EXTRAPLATTE - Laurie Antonioli & Nenad Vasilic / Foreign Affair

Laurie Antonioli, a vocalist admired by musicians, students and connoisseurs of creative music, has recently moved from her native Bay Area in California to Graz, Austria to take a permanent position as the Professor of Vocal Jazz Studies at KUG University.
A mysterious, authentic, musically sophisticated woman, Laurie has emerged from her underground, cult-like status hi the States to embrace the European music scene.
"It's time." explains Laurie, "The years of experience, both personally and musically, the songs, the lyrics and melodies have all come together. It is as if a lovely dinner has been cooking slow in the oven. I'm ready to lay out the table and invite everyone for a special meal."
Her father's family is from the Adriatic Coast and she grew up hearing the Yugoslav language and music. Her maternal grandmother was a member of the Louis Armstrong fan club and introduced her to jazz. "My fondness of Balkan music is cellular. I can't help it. It moves me to the core. And, my devotion to jazz is without question. I took an unusual route as a vocalist being primarily influenced by instrumentalists like Miles, Keith Jarrett and Wayne Shorter. Using my voice instrumentally is a natural. Also, my early influences lie in the folk music of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. So what you hear on this recording has a bit of all these things. The result is quite original and crosses over several musical genres."
Upon moving to Austria, Laurie wanted to put together a band that blended all the various elements of her musical life, "I watched and listened to see who was here. I was in Graz for over six months before I met my new band members." Then the right combination presented itself in Serbian bassist and band leader, Nenad Vasilic and Albanian guitarist, Armend Xhaferi. New York percussionist, drummer and composer, John Hollenbeck, completes the trio. "John spends a great deal of time in the Graz area and I met him through my collegues at the University."
Enja recording artist, Johannes Enders is also in the band. Laurie invited him to join the group after they worked together doing a series of concerts celebrating the 60 year birthday of Laurie's colleague and songwriting partner, piano legend, Fritz Pauer. "Johannes's sound blends with mine. It was a stroke of luck to meet him on these jobs with Fritz." Laurie goes on... "We are all Jazz artists that are influenced by other music. We are all bringing to the band a genuine piece of our heritage mixed with a high level of expertise. This creates the texture, intelligence and soulfulness I have been looking for. We are not afraid of open space or to sit down deep in a groove. We are doing something different that is somehow strangely familiar."
Laurie goes on, "Our music is fluid and rhythmical. The relationship between the bass and the voice is at the heart of it all and we create a sound that is very provocative. We've found a common space at this crossroad between countries and cultures."
In December 2003 the band recorded in Slovenia and then mixed in the US with Grammy award winning engineer Jay Newland.

Credits:

"Laurie is the most talented singer I've ever had the pleasure of working with. She is a very important creative voice in modern music. As a singer of improvised music and jazz, she is a piano players dream." Richie Beirach

"Laurie is truly one of my favorite singers, she's full of wonderful ideas, has an instinctive musicality, a great sense of humor and is an inspiring improviser and collaborator." Bobby McFerrin
"The voice is deep-textured with mysterious dark underfolds. " Cadence Magazine

"...she explores the complex nuances of the melody and basks languorously in the intimate revelation of the lyric... " San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Laurie is the embodiment of the true spirit of jazz - probing, penetrating, burning with the white-hot intensity of a Plugged Nickel Miles Davis. She blows my mind. Laurie is hard-core. " Ann Dyer, Sunnyside Recording Artist

Linernotes:

Beneath its title's semi-noir implications of romantic intrigue, Laurie Antonioli's Foreign Affair speaks of a universal human yearning for the obliteration of the very borders we put up between each other. Musically, at least, the seeds of that yearning were planted in Antonioli at an early age. While growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she heard the Yugoslav language and music of her father's ancestry, in which the Antonioli name goes back some 500 years in Montenegro. In addition she inherited her maternal grandmother's passion for jazz through the recordings of Louis Armstrong and Nellie Lutcher. Through high school and college she found herself leaning backward, forward, and sideways into the music of Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane, the Bulgarian Women's Choir, Eric Dolphy, Jackie & Roy, Lakshmi Shankar and Neil Young.

So Antonioli's jazz path was never entirely straight ahead. Her professional mentors and peers in San Francisco included vocalists Mark Murphy and Bobby McFerrin, saxophonists Pony Poindexter and Joe Henderson and pianists George Cables and Joe Bonner. Antonioli made a recording debut in duo with Cables on 1985's Soul Eyes (Catero Records) and was the featured guest on Bonner's 1987 New Beginnings (Theresa Records, reissued in 2004 on Evidence Records). She established herself as a unique and beguiling voice in a new wave of jazz vocalists, but driven to reweave some of the loose ends in her personal life and commit herself to raising her daughter, Antonioli withdrew from the scene for much of the late 1980's and 90's. She did a lot of teaching through these years both privately and in workshops in college jazz programs, and in 2000 she joined the faculty of The Jazz School in Berkeley, California.

Antonioli's welcome return to recording has everything to do with her recent move to Europe and her current post as Professor of Vocal Jazz Studies at KUG University Jazz Institute in Graz, Austria, a major hub through which hundreds of musicians pass. (Mark Murphy, Sheila Jordan, Andy Bey, Tom Lellis and Jay Clayton have all taught at KUG.) After scouting the musical landscape in Graz, Antonioli put together the multicultural band that recorded Foreign Affair.

Serbian musician Nenad Vasilic became the anchor, his upright bass and astute composing skills dovetailing with Antonioli's warm, elastic vocals and her ingen-ious adaptations. He was also closely involved with the artistic vision of the band and co-produced the recording. Albanian guitarist Armend Xhaferi and New York drummer John Hollenbeck completed the quartet. Antonioli brought in German saxophonist Johannes Enders after working with him on a concert tour of birthday celebrations for pianist Fritz Pauer. Antonioli took the group to Slovenia to record in an old analog studio housed at Radio Maribor. From there she took the tapes to the States and had Grammy award-winning engineer Jay Newland do the mix.

Only a handful of musicians - bassist George Mraz and pianist Larry Vuckovich come to mind - have successfully melded Eastern European and Balkan influences into jazz. With Foreign Affair, Antonioli sets a new standard. From the interpersonal intimacy of "I Know You" and "Mayana" through the longing for freedom and peace implicit in "Crni Narcis" and "Music Box", she not only creates a cultural continuity but also illuminates the way yearning can be resolved through the recognition that each moment is an opportunity for arrival. Indeed, throughout Foreign Affair, Antonioli redefines "home" as that place in the fearless present where the past is embraced and the future is a panorama of unfettered possibilities.

Derk Richardson
Associate editor, Acoustic Guitar magazine
Columnist, SF Gate.com
Music host, KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, California