de Provence is a suite for alto saxophone and piano, written by the French composer Paule Maurice in the late fifties. She is not very well known, but really respected as an educator and composer while living.
I discovered this piece while studying classical saxophone at the conservatory and I fell in love with it immediately. Its melodies are so pure, so minimalist, and its harmonies so colorful…..
I read that the actual piece was written for alto and orchestra, and that really the piano part is just a reduction of the orchestral part, but I have been looking for this score for years, and still haven't been able to find it. So when I put together this huge big band, which is almost a jazz orchestra, having so many colors to work with I decided to arrange the IV movement of this suite for the big band. I did some changes though, opened the 2 parts for 24 instruments, added a little more tension here and there, opened the form up for solos and twisted it more to the jazz side.
I think it turned out very successfully. So here I am, taking this one step further, arranging the whole suite now for big band, giving even more color to this masterpiece.
It is a pretty challenging piece, but the musicians with which I am working are absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to hear them performing it!
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SIMPLE TANGOS
The idea of doing this CD started while recording a demo to work for cocktails in a duo with a guitar player. We were recording this tango and of course while playing it I was singing all the lyrics to myself. And at some point I forgot one part of the lyrics and I was amazed to discover that I couldn’t keep playing it. It made no sense at all!
I love tangos and I love singing them all over the place. I know absolutely all the lyrics of all of them, and they are gold! The harmonies are pretty simple, but the melodies go together with the lyrics in such perfect conjunction! The melodies are just telling the same thing that lyrics are telling but through the music, and that’s exactly what makes tangos such great music.
So now the question is: is it possible to sing the melodies with just my saxophone and make people feel all those things that I am singing for myself in words while I am playing?
Why not? So many melodies make me cry! I want to leave aside for a moment all those twisted solos and super complex arrangements, and enjoy the simplicity of playing a beautiful and expressive melody, accompanied just by a beautiful and simple guitar harmony and make people who don’t know these great lyrics feel all these intense things that these tangos are telling solely through their melodies…...
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FLORENCIA GONZALEZ AND YUKO YAMAMURA SEXTET
This is the first CD that my good friend Yuko Yamamura and I are recording with a sextet where we play compositions and arrangements written by both of us.
The CD will include some of the best tunes of our repertoire, that basically combine my South American and jazzy background with the uniqueness of Yuko’s style, more free jazz and fusion oriented.
Our styles are pretty different, but we are both in the same frequency, with an open mind to new possibilities, sounds and styles. Both of us have a strong classical background yet more contemporary oriented which we combine with popular music, taking it to the extreme and trying to see where we get.
We have been performing with this sextet for some years around the Boston and New York area and finally we made the decision to join our efforts in this new project.
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FREEDOM
This CD is still in process. The tunes are the ones that I am writing now at this moment in my life in which I have so many options to choose from.
Every day I wake up with a new musical project on my hands and I go with absolutely all of them. Letting myself go with the flow and see where it leads.
And that’s exactly what I want to express musically. I want to leave aside prejudices, take an idea or even a style, validate the uniqueness that I find there and go with it to see where I get. Trying to be as honest as possible in my writing and see what happens.
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