María Grand 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 María Grand:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: María Grand
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Geneva, Switzerland
My Life & Work
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Bio:
María Grand is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and vocalist. She moved to New York City in 2011. She has since become an important member of the city’s creative music scene, performing extensively in projects led by or including musicians such as Nicole Mitchell, Vijay Iyer, Craig Taborn, Mary Halvorson, Jen Shyu, Aaron Parks, Fay Victor, Joel Ross, etc.
María writes and performs her original compositions with her ensemble, DiaTribe; her debut EP “TetraWind” was picked as “one of the 2017’s best debuts” by the NYC Jazz Record and her full-length album Magdalena was praised by major publications such as the New York Times, Downbeat, JazzTimes, Billboard, JazzIz, and others. The New York Times calls her “an engrossing young tenor saxophonist with a zesty attack and a solid tonal range”, while Vijay Iyer says she is “a fantastic young saxophonist, virtuosic, conceptually daring, with a lush tone, a powerful vision, and a deepening emotional resonance.”
She is a recipient of the 2017 Jazz Gallery Residency Commission, the 2018 Roulette Jerome Foundation Commission, and the 2019 Roulette Residency. She was Best New Artist for the 2018 Extended Jazz Times Critics Poll; she was also nominated for the Jazz Journalist’s Association Up-And-Coming Musician of the Year 2018 and named the 2018 Newcomer Musician for the El Intruso 11th Annual Internation Critics Poll. As an activist in the performing arts, María is a founding member of anti-discrimination group, the We Have Voice Collective. María performs regularly with her own ensemble; she is also a member of Joel Ross’ Parables, has toured with Antoine Roney, as well as with RAJAS, led by Carnatic musician Rajna Swaminathan, and joined Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl in 2019.
She has toured Europe, the United States, and South America, playing in venues and festivals such as Dizzy's Club, the Jazz Gallery and the Stone in New York City, AngraJazz in Azores Islands, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Roulette in Brooklyn, Porgy and Bess (Austria), Bird's Eyes (CH), MassMoca in New Hampshire, JazzJantar Festival in Poland, Le Guess Who Festival in Utrecht (Netherlands), etc...
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://mariagrand.bandcamp.com
- ▶ Instagram: mariakimgrand
- ▶ Website: http://www.mariakimgrand.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/mariakimgrand
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
María Grand's debut "Magdalena" was named #6 best Jazz Album of 2018 by Billboard; she was named Best New Artist of 2018 by the JazzTimes Readers Poll, #4 Artist to Watch in 2019 by JazzIz Magazine, was chosen one of the Promoter Picks Artists to Watch for 2019 by JazzFuel.com, was nominated for Best Up-And-Coming Musician of 2018 by the Jazz Journalists Association Awards, and was elected Best Newcomer Musician by the 11th Annual Critics Poll of El Intruso!
"..the way Grand has grown as a singer in balance with her skills on the reeds is unparalleled”
- Downbeat Magazine
"On Magdalena, Ms. Grand unspools a constant flow of ideas, serene and deftly paced..."
- The New York Times
"There’s a sense of interior mystery in Magdalena, the full-length debut of María Grand. The 26-year-old Swiss native uses her tenor saxophone like a truth-illuminating candle, her haunting lines exploring every crevice of her equally somber and arresting compositions. No matter how rapt the improvisations, an itch of unknowing pervades the search."
- JazzTimes
She plays with a rare combination of warmth and conviction, and has just released Magdalena, an angular, stripped-down album. {..}With song titles like “Isis”, “Maria” and “Magdalena”, this project is a tribute to powerful women, and should be compulsory listening for inside the jazz world and out.
- The Economist
Her full-length leader debut, Magdalena, was released on Biophilia Records in 2018. Featuring her dauntless ensemble Diatribe and tackling subjects ranging from mythology to family relationships, the album positioned Grand as an improviser of piercing insight and a composer of vast ambition.
- JazzIz
“Luckily, most jazz fans were savvy enough to hear the genius of the 26-year-old’s new direction in modern bop with the excellent Magdalena. Backed by her core rhythm section of bassist Rashaan Carter and drummer Jeremy Dutton (with guest turns from guitarist Mary Halvorson and pianists David Bryant and Fabian Almazan), Magdalena presents a more confident, assured performer and composer than who first emerged on her self-released 2017 debut EP, Tetrawind. She exhibits tremendous growth as both a singer and a reedist.”
- Billboard
"On “TetraWind,” an EP released this year, Ms. Grand, 25, unfurls a teetering logic. She conjoins the spiky rhythms of Rashaan Carter’s bass with tilting sheets of harmony, built by her tenor saxophone, David Bryant’s keyboard and Roman Filiu’s alto saxophone. As an improviser, the Swiss-Argentine Ms. Grand is both measured and frank, often venturing into gentle provocation."
- The New York Times, Giovanni Russonello
"..a dynamic, Colemanesque solo from saxophonist María Grand.."
- the Chicago Tribune, Howard Reich
"Tenorist María Grand takes center with an expressive and stimulating soliloquy.."
- All About Jazz, Hrayr Attarian
"...Grand's tenor riding the whip as the team galloped to the finish line..."
- Jazz Weekly, George W. Harris
"A Revelation!"
- Jazz Magazine
"The two "finds" of the [Newport Jazz] festival for me were coincidentally both women: Maria Grand, tenor player with Steve Coleman, and Kris Davis, pianist with Eric Revis' group. Grand navigated the always tricky Coleman music with a big, broad sound and tremendous melodic acuity."
- Pat Donaher, Visionsong
"Une réplique déroutante [...] émanant de la saxophoniste María Grand, une sorte de "ténor en mi bémol" (ainsi qualifiait-on celui de Warne Marsh qui tendait à sonner comme un alto et pourrait-on qualifier aujourd'hui celui de Mark Turner) improvisant dans le sillage du leader dans un esprit de continuité déconcertant."
- Jazz Magazine, Frank Bergerot
"[María Grand] is an excellent, exploratory saxophonist you should all know. I first encountered her at a Steve Coleman and the Five Elements show in NYC last year. As you're aware, that is not exactly an easy gig to get. She contributes to Steve's 'Synovial Joints' album, if you want to hear her in that context. [...] Grand's pieces are full of wild twists, turns and time signatures, yet hang together in a compelling way. This is stuff for adventurous listeners. There's excellent interplay between Grand and alto saxophonist Román Filiú.
- Anil Prasad, found of innerviews.org
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.
