New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Ancient Future Records) - Featuring Mariah Parker (piano, santur), Paul McCandless (woodwinds, horns), Matthew Montfort (guitars), Kash Killion (bass, cello), Mindia Devi Klein (flutes), Duru Demetrius (Latin percussion), Debopriyo Sarkar (tabla), Brian Rice (percussion)
Mariah Parker's debut recording features her original compositions that draw musical inspiration from Brazil, Cuba, Spain, and India. Her Indo Latin Jazz Ensemble accompanies her and includes musicians from the bands Ancient Future, Oregon, Sun Ra, and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters.
"Parker and friends blend the rhythmic syncopations of Latin jazz music with the entrancing, asymmetrical meters of East Indian rhythms resulting in first-class world music. Intriguing melodies that draw musical inspirations from the tempos of Brazil, Cuba, India, and Spain make for an uplifting serene yet passionate musical journey into an ideal world." - LATIN BEAT MAGAZINE
"Dazzling debut.... Parker's subtle and sensuous sounds reflect exotic flavors of India, the Middle East and Latin America." - PALO ALTO DAILY NEWS
"Although entirely instrumental, Sangria speaks. Maybe it's the technical virtuosity abounding in the multiplicity of sounds - in the santur or sarangi, or the tabla or timbales. Maybe it's in the emotive resonance of what's behind the sounds, like the longing of separation in "Between the Lines," where Parker's fingers dance across the keys in precise, measured movements, in graceful arching and sweeping strokes, or in the spectacle of wonder in "Debajo De La Lluvia" or the "Tenth Journey." Whatever it is, Parker's Sangria is a lively, adventurous exploration into a hybrid global identity." - LEO WEEKLY
"Parker brings a wide variety of influences to Sangria, ranging from Indian and Middle Eastern music to Afro-Cuban salsa and Brazilian samba. She obviously appreciates the Eastern-influenced spirituality and mysticism of John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, and Lonnie Liston Smith, but her composing also contains elements of everyone from Pat Metheny to Chick Corea.... Parker, of course, didn't invent the idea of world jazza^ but she keeps it moving forward... demonstrating that the fusion of jazz and world music still has plenty of possibilities after all these years - and a global perspective serves Parker well throughout the rewarding Sangria." - ALL MUSIC GUIDE
"This collection of eight original instrumentals by Mariah Parker is just one of many examples of the infusion of East Indian music into Western music, but to my ears one of the most successful." - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION
BIO
Mariah Parker (composer and multi-instrumentalist), while completing her degree in music at UC Santa Cruz, worked with ethnomusicologist Fred Lieberman and Mickey Hart on the "Planet Drum" project. She has performed in the US and Europe, and worked with many musicians of note including composer Pauline Oliveros, the late Dumisani Maraire (renowned composer from Zimbabwe) and others. She has studied with jazz great Art Lande and Latin jazz pianist extraordinaire Rebeca Maule'on, and performs regularly with the trend-setting world music group Ancient Future.
