New York, NY (Top40 Charts) People Magazine, in Exclusive Song Premiere, Praises "Touching...Poignant" New Single from Jana Herzen
Jazziz and Elmore Premiere Tracks from Upcoming Album as Well
Preview Concert at Joe's Pub Set for 10/29
'Nothing But Love' Out 1/17/20 on Motéma - Collection of Folk, Pop, World And Jazz Originals Tells a Tale of Love in Many Guises, at Times Evoking Artists Christine McVie,
Maria Muldaur and
Joni Mitchell Among Others
National coverage has begun to build for singer/songwriter/guitarist Jana Herzen's upcoming 1/17/20 album 'Nothing But Love'. In an Exclusive Song Premiere, People Magazine praised the album's first single 'With an Open Heart' as "touching" and "poignant", adding that Herzen's work is "imbued...(with)...color and character".
In a simultaneous national placement, Jazziz Magazine Exclusively Premiered Herzen's new single "Lightening the Load", and the link is below.
Elmore premiered a track as well, 'On The Outside' -- link is below.
The three songs are available now, and will appear on 'Nothing But Love', released by the multi-GRAMMY® winning Motéma label.
On October 29th in New York City, Herzen will preview the 2020 album with a concert at Joe's Pub. Tickets here:
https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2019/j/jana-herzen/
People Magazine - Exclusive Song Premiere/article
https://people.com/music/jana-herzen-with-an-open-heart-premiere/
Song Premiere: Hear Jana Herzen's Touching New Track 'With an Open Heart'; Jana Herzen will preview the release of Nothing But Love with a concert on Oct. 29 at Joe's Pub in New York City
Singer, songwriter and storyteller Jana Herzen will release her new album Nothing But Love on Jan. 17, 2020 - but today PEOPLE can exclusively premiere the disc's first track, "With an Open Heart." "The songs on my new album explore many kinds of love: romantic love, familial love, compassionate love, joyful communion, and also that mysterious kind of love that feels like pain and is apparently required so that we may learn to love deeply," she tells PEOPLE. "'With an Open Heart' sits at the center of the album as a turning point and an invitation. The lyrics came to me while exploring a fun interlocking rhythmic pattern on my guitar.
She adds that the song has its genesis in "two people at the brink of love, each afraid to admit their feelings for fear that the other might not feel the same way. They're afraid to listen to their hearts. But listen they must if they wish to love."
"With an Open Heart" closes with the poignant lines: "Every soul, with a heart that's closed, will suffer from the thorns and never smell the rose."
"My sincere hope is that the song may encourage people to smell the rose," Herzen adds.
Herzen's rich past imbues her work with color and character. Born to famed Stanford professors Leonard and Leonore A. Herzenberg, Herzen's artistic path led her through London and New York City as a theatrical artist before founding her own multi-Grammy winning label, Motéma, in 2003, which boasts the talents of Gregory Porter, Joey
Alexander and Terri Lyne Carrington, among others.
Since then, she's released two solo albums - Soup's on Fire (2003) and
Passion of a Lonely
Heart (2012).
Herzen will preview the release of Nothing But Love with a concert on Oct. 29 at Joe's Pub in New York City. Tour dates and the release of additional tracks from the album sessions will be announced soon for 2020.
Jazziz - Exclusive Song Premiere
By Matt Micucci 10/2019
https://www.jazziz.com/new-music-monday-jana-herzen-pat-irwin-and-j-walter-hawkes-more/
JAZZIZ is happy to present the premiere of "Lightening the Load" from Nothing but Love, the new album by singer/songwriter/guitarist Jana Herzen, which is due out January 17 via Motéma. She explains to us in a statement that the song started out as a stream of consciousness poem she wrote at a jazz bar in 1985, developed into a song that she performed live now and then throughout the years and re-proposed itself when it came time to select songs for her new album. "It seemed to me that an album called Nothing But Love should have a wedding song on it, no matter how wacky," she says. Herzen will perform an album preview concert at Joe's Pub in New York City on October 29.
Elmore - Exclusive Song Premiere -
10/2019
https://www.elmoremagazine.com/2019/10/music-news/jana-herzen-on-the-outside
Jana Herzen On the Outside, looking inward
Singer/Songwriter/Label founder has Nothing But Love
Jana Herzen's varied and colorful history infuses her writing. Raised by activist scientists, her early career as a theater artist led her to London and then to New York City, where she became a founding member for the award-winning and influential MCC Theater. After ten years with MCC, she traveled the world extensively, recorded her first album, and founded her Motéma record label.
