Trans-Kalahari Quintets The Long Journey Home, the latest release from Ansonica Records, is a cross-continental exploration of jazz, funk, and South African cultural traditions. Saxophonist and composer Matthew Dacso met his bandmates while serving in Botswana as a doctor. Now, he proudly presents this unique musical fusion to audiences around the world. The album begins with Pulse of the Kalahari, a jubilant performance featuring a saxophone duet (with Dacso on the tenor sax), supported by a rhythm section. Dacsos thesis for this album is that music is our common human language, and this piece tells listeners of all backgrounds the same thing: get up and dance! Next comes Wander, which kicks off with a vamping electric piano before launching into a jazzy saxophone head. All the while, drummer Arthur Makhwengwe Mengwe is cooking up a sophisticated syncopated beat. Later in the album we hear Tune for Miriam, which starts out with an electric bass line before settling comfortably into a laid back funk groove. Sunday Breeze is a swinging jazz tune in which Dacso and his band take turns showing off their effortlessly-cool improv chops. The album closes with Otse Jive, an elated number that transports listeners to an outdoor festival on a sunny Botswana Sunday afternoon. Regardless of where in the world you call home, The Long Journey Home offers the unrivaled contentment of arriving there. TQKs colorful and electric compositions, paired with skillful and unrestrained performances from his band, transcend borders to share the beauty of Botswana with the whole human family.

Ansonica Records’ new release CHEVERE richly explores and demonstrates the myriad cultural intersections that have recently become available to American and Cuban musicians. The album came together at a recording session that took place in Havana, Cuba in the month of January in 2017. The release presents a variety of collaborations between American, or American-based, composers and Cuban instrumentalists, arrangers, singers, and composers. Some of these connections are relatively straightforward, while others are more nuanced and personal; yet, they all enrich the compositions on CHEVERE with the energy unique to the interaction of two powerful musical traditions. Arthur Gottschalk’s Imagenes de Cuba and John A. Carollo’s In Your Hour of Need represent the album’s most nuanced and personal connections to Cuba. Gottschalk’s work draws on his many trips to Cuba, referencing various elements of modern Cuban culture as observed in his travels. Carollo’s piece, on the other hand, gains its Cuban character directly from the input of CHEVERE’s producer in Havana, Dayron Ortega, who arranged this work for instrumental ensemble. Originally a piano etude, Carollo and Ortega collaboratively transform In Your Hour of Need into a brilliant and truly fascinating amalgam of Euro-American musical ideas and Cuban instrumentation and orchestration. Meira Warshauer’s plaintive choral works Oseh Shalom and Akhat Sha’alti represent the classic form of cultural exchange wherein Warshauer’s voice as a Jewish-American composer is brought to life by the renowned Cuban vocal ensemble Schola Coralina.

This exquisitely produced album embodies the beautiful art whose creation has been enabled by the newly opened cultural exchange between the United States and Cuba. Through a collection of intriguing compositions by American and America-based composers, Intersections showcases the talents of Cuban musicians ina variety of large ensemble and chamber settings. Moreover, the pieces in the album's contents are replete with symbols that touch on the promise of this new beginning in American-Cuban relations, and suggest some of the darkness that preceded it. This imagery begins with Jeffrey Jacob's Awakening, an undulating work for piano and orchestra which is performed by the composer and the Havana National Symphony. Awakening is hopeful and grand, yet ends ambiguously. In this way, Awakening seems to signal the highest aspirations the Cuban and American people may have for their new relationship, while also reminding us that the process of restoring normality remains unfinished.

This new release, Abrazo: The Havana Sessions, highlights works for jazz combo, big band, chamber ensembles, and even choir. Bunny Beck, Roger Bourland, Donald Bowyer, Margaret Brandman, Timothy Miller, John Carollo, Mel Mobley, and Michael Murray are all composers featured on this album. All of these works are performed by current or former members of the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, Irakere, Buena Vista Social Club, and many more. CEO Bob Lord says of this project, "We went right to the source, and sure enough they brought a totally new dimension to the music- a Cuban dimension, a feel and a sound and a perspective unlike anything else in the world."

