Jacám Manricks via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Jacám Manricks:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Jacám Manricks
- City: At large in California
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Brisbane, Australia
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Sri Lankan/Portuguese Australian-born saxophonist/composer Jacam Manricks was raised in a musical family. His parents were resident classical musicians in the state symphony in his hometown of Brisbane and his grandfather was a famous Portuguese jazz clarinetist and saxophonist in Sri Lanka. As a child Jacam frequently attended his parents’ symphony concerts and was introduced to jazz at home through his fathers’ jazz record collection. Due to these surroundings, Jacam was able to build a diverse musical foundation from a young age that combined jazz and classical music, two genres that continue to influence his music today. Jacam began studying piano at age 5 and the alto saxophone at 9. His formal musical training continued in New York in 2001, culminating with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in JazzArts from the Manhattan School of Music in 2007.
As a saxophonist and woodwind player, Jacam has performed and/or recorded with some of the most prestigious international artists of our time. He has performed at venues such as the Jazz Standard, the Jazz Gallery, Cornelia Street Café, Smalls, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
As a composer, soloist and ensemble leader, Jacam has recorded six albums to date (Sky’s the Limit, Labyrinth, Trigonometry, Could Nine, Chamber Jazz, and GilManricks). His music has been highly commended in major jazz magazines, websites and newspapers in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. In 2009 Jacam released his second album Labyrinth, which received rave reviews in JazzTimes, Downbeat, All About Jazz-NY, Sydney Morning Herald and the Irish Times among others. Labyrinth consists of Jacam’s compositions for jazz quintet and chamber orchestra and features some of New York’s finest jazz soloists (Ben Monder – guitars, Thomas Morgan – bass, Tyshawn Sorey – drums, Jacob Sacks – piano and himself on saxophones/woodwinds).
His third album Trigonometry, which was recorded in New York in May 2010 (Posi-tone Records), features Jacam’s compositions for jazz quartet and septet, performed by leading New York jazz artists (Gary Versace – piano, Joe Martin – bass, Obed Calvaire – drums, Scott Wendholt – trumpet, Alan Ferber – trombone and himself – saxophones). Trigonometry has been highly praised by writers for international jazz market media magazines, newspapers and websites. These include Jazz Times, The New York Times, All About Jazz, Time Out-New York, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Ottowa Citizen, All Music Guide, EJazzNews and more. In October 2011, Jacam recorded Could Nine (Posi-tone Records), released in 2012. The album features Jacam’s original compositions and arrangements for jazz quartet performed by internationally respected jazz artists (Adam Rogers– guitar, Matt Wilson – drums, Sam Yahel-Organ, and himself – alto saxophone).
Jacam has received a number of prestigious awards and scholarships for artistic excellence and touring, such as the International Pathways Touring Grant in 2011, the Contemporary Music Touring Program awards in 2010, 2009 and 2008, the Australian National Jazz Award- 2009, the Marten Bequest Arts Fellowship in 2005 and the Queensland Lord Mayors Performing Arts Fellowship in 2000. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, Australia, Canada and the US as a soloist and/or bandleader.
Jacam has composed works for a number of different ensembles worldwide. These include a Suite for Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, which was premiered as a part of the Manhattan School of Music’s 90th Anniversary Celebration Concert in New York in October 2007. The concert featured Jacam as composer/orchestrator and alto saxophone soloist. He has written and/or conducted other works for the William Patterson University Big Band (New Jersey, USA), the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Orchestra (New York, USA), The Mothership Jazz Orchestra (Sydney, Australia), numerous ensembles at the Helsinki Polytechnics Pop and Jazz Conservatory (Finland), the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo (Norway Fall-2010), and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music (Brisbane, Australia).
In addition to performing and composing, Jacam is a very experienced musical educator. He has done lectures, courses, master classes and clinics at internationally renowned institutions such as the Manhattan School of Music (New York, NY), the William Paterson University (Patterson, NJ), the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music (New York, NY), University of California Davis (Davis, CA), University of Toronto (Canada), Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Sydney, Australia), Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne, Australia), Queensland Conservatorium of Music (Brisbane, Australia).
Jacam received his Bachelor degree in Music Performance from the Queensland Conservatorium, Brisbane, Australia in 2000, his Masters degree in jazz composition and arranging at the William Paterson University in New Jersey in 2003, and his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree from the Manhattan School of Music, New York, in 2007 as one of the first doctorate-level graduates in the field of jazz composition/performance/pedagogy.
Contact Information
- Email: info@jacammanricks.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://www.jacammanricks.com/cds
- ▶ Charts/Scores: http://www.jacammanricks.com/copy-of-cds
- ▶ Twitter: jacammanricks
- ▶ Website: http://www.jacammanricks.com
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCKUC943qaEeXEzaDj27V9ww
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/0Be25kgejJc34N3tC5yiEc
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/1TFVkPEY5l2KZkSZq1nwQ5
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/42LNgT295F5KllC9vnkGvZ
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Superb saxophone work, intellectually stimulating writing and ingenious dovetailed rhythmic lines"
- ALL ABOUT JAZZ
"First class talent... a potent swinging chemistry... he gives the genre meaning that people can relate to and apply to their own lives"
- JAZZ TIMES MAGAZINE
"Mellifluous... meditative... beautifully contoured... impressive collection of pieces"
- DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE
Clips (more may be added)
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Chamber Jazz EPK
14 views
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Jazz Combos of UC Davis (Mar. 12, 2019)
17 views
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
