Shola Emmanuel - Paris Recording Session

I awoke in the middle of the night to a rooster call from my fancy new hand phone, a call from an excited Shola Emmanuel announcing that he had just returned from a recording session in Paris. In the fog of sleep I couldn't catch too much detail, but in the morning I found a link to a professionally-produced YouTube video in my email. Here it is, kind of a chamber-jazz thing with a French rhythm section. I am promised that there is more to come; a new album is being mixed.

The musicians in the video are:

Shola Emmanuel : Alto Saxophone

Matteo Pastorino : Clarinet

Jean-Baptiste Pinet : Drums

Rafael Paseiro : Double Bass

Recorded at Bopcity Jazz-Studio, Paris, June 2014.
Other tunes were recorded at the same session with additional musicians and instruments:

Bertrand Beruard - Double Bass
Femi Paul - Alto Sax
Michèle-Anna Artiste - Vocals

Michael Williams - Drums

Johan Blanc - Trombone

Ruairidh - Bagpipe

Shola also played tenor sax, baritone sax, clarinet, trumpet, and piano.

In this day and age where every music school student has more recordings under his belt than some of the historic saxophone legends, I truly hope that Shola's European adventure gets  him some international exposure and leads to some gigs outside of Nigeria. He is one of the only contemporary Nigerian saxophonists playing original improvised music as well as music in the tradition of the Parker-Coltrane axis, swimming against the tide of crappy hip-hop and African MTV big-sunglass videos. I've known Shola for more than six years now and he was already introduced to me as "the best saxophonist in Abuja" on day one. I will update with more video and sound files as I get them.

Shola Eml – Jazz Africa Fusion

I phoned my sax playing buddy Shola Emmanuel in Abuja a few days ago to wish him Happy New Year and he asked me if I got the link. Link to what? A mystery until this morning when his email arrived.

The link inside led to an excellent three-minute video of Shola and his music shot by French filmmaker Libero Films. I don’t know too much about the clip’s genesis – possibly waiting for TV – but wanted to get it out as soon as possible. Apparently there is a second part in the works. If you are not familiar with altoist Shola from previous posts, we first met in Nigeria six years ago and have been on the same musical wavelength ever since. He is gifted with one of the quickest ears I've ever come across.

View Shola Eml – Jazz Africa Fusion below, or watch it in your browser by clicking the link here.

Shola’s web site Rhythm and Sax has a contact form if you'd like to get in touch with him directly.

You can read about Marseille-based Libero films here (French language site).

Shola Emmanuel - The Man Is On Fire

Just returned from a week in Abuja where I caught up with alto saxophonist Shola Emmanuel a couple of times. Shola is, quite simply, the best saxophonist currently on the scene in Abuja.

The week started out with us being roused from my hotel room in the middle of the afternoon by a guest who complained about the noise. Claimed he was sleeping; we left the room to find another place to play and found the guy sitting outside talking on his hand phone. Mffff…playing jazz is not a crime. The hotel desk was apologetic. We ended up going to a public park and set up under a big umbrella where Shola wrote out a list of tunes he wanted to play and we jammed outdoors until 7:00 pm. Here is our a cappella version of  Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Black and Crazy Blues.

On Friday night, we ended up at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja’s swankiest (and most expensive) hotel, where Shola’s bassist was fronting a piano trio in the bar. The rooms at this place are over $500 a night! Better luck musically, though. I brought my mouthpiece and Shola loaned me his tenor. We set up and the band let us sit in from 10:00 pm to midnight, enough time to cover about eight tunes, of which I played on six. Some standards I'd not thought about for years, although each seemed to be in a key different than I was used to and required that I not only dig deep into my memory for the melody, but also transpose in my head on the fly. Good exercise, I guess.

Shola was just on fire. He played the best I have ever heard him play. It helped that he knew the band, the repertoire and the keys well but that can't account for how fine his alto sounded that night. Unfortunately the crowd was sparse, which he said is a side effect of the insecurity in the capital city surrounding the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in the north. People just don’t want to go out to high-profile public places at night. The hotel has a full airport-style security setup in place at the entryway.

Musically, the night was a success. I got in a couple of decent solos out of the half-dozen I played, got some good feedback from the audience, and got to listen to Shola work his way through some first-rate improvisations with a nice young local rhythm section. He decried the lack of opportunity to play in Abuja and continues to work a day gig. A taste but not enough. Go hear this man and his Rhythm & Sax Orchestra any chance you can.