SOPRANO MEETS BASS is the latest from Ansonica Records. This album of traditional medieval Sephardic songs arranged by jazz bassist and music director Alan Lewine and classical soprano Ana Mar�a Ruimonte is an ethnomusicological celebration of the ancient Sephardic culture. These Spanish Jews were expelled from Spain in the 15th Century and resettled throughout the world, mingling their musical traditions with those of other peoples they encountered. The original arrangements meld medieval Moorish Iberia, jazz, flamenco, Middle Eastern music, and bel canto. They have set these songs in a sort of recombinant world fusion reflecting a vibrant embodiment of the Sephardic communities and their culture. As the album's title suggests, the female voice plays a starring role in SOPRANO MEETS BASS. This reflects the fact that the Sephardic tradition has, for centuries, been an oral one, passed down from mother to daughter across an expanse of generations. Only in the 20th Century were these songs transcribed by musicologists. The stories told in the Sephardic Romancero-the repertoire from which the album's program is drawn-conjure up portraits of life in medieval Spain and the universal truths that undergird them. Spanish soprano Ana Mar�a Ruimonte gives life to these ancient melodies and lyrics, radiating from the center of a constellation of renowned virtuosos. Flamenco guitar, Israeli flute, shofar, and a trove of other culturally significant musical instruments vitalize the music of SOPRANO MEETS BASS. The artists' arrangements of the songs on SOPRANO MEETS BASS have been performed throughout the world, from Spain to Cuba to Israel and the United States. This is fitting, since each of these nations has had a hand in forming the unique amalgam of cultural music we hear in this album.

The quartet of musicians who comprise Hevreh Ensemble - Judith Dansker, Laurie Friedman, Adam Morrison, and Jeff Adler - are making their Ansonica debut with A PATH OF LIGHT. Hevreh Ensemble is internationally acclaimed for it's live performances, which feature a wide array of instruments from Cherokee Native American flute, English horn, and shofar to world percussion including djembe, dumbek, balafon, rain stick, and tabla. The Ensemble is also joined on A PATH OF LIGHT by some extraordinary guests, including the genre-defying string quartet ETHEL, cross-cultural percussionist Shane Shanahan, George Rush on double bass, and Naren Budhkar on tabla. The essence of the music on the album, which includes ten compositions written by Adler, revolves around two tracks: A Path of Light and The Speed of Dark, each of which follows a distinctively diverse path. The title track, A Path of Light, features a quiet, meditative introduction which builds to a joyous and frenzied conclusion. That positive energy is balanced, according to Adler, by "the thickness and occasional dissonance of the writing in The Speed of Dark, which invokes feelings of fear and intolerance." The piece that follows The Speed of Dark and which closes the album is the somber-toned Epilogue, which musically represents the consequences of following that second path. A PATH OF LIGHT surrounds these anchoring compositions with seven pieces that together weave a rich tapestry of textures and tones. From the adventurous Sima de los Huesos, to the jazz-centric Sweetgrass Cedar and Sage, to the propulsive Amor Caritas, Hevreh's performances serve to emphasize both the exceptional contributions of each individual instrument as well as the melodic intricacy of their interplay.

Continuing in the series of Cuban recorded Ansonica Records projects comes Coro Del Mundo - choir of the world. With tracks ranging from sacred to secular, and from delicate to aggressive, the surprising cohesiveness of the composers' work is astonishingly beautiful and impassioned. Schola Cantorum Coralina and Vocal Luna contribute exquisite vocals to the proceedings. L Peter Deutsch's Dance to the Revolution, takes inspiration from the writing of Emma Goldman. The composer explains, "what drew me to her writing was her inclusion of interpersonal relationships, not only political or economic ones, in the vision of ideal society." Deutch's Where Everything is Music transports the listener to Havana. Conrado Monier's Gozando's en La Habana received mention in the Choral Music Contest sponsored by the Cuban Agency of Musical Copyright and the Cuban Music Institute. Monier's second composition on Coro Del Mundo, Gozando en La Habana, is an a capella tour de force effortlessly conjuring up the sights and sounds of the City of Columns. Cuban composer and conductor Guido L�pez-Gavil�n's Qu� Rico �! is a shimmering choral mambo that leaves the listener breathless. Vocal Luna's contribution to Coro Del Mundo is profound. On Cemento Ladrillo y Arena, Murmullo, and Silencio their voices range from brassy brilliance to delicate, angelic whispers. Nowhere is this more apparent than their performance of Cynthia Folio's four-part piece At the Edge of Great Quiet. J.A. Kawarsky's Sacred Rights, Sacred Song also shines with Vocal Luna's participation. Sacred Rights, Sacred Song, a multi-movement piece, envisions Israel as a healthy Jewish democracy in which the spiritual civil rights of all Jews are protected. Michael Murray's El Lunar, based on a poem by Juan Clemente Zenea, depicts the adoration of a beautiful woman. Caminando, based Nicol�s Guill�n's poem focuses on the extreme poverty and scarcity faced by many Cubans in the 1930's. The extraordinary desperation and bleakness Guill�n depicts is emphasized by the implication of cannibalism toward the end of the piece. Both of Murray's pieces are lush with solemn, hypnotic tone. Meira Warshauer's We Are Dreamers is an adaptation of the Jewish psalm Shir Hamalot. With it's blend of religious and cultural influences, Coro Del Mundo is proof that different faiths and beliefs can sit together comfortably at the same musical table.

