CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Network Node
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Name:
Myron Walden
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Miami, Florida
Life
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Bio:
Myron Walden was born in Miami, Florida on October 18, 1972. He moved with his mother to the Bronx at age 12. Shortly after his move, as Myron’s uncle was listening to a recording of Charlie Parker, young Myron was profoundly moved by the music. Hearing the uncle exclaim “Tell it Bird!” immediately knew that music was his calling and music would be his voice. Myron taught himself to play the saxophone.
Myron graduated from LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts in New York City, and the Manhattan School of Music. In 1993 he won the prestigious Lincoln Center Charlie Parker Competition.
Early Adulthood
During the 1990s, Myron established his credentials as a performer in New York’s jazz scene, and was a fixture at the legendary Small’s, a fertile ground for the nurturing of new talent. As Myron’s stature as a performer grew, he had the chance to share the stage with many greats, but also began to develop his skills as a composer.
Walden began his body of work as a leader with ‘Hypnosis’ (1996) and ‘Like a Flower Seeking the Sun’ (1999) both on NYC, and ‘Higher Ground’ (2002) and ‘This Way’ (2005) both on Fresh Sound New Talent. Myron composed and arranged original music for all four recordings, which were all met with critical acclaim. All About Jazz and the Jazz Journalist Association named ‘This Way’ one of the Top Ten records of 2005.
Current Work as a Sideman
In addition to developing his voice and profile as a leader, Myron has had the good fortune to belong to two bands of particular meaning to him and significance to American music. In 1997, Myron joined the Brian Blade Fellowship Band at its inception, and he continues to record and perform with the group today. Myron’s soulful, passionate solos on the alto saxophone and bass clarinet are frequently cited as moving and exciting parts of this ensemble’s performances.
A representative example of critical response to Myron’s role in the band comes from Jim Macnie “The last time I saw Myron Walden, a huge audience at the Newport Jazz Festival was giving him lots of house—applauding, whistling, whooping…At the front of the stage…Walden leapt to the pulpit, and preached to the crowd with chorus of glorious gospel shouts [and the audience] was on his wavelength.” In 2003, Myron joined the late Ray Barretto’s band. With that band, Myron not only recorded and performed, but also composed and arranged. Barretto’s final GRAMMY nominated album, ‘Time Was—Time Is,’ released in 2005 featured two of Myron’s compositions, including the title track. Myron arranged one of the tracks on the album that particularly moved both fans and critics, ‘Motherless Child’.
Current Work as a Leader
Myron is also pursuing his musical journey as a leader with multiple projects, composing and playing the tenor saxophone. The tenor allowed him to add a new voice to his rapidly developing compositions and to diversify his sound.
In Walden’s world, jazz is a journey that covers a vast landscape of possibilities. Proving his point, Walden released no less than five albums on his own Demi Sound label between 2009 and 2010, an outpouring of recordings that are all parts of an exciting, expansive musical vision.
There’s Myron Walden Momentum, Walden’s foray into soulful hard-bop inspired by Miles Davis’ legendary mid-1960s quintet. Walden’s fiery quintet (his tenor is accompanied on the front line by trumpet) released a self-titled studio CD ‘Momentum’ and a companion live album, ‘Momentum Live’ in 2009 and this Fall toured Europe. Representative of the critical acclaim for Momentum is “For the last 10 years Walden’s brought a unique brand of ardor to the bandstand, at it’s become a signature…Momentum…is marked by sizzling sincerity—the kind of emotion that puts listeners on the edge of their seats.”
Then there’s the more introspective and more acoustic Myron Walden In This World. With this band Myron plays tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet. In This World’s first two albums, ‘To Feel’ and ‘What We Share’ (released in early 2010) are a double-valentine to his wife Amy. This work was described by Nat Hentoff as “some of the most deeply affecting jazz ballads I’ve ever heard”.
And finally there’s Myron Walden Countryfied, the Southern roots, rock, blues, and soul project, with Walden on tenor and featuring electric guitar B3 organ and drums. The group’s inaugural, self-titled album ‘Countryfied’ was released in mid-2010 and marks Walden’s first non-jazz release. USA Today wrote “[Walden] adopts a King Curtis guise, dripping with down-home soul” and Downbeat called Countryfied “…dripping with down-home country blues, gospel and soul, clearly under the influence of Ray Charles, Otis Redding and James Brown.”
Critical Commentary on Work as a Musician
Nat Hentoff, writing for the Wall Street Journal, said “Myron Walden…is simultaneously the most insistently personal and instantly accessible musician of his generation.” Jazz Times spoke to Walden’s signature style, noting that Walden “plays with a Phoenix-like virtuosity and an attention to rhythmic detail rarely heard among saxophone players.” The Wall Street Journal also commented on Walden’s distinctive brand of commitment “Mr. Walden is one of our more primal and emotional players—on any instrument. He brings the raw intensity of a Mississippi bluesman to modern jazz.”
With as broad and exciting a musical vision as Walden has already realized, and judging by the creative momentum he has recently established, the future appears to hold no bounds. Walden sees things first and foremost on a spiritual level. “My passion is too expansive to be limited to one style,” he says. “I like to express myself and my emotions beyond the conventions of any one genre, and when I play a solo, I want it to be so relatable, you’ll want to sing it back to me.”
Contact Information
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Management/Booking:
For publicity and press:
Nick Loss-Eaton, Shore Fire Media
[email protected]
718.522.7171
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"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; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX