Bio:
Ray Angry is a pianist, producer, composer who is one of the most in-demand artists today.
Classically trained with roots in gospel, one foot firmly planted in jazz and the other stirring the pot of pan-global pop, Ray Angry is the musician that the sharpest and shrewdest up-and-coming musicians aspire to be. As a tireless and ceaselessly inspired pianist, keyboardist, composer, producer, arranger and all-around coveted sideman—in the studio and on the road—Ray is the busiest, most eclectic musical talent crisscrossing the globe and genres for collaborations with today’s most exciting new and veteran artists. Ray’s resume since the ‘90s bursts with names such as Jeff Beck, Wynton Marsalis, Mark Ronson, Q-Tip, Yolanda Adams, Daniel Winans, Joss Stone, Sting, Me’Shell Ndegéocello, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cindy Blackman, a duo of Mick Jagger & Dave Stewart, Estelle, Richard Smallwood, Dionne Warwick, Dianne Reeves, Queen Latifah, D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Kelis, Christina Aguilera and ongoing associates The Roots.
In collaboration with Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Ray co-produced and co-composed “It Ain’t Fair” (for Oscar consideration) from the film Detroit, placed “Running” (sung by Yahzarah) in Spike Lee’s 2017 Netflix reboot of She’s Gotta Have It, received co-composing and co-production credits for the score of the 2016 revamp of the TV movie classic Roots, was music consultant on the song “It Ain’t Easy” for Chris Rock’s movie Top Five, plus wrote and co-produced the song “Peace” for the Showtime TV drama The Chi. He composed the theme songs for television’s “The Rundown with Robin Thede” (BET) and “Inside Amy Schumer” (Comedy Central). Under his production alias Mister Goldfinger, along with his muse Butterfly (Kendra Foster), he created the single/video “Daylight,” as well as soon to come work with Leslie Odom Jr., an album project by Michael Bloom, and a cinema-esque turn from Parisian actress Nora Arnezeder.
In the midst of his near three decades of blissful productivity at the service of others, Ray has finally recorded his long-awaited first album as a leader, simply titled Ray Angry One. As much as anyone could have hypothesized how it might sound, the result is completely unexpected, profound and on another level musically. The instrumental ten-song album is a meditation on the concept of higher love—the love it will take to unite people, turn the tide in America and make the world at large a kinder more compassionate place. “Music is meant to inspire and bring about change,” Angry explains. “It’s also meant to make you think about who you are as a person and the meaning of your existence. Music is a powerful tool. Why not use it to connect the world? It doesn’t have to be an elitist thing. To me, it’s like, ‘Listen, I have an idea. Let’s explore it.’ Ray Angry One is a playlist of what I love about music…music being all about energy, camaraderie and community.”
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).