Alicia Hall Moran - Here Today [CD]

Huey Copeland writes...

HERE TODAY combines the artist’s revelatory new tracks with covers of famous standards by Georges Bizet, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Stevie Wonder. As ever in Hall Moran’s work, a range of musical styles, tones, and tempers are dynamically cross-wired and recombined. Her inimitable operatically-trained voice–at turns sly and simmering, sophisticated and soulful–unites her expansive aesthetic vision and places black female being at the heart of the modern world.

At once looking forward to futures that might be and looking back on tragedies that continue to unfold, Here Today offers us allegories of the present. Indeed, this album carves out sonic space for luxuriating in the wonders of Hall Moran's voice while reckoning with the dark histories she enjoins us to witness. Not unlike her fellow black vanguardists working in other media, such as painter Glenn Ligon and poet Nathaniel Mackey, Hall Moran takes up the Western lyrical form only to turn it inside out with the nuance, force, and prophetic urgency of black feeling. The resulting album is both a script for survival in today’s dark times and a model of black study for the ages, with an edge as insurgent as it is incisive.
- Huey Copeland, PhD

----------------------------------------------------------------------
credits
released December 21, 2017

Engineered by Sascha von Oertzen in New York at Samurai Hotel Recording Studio (thank you, David Stoller) and National Sawdust with assistant engineer, Gintas Norvila.

Rome sessions engineered by Roberto Rosu and assistant engineer, Gabriele Di Domenico, in Gavin Brown’s enterprise within Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, Italy. Thanks to Gavin Brown's enterprise Rome/NY and Giulia Ruberti. Piano courtesy of Steinway & Sons.

Mixed by Sascha von Oertzen
Mastered by Sarah Register
Produced by Alicia Hall Moran
Executive Produced by Jason Moran

PERSONNEL:
ALICIA HALL MORAN – voice/piano
BRANDON ROSS – guitar
THOMAS FLIPPIN – guitar/theorbo
CHALA YANCY – violin
JT LEWIS – drums
MELVIN GIBBS – bass
LORENZO RUNDO – viola
FRANCESCO PARENTE – cello
GENE ALEXANDER PETERS – antique chains (track 14)
JASON MORAN – piano (tracks 3 and solo on 12)
-------------------------------------------
Artwork by Amy Sherald:
What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American), 2017 (oil on canvas),
Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.
Saint Woman, 2015 (oil on canvas), Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.

Design: Hayden Miller
----------------------------------------
Dedicated to my family
Nigeria ---> Georgia --> Oklahoma and Pennsylvania -->
California --> New York --> Connecticut
& Dr. Olivia J. Hooker for telling her American story

Special thanks to Paola Prestini, Tyler Gilmore, River To River Festival, Pieranna Cavalchini/Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Toshi Reagon/Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
▌Track Listing▐

01 - Signed, Sealed, Delivered
(written by L. Garrett, L.M. Harnaway, S. Wonder, S. Wright; and Habañera, from Carmen, by Georges Bizet)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals; Strings*)

02 - Oklahoma Girl
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Strings*)

03 - Feeling Good
(written by Anthony Newley, Leslie Bricusse)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals; Jason Moran, piano; Strings*)

04 - Gold
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals; Strings*)

05 - Not Today
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Strings*)

06 - God Bless The Child
(written by Billie Holiday)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals; Jason Moran, piano; Brandon Ross, guitar)

07 - I Am the Fire
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Chala Yancy, violin)

08 - Two Wings
(arr. Roland Hayes)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals; with Harriet Tubman**)

09 - We All Just Live In The World
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; JT Lewis, drums; Thomas Flippin, guitar)

10 - Roun' About de Mountain
(arr. Roland Hayes)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals, with Harriet Tubman**)

11 - Who Are You?
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Thomas Flippin, theorbo)

12 - Love Hurts
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals and piano; Chala Yancy, violin; Lorenzo Rundo, viola; Thomas Flippin, guitar)

13 - 2 Train To Wall Street
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Thomas Flippin, guitar)

14 - Metal
(written by Alicia Hall Moran and Gene Alexander Peters)
(Alicia Hall Moran, piano; Gene Alexander Peters, relic slave chains from his museum collection)

15 - Black Wall Street
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals with Harriet Tubman**; Thomas Flippin, guitar)

16 - Higher
(written by Alicia Hall Moran)
(Alicia Hall Moran, vocals/piano; Strings*)

*All Strings performed by Chala Yancy (violin), Lorenzo Rundo (viola), and Francesco Parente (cello)
**Harriet Tubman consists of Brandon Ross (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass), and JT Lewis (drums)
license

© all rights reserved

NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: When purchasing multiple items, please contact us directly at [email protected] for a combined shipping discount.