Written by Lisa Mejia

Upon first hearing Phyllis Blanford’s new album Edgewalker, the love of jazz was firmly planted within my musical portfolio. It’s an album that blends traditional musical collaborations with the storytelling attributes of a modern woman. I’m not versed in the world of jazz, but the way that Blanford unfolds her songs, it didn’t matter, for she became my guide through the music.

This genre of music was now inspirational to me, and I had to find out more. I was granted the delightful opportunity to chat with Blanford about her new album and how she was able to take a musical form rich in history and somehow make it her own.

Jazz is a complicated musical genre in which all the instruments blend together while keeping their own beat. It’s as if they are vignettes joined together to form one desire, and if you were lucky you had a soulful singer to hold your hand as you took a journey with the music. Edgewalker has all of these elements, but what was most impressive to me was that Blanford was able to embrace this traditional world yet find a way to also sing towards the women, empowering them as individuals.

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The beautiful Phyllis Blanford is a one of a kind jazz artist that you should keep your eyes on, she has traveled worldwide many times. She has toured in Italy, Germany, and Bermuda.

Back in 2015, she released her record, Edgewalker, and it includes ten tracks. Edgewalker  is music that swings! It’s the heartbeat, it’s the first drum! It makes you smile, it makes you think, it makes you tap your feet and shake your hips! The spoken word will make you nod your head and say YEAH that’s dope. Swinging to words!.

“Creating this album has changed me for the better. It’s brought more fun into my life. It’s opened me up to a deeper understanding of the world around me. It’s transformed me from top to bottom. That transformation is what I’d really like to share with the world, because maybe some of that energy will pass through the music and impact their lives in wonderful, unexpected ways.” 

If you love jazz music, make sure to purchase her album on iTunes, Amazon, or CDBaby here!

Phyllis Blanford

By C. Michael Bailey

Vocalist/composer Phyllis Blanford has a broad vision for her music. She lushly fills the corners of her art is color and edges with her band including multireedist Don Braden, guitarist Vic Juris, and drummer Winard Harper and vibraphonist Stefon Harris. These are percussion-rich songs softened with delicate horn arrangements, all increasing the buoyancy of Blanfords assertive vocals. Blanford favors Carmen Lundycovering her “Blue Woman” and “Good Morning Kiss” giving them both a piquant Latin flavor. She addresses Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away” is a straightforward manner that runs interestingly counter to the arrangement. This trend infuses “Night and Day” and “Speak Low.” The two highlights of the recording are a breezy “Come Rain of Come Shine” and a thoroughly transformed “You Don’t Know What Love Is” that demonstrates the adult contemporary jazz can be a suitable vehicle for standards.

by Jack Goodstein

“This is the album I always wanted to make.” It is “pure, raw, real. My heart, my soul. Expressed. Out loud. Unapologetic.” The album is Edgewalker and it is due for a May release. The “heart” and the “soul” – not to mention the opening quote – belong to vocalist Phyllis Blanford, and if raw and real is what she was looking for, with Edgewalker, she found it. She pours her soul into the emotional honesty she brings to the music, in the passion of the spoken word sections she adds to the album’s opener, Carmen Lundy’s “Blue Woman” and its final piece “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”

Working on dynamic material like Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away” and Buddy Johnson’s “Save Your Love for Me,” as well as tried and true classics like “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “Night and Day,” Blanford walks to the very edge. Her interpretations of “When Sunny Gets Blue” and “Speak Low” breathe new life into them. With a 10-piece ensemble featuring highlight solo work and ornamentation from trombonist Vincent Gardner, trumpeter James Gibbs, Stefon Harris on vibraphone, and producer-arranger-musical director Don Braden on sax and flute, her performances are arresting.

Original Review

Rounds of Jazz at Midnight
Italy

There’s an outdoor club in the little square of Ravello set up for a concert different from the usual events that this beautiful town offers during the summer. The club drums up a different sound: Jazz at Midnight. Tonight on the scene are Phyllis Blanford with Chicago Beau.

