What's Up?
Lead singer for saxophonist and bandleader, Kamasi Washington; featured vocalist (and lyricist) on his 2015 release, "The Epic". Vocalist on his EP, "Harmony of Difference". Featured vocalist (and lyricist) on Kamasi Washington's upcoming, as yet untitled release due May 2018. Member of the musical collective, The West Coast Get Down. Currently touring with Kamasi Washington & The Next Step. Featured vocalist on Ryan Porter's new children's classic, "Spanglelang Lane". Featured vocalist on Brandon Coleman's upcoming release on Brainfeeder, which includes the song performed on the Epic Tour, "Giant Feelings". Currently recording album in collaboration with Brandon Coleman, Kamasi Washington and The West Coast Get Down, and featuring the song, "Black Man".
Life & Work
Bio:
Patrice Quinn records & performs with Kamasi Washington & The Next Step; The West Coast Get Down; & Grammy Award winning bassist and composer/arranger, Kevin O'Neal. She is currently embarked on a world tour in support of Kamasi Washington's 3-CD release, "The Epic", (Brainfeeder). She will record and release her solo album with the members of Kamasi Washington & The Next Step, aka The West Coast Get Down in the new year.
2003-2007: Taught Third Year Acting and Commedia Del Arte at Arts High School (LACHSA) in Los Angeles, under the leadership of Lois Hunter, directing several productions there. Other directing: "Alices: Adventures In Wonderland", Marlborough School (adaptation, production and costume design); "Blurred", Robey Theatre; "Uppa Creek" - an anachronistic parody of the Antebellum South, inspired by MacArthur Genius, Kara Walker's silhouette etchings "The Means to an End..." and written by Keli Garrett; and several productions at Occidental College One Act Play Festival.
Founded ArtsExpand, program for at-risk youth in Los Angeles; led workshops for: Blue Line Theatre, Zoo District, Blue Panthers Theatre Co.; UCLA, Bang Improv & for Sarah Ruel's (Pulitzer nom.) "Orlando" at The Actors' Gang (Joyce Piven, dir); and privately.
Studied at Circle In The Square Theatre School, NYC; Piven Theatre Wkshp., Chicago; Anne Bogart's S.I.T.I. Company (Viewpoints, Suzuki); & Commedia Del Arte with New Crime Prods, Chicago and Corn Exchange, Dublin, IRE.
Stage credits include Macbeth (Lady Macbeth), with Harry Lennix ("Matrix", "Julie Taymor's Titus"); John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer winning play, "Doubt" (Mrs. Mueller), with Academy Award Winner, Linda Hunt at Pasadena Playhouse (nom., Ovation Award, Best Featured Actress); (Georgia) "The Exonerated" directed by Bob Balaban (NYC, and US tour); and the title role in Ntozake Shange's jazz operetta (with music composed by jazz trumpeter, Baikida Carrol), "Betsey Brown" at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre, NYC.
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).