A car accident could have ended her life in 2021, but fate called her to continue standing and publish an album born from those ashes. Phoenix (whirlwind Recordings), that is the name of the album that Lakecia Benjamin has built from that moment on as an open door to her admiration for art and respect for the women who have accompanied her throughout her career. she. “I want to show people how to resist, how to move forward despite the pressure, how to overcome adversity,” explains the young saxophonist in a conference call from New York. “If you keep trying and keep moving forward in life with positivity and belief in yourself and in everything that is possible thanks to God in life, you never know how far you will go.” For now, this Thursday she will be at the Terrassa Jazz Festival, where she will begin the tour to present her new album with Oscar Pérez on piano, Elias Bailey on bass and E.J. Strickland on drums. Club Vanguardia members have a 15% discount on tickets.
Sirens and gunshots resonate at the beginning of the album, a reminder of the moments after the accident, mixed with the critical situation of the black population and the American lower classes during the years of pandemic and confinement. In the background, the words of activist Angela Davis, “I firmly believe, and I think men should applaud it, that this is the era of women.” It is the first of several female collaborations on the album that include Dianne Reeves’ vocals, Patrice Rushen’s piano on Jubilation, and poet Sonia Sánchez’s verses on Peace is a haiku song. And of course the production of percussionist Terri Lyne Carrington, winner of three Grammys (the first woman to achieve this in the best jazz album category) and collaborator of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz. “I wanted to show the women I’ve seen play jazz, the ones who help me make my own songs, and show who I am from the people I’ve admired.”
These artistic references include Wayne Shorter, whose voice is present in Supernova, as well as Jean-Michel Basquiat, also with his own song. “You can go to the museum and on every floor there are paintings by Basquiat, so I researched his life. I liked the way he dressed, his attitude, his youth, his funk, some of the things he wore then we still wear now, he was ahead of his time.” That’s why he wanted to pay tribute “to someone who inspires artists of several generations and who only enjoyed a little bit of life.”
Born in Manhattan in the Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, Benjamin mixes jazz, hip hop and soul in the songs she composes accompanied by the alto sax, an instrument she adopted at school so as not to separate herself from it in a career that led her to play alongside to Stevie Wonder in the White House during Barack Obama’s first term, years before publishing her first album, Retox, in 2012. A collaborator with artists such as Alicia Keys, Diana Krall and The Roots, her career took a leap in 2020 with Pursuance: The Coltranes, a simultaneous tribute to John and Alice Coltrane that featured the collaboration of Ron Carter and Dee Dee Bridgewater among many other musicians.
Benjamin was coming from one of the concerts to present this album in Cleveland when, in September 2021, he had the fateful accident in which he broke three ribs, his scapula and his jaw, despite which he resumed the tour a few weeks later. , a story that remembers in Trane. Things did not improve during the pandemic, a period in which the artist lost 15 members of her family, to whom she dedicates the ballad Rebirth, while New morning remembers the days of confinement with a message of resurgence, like the mythical bird that rose from its ashes. “I wrote it during the pandemic, locked up at home with nothing to do, always the same routine. “I was trying to give an optimistic message to people: if you are able to overcome this stage, things will get better.”