Through the next 16 years, Herzen never lost sight of her journey as a singer, composer, and instrumentalist. Her deep immersion in diverse styles highlight the production and arrangements of her new album Nothing But Love, which drops January 17, 2020. With its unexpected juxtapositions of loss and melancholy alongside eye-winking fun and the courage let the sun back in, Nothing But Love offers a complex, sophisticated collection of folk/pop/world/jazz originals. Recorded live by a group of seasoned jazz musicians whose chemistry is palpable, each instrumentalist brings a special gift to the table, and Herzen's own guitar work plays a key role in leading the arrangements.
Herzen's rich, milky and confident vocals lead us through the album, and the driving rhythms and quirky lyrics of the standout track "
On The Outside" ushers in the most quirky, wild and jam-based side of the album's chameleon sound.
Herzen told Elmore, "I wrote 'On the Outside' in the last year of the
20th Century amidst some self-searching that happened also to be at the height of the Y2K scare. Remember that? Doomsday theories were going around about how the world's infrastructure was going to collapse in the first second of the new Millenium due to faulty mainframe computer clocks. I happen to have been hanging out at the time with some punk visual artists on the San Francisco scene who were using some pretty wild imagery in their art. Some of those images wound up in this song, which illustrates, to a pretty rocking groove, the timeless truth that love, peace, and strength are really inside jobs. Thinking back, I believe it was a read through Viktor Frankl's' Man's Search for Meaning' which first brought this truth to my awareness."
Nothing But Love marks over a decade of collaboration between Herzen and Charnett Moffett, acclaimed as one of the most innovative and virtuosic bassists in jazz. Herzen's label, Motéma Music, has 20 Grammy nominations with four wins and has recorded new artists, legends and politically conscious groups.
Read the Full Press Release for Nothing But Love Here:
On 'Nothing But Love', Jana Herzen's diverse, soulful and sophisticated collection of folk/pop/world/jazz originals, the singer-songwriter and guitarist reaches new heights as a storyteller and composer.
With its unexpected juxtapositions of isolation, loss, and melancholy, alongside eye winking fun, hopeful 'turning the page' and finding the courage to consider letting the sun back in, 'Nothing But Love' offers a complex portrait of a force that, in Herzen's words, 'makes the world go 'round'. "This cycle of 12 songs -one of which I wrote on a napkin in an NYC jazz club as far back as the 1980's- has long desired to see the light of day." she explains. "Each song is inspired by a particular moment, place, or person in my life. Together, they tell a tale of love in many guises."
Herzen's varied and colorful history infuses her writing. Raised by famed activist scientists Leonard and Leonore A. Herzenberg of Stanford University, her initial calling as a theater artist led her to London and then to New York City in the 1980s where she eventually became a founding member and dramaturge for the award-winning and influential MCC Theater. After ten years with MCC, she then traveled the world extensively, recorded her first album, Soup's on Fire, and eventually founded her tastemaker Motéma label in 2003.
Though she has primarily devoted her last sixteen years to leading Motéma, Herzen has never lost sight of her journey as a singer, composer, and instrumentalist. The influences of her deep immersion in diverse styles of music show up in the production and arrangements of 'Nothing But Love'. The album's soundscape benefits from the vibrancy and immediacy of being recorded 'live in the studio' by a group of seasoned jazz musicians with a shared history of working together. The chemistry of the band is palpable. Each instrumentalist brings a special gift to the table, including Herzen whose guitar work plays a key role in leading the arrangements.
As a vocalist, Herzen's rich, milky and confident tone is warmly inviting as it leads us through the journey of "Nothing But Love." The song-cycle opens with the title track, a swaggering guitar-driven blues/reggae/country vibe that packs a humorous spiritual punch. Next is the mournful, smart and redemptive "
Speak" a story of lost love and found freedom set to six-eight rhythms born of Herzen's love for African music. "
Speak" is further elevated by a memorable song structure and instrumental interplay.