Blanford is an African-American vocalist well-known in Italy, especially for some of her collaborations with great Italian musicians like Tullio De Piscopo and Pino Daniele. The sound that extends from the artistic encounter between Blanford and Chicago Beau is new. It explores a relationship between poetry, blues, rhythm and traditional American and Mediterranean blues songs. Events like this in Ravello have attracted large audiences of fans and toursits. The intention of the event is to overcome the barriers created between the different genres.

The Voice and the “Rhythm” of Phyllis Blanford in Penne

Penne, Italy. This evening at 21:30 in Penne, at the Town Park by St. Francis Avenue, will be held the final evening of the series “Musical Encounters: Italy – USA Connection – Rhythm and Blues”, organized by the City of Penne.

The “Phyllis Blanford Group” will close the event with a concert, with the singer and actress Phyllis Blanford (voice), Roberte Cortese (keyboards), Pippo Matino (bass), Stefano Micarelli (clarinet), Gianni Savelli (saxophone) and Antonio Sandirocco (drums).

Phyllis Blanford is a voice well-known to connoisseurs of blues and theater-goers. She’s participated in several European jazz festivals and music tours with Tulli D’Episcopo, Enzo Avitabile, Roberto Ciotti and James Senese.

On television, she appeared in the Festival Bar, Domenica in, Evening of Honor, and the Loretta Goggi show. She was also in Parioli’s theater production of Stars and Kayak, and performed on a national tour with Ernesto Canlindri in the show “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” She’s also been in many European tours (Berlin, Frankfurt), and the USA (New York, New Jersey).

“I am the Noisy-Rowdy.”
After the applause Phyllis Blanford provides a remarkable encore at the opera Rosa.

Phyllis Blanford moves across the rehearsal floor like a small black tornado. On her left, her microphone stands. On her right, three ‘horse girls’ dance. A few meters behind hang the intestines, skinned cow heads and other props that will soon play a role in the revival of Rosa – A Horse Drama, Louis Andriessen’s opera which was directed by Peter Greenaway.

When the Opera first launched, Blanford’s performance was the encore. Immediately after the applause and the flowers she appeared in a box high above the stage and recited her lines as if her life depended on it. She began almost unaccompanied and over the course of her reading turned into a Rock singer, backed by bass, organ, and drums. Her contribution was called “rap”, but that label falls short in describing Blanford’s performance. She was so different, so impassioned and driven – something that can’t be said about most rappers.

Now, during the Opera’s revival, Blanford will not be the encore. She’ll perform during the show in her full glory. “Now it’s my turn,” she says. And indeed, it’s her time to shine. For two months she was in daily rehearsals, of all roles. She knew every vocal, all the details of the script, and meanwhile studied modern classical music with composer Louis Andriessen.

Europeans Still Avid Fans of American Jazz

African-American jazz musicians and singers continue to be embraced by Western European jazz fans. I witnessed this firsthand on a recent trip to Italy and France.

In Rome, the most often mentioned spot for jazz entertainment is “Saint Louis Music City” where young African-American singer, Phyllis Blanford, turns on crowds with her high energy style in belting out tunes she likes to call “Rock-Jazz.” She adds, “There is the perfume of fusion underneath.”

The talented Ms. Blanford is not just passing through. She has been a Rome regular for the past seven years after arriving as part of a theater company, dancing in its production of “La Mamba.”

Her roots in the U.S. are in New Jersey, where her mother resides, and in Florida, where she spent considerable time with aunts and other family members.

Lively Music Days

The Dutch Music Days (an old Dutch festival) is alive and well. The festive mountain sounds were a breath of fresh air to the dullness of the music scene in recent years. The party culminated in a true sentimental, pop scene. Sporano, Index Singer, Phyllis Blanford was reciting, rapping the epilogue of the acclaimed Opera Rosa by Louis Andriessen. The crowd clapped rhythmically.

Ton Zuckerman, director of the Conservatory and a musician during the turbulent sixties, was responsible for the revival of Dutch Music Days. Staying close to his home, Zuckerman put on Dutch Music Days in Vredenburg. His own memory of the original Dutch Music Days proved an excellent guide for to create an amazing experience.

