Bio:
Amy K. Bormet is an in-demand pianist, vocalist, and composer. The quintet from her debut album, Striking, was featured as part of the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center. As an advocate for women in music, Amy created the Washington Women in Jazz Festival in 2011 and continues to serve as executive director. One of Amy K Bormet’s latest projects, Ephemera, is a platform for her new art songs with improvisation. Ephemera performed a two-week tour of Sweden.
Along with her performance career, Ms. Bormet is a prolific composer frequently combining improvisation with concert music. Recently Amy composed several pieces for the Capital City Symphony and her jazz ensemble, and premiered a concert of new works for string quartet and her jazz piano trio at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has been commissioned to write for Wild Up’s Work concert for classical bassist/vocalist Maggie Hasspacher, the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Afro-Blue, Howard University Jazz Ensemble, and the Brad Linde Ensemble among others. In addition to her albums, Amy’s recorded music can be heard in short films, radio dramas, and audio books.
Amy is an alumna of the Kennedy Center’s residency program for composer/performers, Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead, the inaugural Mary Lou Williams Emerging Artist Workshop, and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestral Institute (American Composer’s Orchestra). She received her bachelor’s degree in Jazz Studies/Piano Performance from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Ellen Rowe and Geri Allen, and her master’s degree in Jazz Studies from Howard University.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Amy Bormet led her trio through an enticing set of standards and originals, starting off with a fetching reading of Miles Davis’ “Nardis” and adding a winning makeover of “Stella By Starlight.” Although, she often plays acoustic piano, her considerable improvisations and melodic acumen shone through the electric keyboard at Hillfest, as drummer Terence Arnett and electric bassist Tarus Mateen spurred her forward… [S]he brings a contemporary bite to her originals, as with the deliciously snarky mid-tempo “Maybe She Knows,” the melancholy “Goodbye Waltz” and the groove-laden “Closer.”
– Downbeat
“We have been tracking her career as she has been making her way, as her star is on the rise…Amy Bormet’s “Striking” is the name of her group, and an apt description of Bormet herself.”
– Kevin Struthers, Director of Jazz Programming at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
“If you know your D.C. jazz, you almost certainly know pianist Amy K. Bormet. She’s the backbone of the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra; the architect of [the] Washington Women In Jazz Festival; a favorite accompanist for a variety of leaders, bands, and styles; a surprisingly accomplished singer; and one of the funniest people in town. What you may not know is that she’s a formidable composer and arranger, too. That’s certainly what you’ll find if you give a listen to her new self-released album, Striking: It’s an expertly played, handsomely sung record of mostly her own work (and a few standards) that shows not only her technical chops but a remarkable ear for harmony—and, more subtly, a delectable rhythmic sense and precision…”
– Washington City Paper
“Bormet performed a lovely set of original music with her “Striking” quintet, and often doubled on vocals in a high voice evocative of 1930s jazz singers.”
– Jazztimes
“On her debut solo release, Striking, pianist and vocalist Amy K Bormet blends elements that don’t often come together: Original songs that have a distinct pop sensibility mesh with considerable jazz chops from Bormet and her fellow instrumentalists…”
– capitalbop.com
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).