Songs of Lake Volta, Joe Sheehan's debut on Ansonica Records, finds the composer and pianist fusing his passion for the music of West Africa, particularly that of Ghana, with his background in both classical chamber music and contemporary jazz. Songs of Lake Volta features nine traditional Ghanian songs surrounded by original music composed by Sheehan, performed by two critically acclaimed groups: Kinetic and Kassia Ensemble. Sheehan returned to Ghana several times after a life-changing trip in 2008, between 2013 and 2017, to further explore the country and it's music. The intensity of these studies, which included many unforgettable late nights drumming and dancing, continued to inspire him, resulting in Kinetic's 2014 recording, World of Wonder, and now in Songs of Lake Volta. To promote the values of open, critical cross-cultural dialogue, this genre-bending album challenges the persistent notion of drumming being the sole outstanding feature of traditional African music. Kinetic, which Sheehan founded, is comprised of five versatile musicians who believe in breaking down barriers between traditional music genres and audiences. The newly-formed Kassia Ensemble is equally focused on breaking down barriers - the all-woman group came together to supersede the gender barrier that is prevalent in classical music. Songs of Lake Volta features vocalist Anqwenique Wingfield singing in various indigenous languages and styles representative of Ghana's ethnic diversity. The amalgamation of the Kassia Ensemble's and Kinetic's musicians represents an equally diverse spirit, incorporating whose work outside these groups extends to contemporary classical, R&B and hip-hop. Songs of Lake Volta expresses Sheehan's joy and admiration for Ghanian music in an honest and respectful way, sharing a wisdom that unites the three music traditions from which it draws influence: West African, classical and jazz.

AT LAST MO LAPENG marks the Trans-Kalahari Quintet’s second sensational release with Ansonica Records. Matt Dacso, Andrew Chinganga, Zakes Gwaze, Lekofi Sejeso, and Arthur “Makhwenkwe” Mengwe bring the ensemble to unbelievable new heights on this album, with funky afro-jazz recordings and spectacular percussive features that are sure to please the ear. From the jubilant Ka-Ching, featuring Chinganga on the alto sax, to the sultry tenor sax line on It Takes Two, the keyboard and guitar solos on this album are sure to lure you to the dance floor. Or maybe you’re due for a little TLC, a cool groove that just might convince you to sit back and relax before Tobesta Tobesta gets you back on your feet. The TKQ closes the album with Hands Off, a percussive cadence with a certain vitality that will have you starting the album all over again! But no matter where you start, AT LAST MO LAPENG invigorates with bright and familiar tunes that signify the TKQ’s long journey home may just be beginning.

RE/SEMBLANCE: SAATH-SAATH from Tejaswini Niranjana and Ansonica Records is a unique collaboration between Indian and Chinese musicians and a Cantopop lyricist. The result lives up to the meaning of the Hindustani phrase Saath-Saath: “together-together.” Transcending the confines of borders and cultural differences, this double album is the result of multiple crisscrossing journeys that took Chinese musicians to Bangalore and Mumbai, and took Indian musicians to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Wuhan. The music exemplifies the notion of “resemblance” by hinting at and recombining a number of cultural traditions; listeners hear a melody that hints at a Hindustani raga, Indian singers intone a Cantonese poem, and more. Through the shared language of music, RE/SEMBLANCE: SAATH-SAATH makes a profound and hopeful statement regarding the future of humanity.

Timothy Lee Miller presents Something More, eight original jazz compositions that explore the unique relationships that the composer has with his family. Expanding upon something as simple as a photograph or a memory, Miller's noir-influenced jazz expands his reflections beyond words, and instead creates story through moods. The album features both contemporary compositions, as late as 2017, as well as some that Miller had written back in the 1980s. Each track was inspired by snapshots in Miller's life, a soundtrack to a particular date in time with one of Miller's family members. The bustling, sweeping opener “Sebastian's Day Off” took its tempo from a day Miller spent in the park with his son. The composition makes quick jumps from energetic bebop to smooth lounge to bouncy jazz, providing readers with the breakneck direction changes that come with entertaining a small child. Meanwhile, the more solemn “Inky and Marie” carries a ghostly feel in its opening chords, alluding to the sorrow Miller felt when his Aunt Marie's dog Inky passed away one night during a visit. Like a photo album set to sound, Miller’s compositions lets the listener into some of his most cherished memories. SOMETHING MORE shares the thought that behind every memory, there is a story, and behind every story, there is music.