The driving rhythms and Dadaist lyrics of the standout third track "On The Outside," usher in the most quirky, wild and jam-based side of the album's chameleon sound. Then a jazzy world of smoke and loss move the narrative through Herzen's original Cuban Montuno "My Latin Love" and her haunting jazz ballad "Night Blooming Jasmine. "
Then there's an interesting cinematic shift on "With An Open Heart." Lightness starts peeking through. As the verses evolve - her story, then his story, then our story - all souls experiencing love from a different perspective - a door opens to new love, paving the way to Herzen's Tom Waits-esque wedding song, "Lightening The Load," and her celebratory "High Time", set to infectious African Soukous rhythms and affirming the triumph of light over darkness.
Winding up the journey, are Herzen's reggae/pop song "Like A River," which flows with the joy of love, trust and partnership; the deeply heartfelt "Thinking of You," an ode to familial love, loss, and redemption; the expansive "Precious Air," written in the Australian Outback; and the stand-out closer, the dark and powerful, yet oddly aspirational, 'Name of Love' which urges us to "please trust in something that's higher."
Throughout the program, Herzen's understated vocal delivery shifts to suit the mood, style, and story at hand, and at times subtly evokes artists who've preceded her - the warm contralto of Christine McVie, for example, or the sensual, yet humorous and wide-ranging vocals of a
Maria Muldaur. Meanwhile, her lyrics and musical style at times can bring to mind such forebears as Joni Mitchell,
Paul Simon or Suzanne Vega.
The album's instrumentation is also particularly engaging and quietly powerful: Supporting Herzen's vocals and electro-acoustic guitar, are co-producer and
Music Director Charnett Moffett's groove-solid and vocal-like fretless electric bass lines; Brian Jackson (the keyboard wizard behind the production of Gil Scott-Heron's albums) faithfully underscores the soul of each song with just the right chords and colors; the versatile and much-in-demand drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr, brings both grit and groove; and rising star violinist Scott Tixier plays inspired and imaginative lines that succeed at conveying or supplementing a wide range of emotions, from playful to mournful, beautifully complimenting Herzen's multi-timbered voice.
Nothing But Love marks a growing collaboration between Herzen and Moffett, now in their eleventh year of working together since he was first signed to Motema in 2008. Their prior collaborative albums are - 'Passion of a Lonely Heart' a vocal, guitar and bass duo project released in 2012, which they toured internationally; Nett Duo 'Overtones', an instrumental bass and guitar project released in 2018; and most recently Moffett's 2019 free-jazz-meets-rock-meets-classical opus 'Bright New Day', on which Herzen plays guitar in his quintet. Notably, it was her experience performing and recording with Moffett's Bright New Day quintet that led her to use the same personnel on this album. Moffett, who is acclaimed as one of the most innovative, and virtuosic bassists in jazz comments, "Jana's poetic voice has a sensibility that touches the heart and soul. Her journey in life has led her to various styles of music that join together here to create a rainbow of song that expresses the many different colors of love."
Herzen will preview the release of Nothing But Love with an October 29th concert at Joe's Pub in New York City. Tour dates and the release of additional tracks from the album sessions will be announced soon for 2020.
"She is a composer, guitarist and lyricist whose performances are imaginative and soulful." - Jazz Times
"Herzen presents warmly wrought jazz-pop." - Time Out, NY
"Absolute Intimacy." - Gary Walker, WBGO
ABOUT MOTÉMA:
Motéma
Music is an award-winning independent label founded in by Jana Herzen in San Francisco in 2003 and now based in Harlem in New York City. The label has twenty GRAMMY nominations and four wins and has been recognized in the genres of jazz, reggae and R&B. Motema has launched recording careers for such international stars as Gregory Porter, Joey Alexander, Pedrito Martinez and Deva Mahal. It has also provided an avenue of expression for jazz legends Randy Weston and Monty Alexander, released music by jazz innovators Geri Allen,
David Murray and Charnett Moffett and provided an outlet for important leaders in the vanguard of contemporary jazz including Donny McCaslin, Marc Guiliana, Ben Wendel and Melissa Aldana. The label also supports politically conscious groups such as Playing for Change, Jaimeo Brown's Transcendence, and most recently Terri Lyne Carrington's Social Science, which will street an epic, star-studded double-album on November 8th. Learn more at www.motema.com
Visit: www.janaherzen.net
Linkfire: https://orcd.co/janaherzen
More about the album here: https://motema.com/releases/nothing-but-love/
More about Jana Herzen here: https://motema.com/artists/jana-herzen/