Tribute to the Late Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel came down from Abuja to visit and we jammed for a quick hour before heading off to the New Africa Shrine to hear Femi Kuti. Shola and I hadn't seen each other in four years but it didn't seem to matter, either musically or in friendship. I was taking the opportunity to catch up on hap'nin's of some of our other musician mates in Abuja when I learned some shocking news: in Shola's words, Dare is no more.

Bandleader and saxophonist Dare Peter passed away last month after struggling with a long illness. I don't know Dare's exact age but he couldn't have yet reached 40. He came across as kind of a hard-nosed Rasta type with his dreadlocks and Rastaman hat, but that hard exterior was far from the full reality as Dare proved himself to be a musician of heart and integrity in the time I knew him.

Dare Peter and Ron Ashkin in Abuja, 2008

Back in 2008, I walked in to the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja and heard Dare playing Sonny Rollins' Doxy on alto, supported by a great local rhythm section. He immediately invited me up on stage to join him (here is an audio track of us doing Doxy). That cemented a musical relationship for the rest of the year when I became his second saxophonist, playing tenor, and we played his regular Elephant Bar gig as well as going out to other venues like Silver Spoon and the Arts & Crafts Village. It was at Silver Spoon with Dare's band that I backed up Dede Mabiaku, not knowing at the time that Dede was Fela Kuti's protégé and famous throughout Nigeria. Someone in the audience dashed me a bottle of Champagne that night.

Dare was inclusive and accepting as a bandleader, giving me plenty of chance to stretch out and improvise as the ideas flowed; not competing with me, cutting me off, getting in the way, or making me feel like I was stepping on his toes. There were plenty of times where he gave me the feeling that I was being featured by the band and not just playing a supporting role. He had a repertoire that spanned from jazz to highlife to pop and often a set would progress through all three styles; I'd usually play the jazz opening set and the highlife closer but usually chose to sit out on a lot of the chick singer vocals. Playing with Dare really opened up my desire to perform.

As a musician, Dare had an easy facility on alto sax with a screaming altissimo. His signature tune was Grover Washington's Mr. Magic. Here is a video Dare playing Mr. Magic in 2008:

I've posted this before, but this time it is for posterity (more videos can be found here as well). I understand that Dare married soon after I left Nigeria and leaves behind his wife and young son. Dare Peter, Nigeria's Mr. Magic, rest in peace.

Rhythm & Sax Orchestra - Shola Hits the Big Time

Received this invitation to the upcoming Rhythm & Sax Orchestra concert in Abuja on October 21. I thought the guy holding the sax in the poster looked awfully familiar and sure enough, it is Shola, my running buddy from Abuja in 2008 with whom I had lost touch. Looks like he has hit the big time: =N=10,000 for a VIP ticket to hear him play is a long way from scuffling for bar and hotel gigs. That's about 60 bucks for a seat! I phoned Shola and we will try to get together in Lagos soon.

It is great to see the progress he has made over the past four years. I met Shola the first week I was in Nigeria, at the Nigerian PGA tournament at the IBB Golf Course where I had been invited to sit in with the band. Shola was introduced to me as the best saxophone player in Abuja. Over the next six months or so we jammed innumerable times at my hotel room, at his house, and at various gigs. I've got a bunch of our rehearsal recordings in the can and even went so far as to write out the lead sheet to one of his compositions, which I've got in my book as Shola's Blues.

If you are in Abuja in late October and have the chance to see him perform, go for it. Here's a photo of Shola sitting in on keys with Dare Peter's band at the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja back in November, 2008. Note the horn case hanging from his shoulder.

Shola Emmanuel on keys at the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja, 2008. George on drums.

Nigeria Retrospective - Performance Videos

I have a few performance videos from 2008 when I spent the year in Nigeria. These are worth pulling out of the can and posting. I was playing with saxophonist and bandleader Dare Peter, who calls his band The Music Pyramids. Three of the videos come from the Arts and Crafts Village in Abuja, an outdoor venue, and were filmed at about 3:00am on a hot August night when Dare and I sat in with the house rhythm section. A fourth video comes from the Elephant Bar in Abuja with the Nigerian Hendrix, King Faj, fronting Dare’s rhythm section. The video on that one is terrible but the music more than makes up for it. 

First, Dare’s signature tune, Mr. Magic, from the Arts and Crafts Village: 

Next, King Faj plays All Along the Watchtower; I’m on tenor sax: 

Then, two more from the Arts and Crafts Village – the warhorse C Jam Blues and an original highlife tune of Dare’s: