Bio:
Bending the future of sound, taking ivory and ebony to destinations unknown, is keyboard maestro, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger and astral traveler Brandon Coleman. A regular fixture with Babyface, Donald Glover, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington’s band, Coleman represents a new chapter in the evolution of jazz and funk fusion. His celebrated sophomore album, Resistance, released in late 2018, brought him “All Around The World” to Japan, South America, and Europe alongside Kamasi and traveling North America to support Flying Lotus, with his future funk band, Brandon Coleman’s SpaceTalker.
“For those accustomed to Coleman’s role laying the foundation for expansive spiritual-jazz explorations in Kamasi Washington’s band, it’s revelatory to hear him so spry on his feet and down to get down. If his work with Washington contains all the weight and gravitas of Sunday church, Coleman’s Resistance has all the fun, breeziness- and yes, sunlight- of an afternoon church picnic,” said Andy Beta of Pitchfork. At a typical Brandon Coleman show, whether trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet or SpaceTalker, it’s common to get the entire Sunday extravaganza.
from https://www.foxperformances.com/artist-roster/brandon-coleman
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Brainfeeder is proud to present “Resistance” - a funk odyssey by keyboard maestro, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger and astral traveller Brandon Coleman. A regular fixture in the Kamasi Washington band, wylin’ out on the keys or wielding his keytar, he is introduced onstage at gigs as “Professor Boogie” by his longtime friend and collaborator. “Resistance” represents a new chapter in the Funk dynasty that spans George Clinton / Parliament Funkadelic and Zapp through to Dr. Dre, DJ Quik and Dam Funk as the Los Angeles resident salutes his musical heroes - Herbie Hancock, Peter Frampton, Roger Troutman - and honours their ethos of freedom and experimentation in his search for Funk’s future.
“Resistance” is a powerful statement from an artist who is passionate about hybridity and innovation - stitching together threads from jazz, disco, boogie, R&B, electro, soul and Funk. “I’ve been in the studio a lot in recent years, writing with this or that artist and I always felt constrained… like I had to compromise and submit to a ‘pop’ sensibility,” he explains. “This time I just wanted to create something that was really free… something original… to incorporate all the styles that I represent, because often when I’ve tried to do that in the past it’s been met with resistance.”
The list of artists with whom Coleman has collaborated is simultaneously inspiring and exhausting. From Ciara to Mulatu Astatke and Childish Gambino to Shuggie Otis… but one of his most consistent studio partners during the last decade has been R&B icon Babyface. “I’ve learned a lot from him… working on countless projects… he would just call me at any time and say: ‘Hey man, I’m in the studio with Aretha Franklin at the piano and I want you to come in and help us arrange some songs.’ And I would be like: ‘Erm ok, I’m on my way’,” he shakes his head and laughs. “Those experiences shaped the way I hear and appreciate music”.
Coleman’s epiphany came aged 16 when he’d only really just taken up piano. “My brother gave me a Herbie Hancock record - ‘Sunlight’,” he says. “I put it on and just kept listening to it on repeat ‘cos I couldn’t fathom how he was singing like that… it sounded electric. That was it for me.” Utterly bewitched by the marriage of human touch and robotic texture in those vocals, he moved on to Peter Frampton and Roger Troutman (celebrated for their mastery of the talk box) and decided to create his own signature synth patch for his vocals. “I wanted to take it further… if Siri could sing, this is how Siri would sing,” he laughs.
It is fitting that “Resistance” should arrive on the imprint founded by Flying Lotus - a perpetual free-thinker and champion of genre-exploding. “I can remember the first time I met him,” says Brandon. “It was at a ‘Suite For Ma Dukes’ rehearsal with Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and I walked in and noticed this mad set-up with crazy pedals and stuff and I’m usually the guy who has that. Who the hell does this guy think he is, doing what I do but different gear?… and then I was like ‘Holy shit - this is Flying Lotus!’” The pair have subsequently worked together on music for Bladerunner, FlyLo’s directorial debut Kuso and Brandon plays on “Until The Quiet Comes” and “You’re Dead!” too. It was an easy decision to sign the album to Brainfeeder: “It just feels like family, y’know?”, he explains. “Stephen [Thundercat] is there… plus I’ve toured a lot with Kamasi and the type of shows we were playing - the venues and the crowds - it wasn’t a jazz audience and I dug that. I feel like that was something that Brainfeeder brought to the table”.
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).