On the heels of Blue Engine Records’ banner 2019─which included six album releases and a GRAMMY® Award-nomination for Una Noche con Rubén Blades─Jazz at Lincoln Center’s in-house recording label proudly announces plans to release four new albums featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in January and February of 2020. These releases include The Music of Wayne Shorter, which finds tenor saxophone titan Wayne Shorter performing some of his most beloved compositions alongside the JLCO and will be available digitally and on CD January 31.
Other releases include Sherman Irby’s Inferno; Black, Brown and Beige; and The Ever Fonky Lowdown. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s virtuosity and dynamism will be revealed on these albums, which encompass daring new original works as well as the definitive modern performance of Duke Ellington’s most ambitious composition.
The Music of Wayne Shorter will be Blue Engine Records’ initial physical album release of 2020. The CD, recorded live at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2015, features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis alongside 11-time Grammy Award (including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy) winner Wayne Shorter performing. Each of the album’s 10 songs—which include “Yes or No,” “Endangered Species,” and “Teru”—is a classic Shorter composition given an invigorating new arrangement by a JLCO member. The album will be available to pre-order on Dec. 27, 2019. For more information on The Music of Wayne Shorter, head to www.jazz.org/wayne.
Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Managing and Artistic Director, says, “Wayne Shorter is at the highest level of our music—you can’t get any higher than him. Everybody strives to have a personal sound: Wayne’s sound is definitive.”
The first slate of 2020 Blue Engine Records releases also includes several digital albums:
· Sherman Irby’s Inferno (available on January 17, 2020): The JLCO’s lead alto saxophonist Sherman Irby presents a swinging journey through the nine circles of hell in a work inspired by Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem.
· Black, Brown and Beige (available on February 28, 2020): Blue Engine Records’ first release of Duke Ellington music, and the first time Marsalis has recorded the maestro’s groundbreaking masterpiece.
· The Ever Fonky Lowdown (available on March 6, 2020): A sweeping Marsalissuite—with narration from famed actor Wendell Pierce and guest vocals from Camille Thurman, Ashley Pezzotti, and Christie Dashiell—that captures theartist’s insights on contemporary culture and society.
About Blue Engine Records
Blue Engine Records, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s platform that makes its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere, launched on June 30, 2015. Blue Engine Records releases new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s performance history that date back to 1987 and are part of the R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library. Since the institution’s founding in 1987, each year’s programming is conceived and developed by Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis with a vision toward building a comprehensive library of iconic and wide-ranging compositions that, taken together, make up a canon of music. These archives include accurate, complete charts for the compositions – both old and new – performed each season. Coupled with consistently well-executed and recorded music performed by Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, this archive has grown to include thousands of songs from hundreds of concert dates. The launch of Blue Engine is aligned with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s efforts to cultivate existing jazz fans worldwide and turn new audiences on to jazz. For more information on Blue Engine Records, visit blueenginerecords.org.