What's Up?
“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.”
-Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
Life & Work
Bio:
Fay Victor, a sound artist and composer based in Brooklyn, NY, has crafted a distinct vision for the role of vocals in jazz and improvised music, exploring repertoire, improvisation, and composition in a unique way. Embracing an "everything is everything" approach, Victor leverages the freedom of the moment to shape musical responses, seeing the vocal instrument as a boundless avenue for sonic exploration and direct communication within improvisational contexts. This ethos permeates Victor's 11 acclaimed albums as a leader, showcasing the evolution of this expansive musical expression over time.
Victor's innovative work has garnered attention from various media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone Magazine, and The Huffington Post. Collaborating with luminaries like William Parker, Roswell Rudd, Dr. Randy Weston, and others, Victor has graced prestigious venues such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Kolner Philharmonie.
As a composer, Victor has received accolades such as the 2017 Herb Albert/Yaddo Fellowship in Music Composition, an AIR in Composition from the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2018, and a Jazz Coalition Commission in 2020. Victor's composition "Sirens & Silences" premiered in Brooklyn in May 2022, while "Breathe Them In," a work for voice and violin, was commissioned for premiere at the New England Conservatory in 2023.
In addition to her artistic pursuits, Victor is deeply engaged in education, serving on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School, teaching interdisciplinary practices and Vocal Performance. She also contributes to the ROC Nation School for Sports, Music, and Entertainment at Long Island University, and conducts talks and clinics on jazz, improvisation, composition, and more worldwide. Furthermore, Victor is actively involved with organizations such as the International Contemporary Ensemble and serves as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, while also holding an ex-officio Board Member position with the International Association of Schools of Jazz.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Ms. Victor is a singer with her own brand: She’s theatrical and extreme without being campy. Expectations about a jazz vocalist’s demeanor — that it can’t be too aggressive, or that if it’s biting it can’t also be warm — don’t mean a thing to her. And forget about continuity. Sometimes melody leads to rhythm, or an explosion or a scream. Her affects are all scrambled. In that way, her playing sounds firmly planted in the age of digital media. When she does sing even or discernible pitches, her precision is remarkable. But even more striking is how conversational and direct it feels. She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.”
-Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
“If you have never seen her perform live, she is joy incarnate. She scats, she wails, coos, squalls, caresses, plays with words as if writing a play on stage, and does so with a twinkle in her eye. One can hear influences ranging from Nina Simone to Frank Zappa to Bill Dixon to Jimi Hendrix in her music.
-Richard Kamins, Step Tempest
“The whole legacy of Jazz is in her voice”
-Nicole Mitchell (noted composer and flute player), The Wall Street Journal
“Accomplished vocal modernist Fay Victor manages to deconstruct the tradition of jazz song without pretension or tedium”
–Time Out New York
“Victor is at the vanguard of jazz singers…
-Signal to Noise
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
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).
EX TERRA BRASILIS
The Small World Phenomenon
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Sodré
Betão Aguiar
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX