Tag: WinterJazzFest

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Narrowsburg, NY – New Year’s Day

I’m welcoming in 2025.

Can’t wait until it arrives

Will I live to see it through

Will all I care about survive?

I’m anxious with anticipation

as this number of this year gets left behind

and the new beckons in my compartmentalized consciousness

separating numbers/dates as if it means a thing

yet I look forward to the existential leap into the future that starts now

at midnight

everywhere in the world that carries this colonial calendar.

It’s what I’ve got to give definition to the line of past/future

Seeing the future in anticipation, 

will I live to see it through

Will you?

will all we care about survive?
========== fayvictor

I am so grateful to be here, still on the planet with you all. Bringing in this new year

2024 was a mixed bag of kryptonite and joy. Deeply painful and deliciously precious moments. I had highs in 2024 that I’ve never known and had lows I never knew I could handle. Still I’m here, healthy and mostly whole.

I’m humbled by my own jaded sense of ‘understanding’ life to realize that there is yet so much for me to learn and experience. The gamut of life is endless, even when we’re no longer here. 

I move in 2025 with a milestone birthday in the mix, with beautiful work ahead with folks that I love and admire and the promise to take care of myself and those I love better and with deeper intention. 

We all move into this year anxious of what’s to come. I feel that building your community is key to whatever transpires and get a passport, if you don’t have one already. Please. 

May you all find the peace, prosperity and joy you’ve been seeking this year. Just don’t hurt nobody doing it. LOL

Photo by Brian Hartley – at GIOFest woth Gerry Rossi, Clara Warnaar and FV

Some Experiences that Blew My Mind This Year

*Traveling through the night to visit a dying friend. The days spent with him were precious.

*Traveling to Jamaica to celebrate my aunt’s 75th Birthday. We had a ball and it was well timed. Just 4 days earlier, Jochem had a serious panic attack that we first thought was a heart attack. 

The resort stay was what the Doctor of the universe ordered.  He’s OK now.

*Composing and premiering an 8 bassoon piece called NURTURE for Rebekah Heller’s Bassoon ensemble at the Fridman Gallery

*Learning and performing the Psalm of Akhnaten; ca. 1365-1348 B.C. for Talib Rasul Hakim at the New York Performing Library/Lincoln Center with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Either/Or Ensemble

*Performing Bonita Oliver’s For Namesake, which asked the performers to search their own history around our names. This was a powerful work that took me on a journey through family history I didn’t know. especially about my great-grandfather’s successful shipping and design business in Guyana that spawned features in UK and American shipping magazines.  Bonita’s work spawned this discovery.

*Getting back out on the road for the first time since the pandemic. I was out for close to 2 months and it was amazing to be out there again and I want to do it more.  My body was yelling and screaming at me by the time I got home for Christmas, though. It’s clear I need to give my body more care if I want to keep performing on a touring schedule. Also, can we talk about how HARD travel is on our bodies? 

How lugging luggage causes us to twist our bodies in weird ways and the constant conforming to small spaces on planes (I don’t care WHAT class you fly in…) is truly a lot. Still, I want IN!

Performing Herbie Nichols Music at Dizzy’s and The Jazz Gallery in NYC + Industrie Salon in Berlin. Performing Herbie Nichols music IS a spiritual experience for me.

Working, performing and presenting a piece with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra! These are next level humans and great musicians.

Meeting and connecting deeply with vocal powerhouses Elaine Mitchener and Maggie Nicols.  These two vocalists made me feel seen and heard in a way I’ve never experienced before and singing with them both was a dream.

Artwork by Bill Mazza

Coming UP!

Herbie Nichols SUNG at the Winter Jazz Fest!

We’ll open up for Aja Monet on the opening night of the Festival at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, yall. 
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street NYC 
6:30 PM Doors | 7:30 PM Show 
Herbie Nichols SUNG performs at 8:15PM (ONE SET ONLY)

Get your TIX at the link
Herbie Nichols SUNG
Fay Victor – voice, words, concept
Anthony Coleman – piano
Michael Attias – saxophone (alto/baritone)
Ratzo Harris – double bass
Tom Rainey – drums

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Herbie Nichols SUNG as part of FV’s curated week at the Stone at the top of 2019, celebrating 100th birthday of Herbie Nichols…photo: Carlos Alberto Murrat

Happy 2019 dear friends!!

All the best wishes for this and every year.

Thank you and much love to all the musicians, students and friends that were a major part of my music making life in 2018. It was a transforming year for me starting the year as a Yaddo Fellow for 6 weeks that changed my artistic mindset completely. Seriously.  Those 6 weeks exposed me to some of the most brilliant artists I ever encountered in any discipline. The constant talks about process and development forced me to take a good look at how I viewed my own work as musician. I’ve spent the rest of 2018 ingesting these new perspectives, a true mind shift for me.

I upped my teaching game in – I taught more courses on Creative Improvisation and Improvising Strategies for Songwriters (w hubby Jochem van Dijk) and was a guest lecturer at Banff for the first time, I also continued to run the Jazz Vocal Summit at the New York Workshop for the 8th year in a row.

The We Have Voice Collective truly blossomed in 2018 (We started at the end of 2017) with the release of our Code of Conduct for the Performing Arts that created a wonderful flurry of discussion and discourse around sexual harassment and bullying within our performing arts community. This is the most amazing group of powerful women and non-gender conforming artists that I’ve ever had the honor of being a part of.  I’m in awe of them as individuals and the dedication they have shown to this Collective and to the cause.