Sterile Odyssey
Amsterdam

Choreographer Bespie Blankert and composer Louis Andriessen spoke in an interview about their latest collaboration, Odyssey: “The location is almost the best part of the whole show.” Almost, because ultimately the best part is actress Phyllis Blanford (known from the opera Rosa, a horse drama) who delivers impressive contribution.

Blanford’s rendition of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses is sexy and sizzling. With a crown of light above her head, sitting on a blood-red rock that surrounds her like a huge dress, she let the emotions, shouting, whispering, and languishing roll out.

The Golden Years of Jazz in Canelli

Canelli. A concert to crown the success of the fourth season of the Riccadona Concerts starts tonight at 21:15. In it sings American soubrette Phyllis Blanford accompanied by pianist Massimo Faraò.

The protagonist Phyllis Blanford has had an interesting life: born in Florida, she studied acting, singing and dancing in Stockton University in New Jersey. After graduation, she studied at the Actor’s Studio –  the famous school “made in the USA” that formed the most famous actors and actresses. Then came her big decision to move across the ocean and discover Italy. The American-born actress chose to settle in Rome, a city she describes as her favorite, after her great success with the theater Eliseo in Rome, with the show “Oh Jerusalem”.

Phyllis Blanford has also performed in numerous festivals – both Italian and Foreign – from the Todi Jazz Festival at the New York Public Theater to Saint Louis Music City she did it all. She also performed in a scene from the famous “Cafe La Mama Theater” – a tribute to the avant-garde 80’s.

Broken Dido
Paradiso, Amsterdam.

How does an electronically generated chord reverberates harmoniously? What kinds of lights would a string quartet produce? What do hands do with a bass?

With four world premieres Nieuw Ensemble at Paradiso present an integration of live electronic music and video.

Luca Francesconi is the man behind the production. His music is like poignant film: image fragments of a broken woman are generated as the music plays. The lead actress – Phyllis Blanford.

No hard questions to answer, just plain emotion. Guaranteed success.

Expose with Phyllis Blanford & Betsy Torenbos
Amsterdam

Expose is about the loving relationship between two women, who both lost a friend – “swept away too swiftly.” The show is a tribute to these two people. These two people were outside the circle of the two women’s family and friends, but in their ordinariness they pronounces such a strong impact on the lives of Betsy and Phyllis that they had to reassess their own existence. An improvised exposé is risky, a leap into the unknown. Is there a better way to prepare for the new millennium?

Phyllis delivers a striking performance in a Frankfurt theater with a group of strong women.

Guus Janssen Nonet’s Love Songs

Phyllis Blanford – vocals, Eric Boer – trumpet, Joost Buis – trombone, Jorrit Dijkstra -alto saxophone, Peter Bergen – tenor sax and bass clarinet, Guus Janssen – piano, Jacques Palinckx – guitar, Ernst Glerum – bass, Wim Janssen – drums.

After the Love Songs series by the Guus Janssen Octet in1993, a second songs program was created, this time in collaboration with the jazz and opera singer Phyllis Blanford. Last year Blanford was the star in the world premiere of the Dutch Opera Rosa by Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway’s.

In addition to a reinterpretation of some former love songs and a composition by Jacques Palinckx, Blanford sings some vignettes derived from Missa, and mass in two pieces by Guus Janssen and Friso Haverkamp.

Rounds of Jazz at Midnight
Italy

There’s an outdoor club in the little square of Ravello set up for a concert different from the usual events that this beautiful town offers during the summer. The club drums up a different sound: Jazz at Midnight. Tonight on the scene are Phyllis Blanford with Chicago Beau.

Blanford is an African-American vocalist well-known in Italy, especially for some of her collaborations with great Italian musicians like Tullio De Piscopo and Pino Daniele. The sound that extends from the artistic encounter between Blanford and Chicago Beau is new. It explores a relationship between poetry, blues, rhythm and traditional American and Mediterranean blues songs. Events like this in Ravello have attracted large audiences of fans and toursits. The intention of the event is to overcome the barriers created between the different genres.