2018 was an amazing year for album releases! Grateful to have been a guest on guitarist Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance Project alongside powerhouses such as Tom Waits, Steve Earle and Meshell Ndegeocello, I’m also singing on the brilliant composer/flutist Nicole Mitchell’s Maroon Cloud with Tomeka Reid & Aruan Ortiz in the mix.

After 5 years of no project out under my own name, I released Wet Robots on ESP Disk with my ridiculously incredible group SoundNoiseFUNK. Grateful that Wet Robots made some waves (including 4.5 stars in DownBeat magazine, being in the DB HotBox for the first time, a feature in a Norwegian newspaper and great reviews & words and outlets such as Popmatters, JazzTimes, The New York Times….and #4 on the Jazz Critics Poll for 2018 (tied with Kurt Elling) Wow!! I was floored by the attention the album received, and grateful.

I went back into the studio in 2018 (well a barn-like studio as it were) Upstate NY in September to record Barnsongs, Old & New and working on releasing that in 2019. A combination of old and new compositions of mine and Jochem van Dijk’s reconfigured for voice, alto saxophone (Darius Jones) and cello (Marika Hughes).

Last and not least by far – health became a focal point for me in 2018.  Had a health scare that required a major operation and an 8 week recovery just before Summer began. I’m OK now, absolutely fine. Although it was was tough and difficult to go through. Yet, there was an abundance of beauty too. So much love and community came to the fore, a deep trust that all would be OK prevailed. People showed up and showed who they were.  I learned about love in a deeper way than I understood it before. I don’t want to go through something like this again but I learned from it and I’m here! And the ultimate lesson I learned about myself… to quote a title from Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance album ”I ain’t gonna let nothing turn me around” for long.

Much love, make this a special 2019.

Fay

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS! (Photo taken in Mexico City, Mexico)

Greetings and Happy Holidays to you all! Wishing everyone a wondrous holiday season and a prosperous and positive 2019.  2018 has been some year on the world stage with a swift wind change right in politics around the world.  Watching the news makes everything seem grim or how it all is coming to a dismal end.  Climate change notwithstanding, there is still lots of positivity around the world.  People trying to enjoy and simplify their lives as best they can.  I spent most of the autumn in amazing cities: Seattle, San Francisco, Long Beach, Rome, Venice, Krakow, Poland and Mexico City. Everywhere the similar thread was so many homeless among the opulence. Affluent folk peering in at the lives of people either catering to their whims or somehow superficially related to outside perceptions. Yet I also met people happy with their lives as is. Content. At peace. No longer searching if they ever were.  Except for music, maybe, in time of need. I was amazed to discover in Mexico that anyone can sing with Mariachi musicians and people DO when they are sad or full of heartbreak over jilted lover. This is how normal folk come out to relieve themselves of the pain of loss and more, in community. One example of how it is still a big beautiful world out there and if you can, go out and taste it.

After all this moving around, I’m firmly planted back in NYC for sometime and so much good stuff is coming up.  January is chock full of goodies including the Herbie Nichols Centennial Celebration at The Stone that I’m honored to curate + my Mutations for Justice project is on the Winter JazzFest January 12th 2019 at SOB’s. Before we hit 2019, please join me at the 55BAR for the last performance of the year: at the 55BAR with Old Songs, New Skin. Come and join us for a toast to kissing 2018 goodbye!

DEC 27 Old Songs, New Skin
FV – voice, compositions
Marika Hughes – cello
Darius Jones – alto saxophone
55 Bar
55 Christopher Street
7-9PM
No Cover, 2 drink minimum

Old Songs, New Skin!(Marika Hughes, FV, Darius Jones)

Seriously though,  sending the best wishes for a safe, fun and rewarding holiday season + a spanking new and prosperous 2019. I am so grateful for everyone’s support this year of the music and projects I’m involved in and coming out to shows. I could not do what I do without working with and in front of great people.  Incredible to be on record with Marc Ribot, Nicole Mitchell and my own SoundNoiseFUNK in 2018, amazed that all of these projects were well received by music lovers as well as the critics.

Thank you, thank you friends!
In gratitude,
Fay

 

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FV’s SoundNoiseFUNK on WJF 2018 w (l-r) Joe Morris, FV, Reggie Nicholson, Sam Newsome. Photo by Jochem van dijk

Dear Friends,

Hoping this greeting finds you well!

I’d like to share some news: SoundNoiseFUNK, the group I presented at the WinterJazzFest AND who has a smokin’ record about to drop on ESP-Disk, got a great review in Downbeat from the Bill Milkowski that I want to share with you all!

“With Morris’ Derek Bailey-like splatters of pointillistic single notes, Newsome’s remarkable overtones, percussive effects and displays of circular breathing setting the tone, along with Nicholson’s sensitive and at times kinetic commentary on the proceedings, Victor was freed up to soar with impunity as she morphed from character to character like a jazz vocal version of Robin Williams during their scintillating set. Throughout the course of this continuous stream of music, colored by dramatic shifts in events, Victor demonstrated touches of Aretha Franklin, Yoko Ono, Connie Boswell, Betty Carter and Diamond Galas while also channeling opera singers, voodoo priestesses and an Islamic sheik singing the call to prayer along the way.” 

Read full review here: http://downbeat.com/news/detail/winterfest2

Check out a video here of the piece The Threat, featured in the review:

&

AND

The next CREATIVE IMPROV Class will begin March 13, 2018!! Very excited to teach this course once again! Get in touch for detailed info on the course and to sign up! This 5-week, 12 hour course will set anyone the course of opening up many possibilities as an improvisor.

Thanks for reading friends! About to leave town for awhile to attend an artist residency Upstate New York. Back at the end of the month and sending everyone out there good and beautiful vibrations.

Thanks for reading,
Fay