The organization is still busy with various artists for the 2013 edition of the festival. More names will be announced in the course of the coming months.
Program
Luis Miguel
Mexican singer Luis Miguel is one of the most popular performers in Latin America and was even given the nickname ‘El Sol de México’ (The sun of Mexico). He started singing professionally at age eleven and received his first Grammy Award at only fifteen, for his duet with Sheena Easton, Me Gustas Tal Como Eres (I Like You Just The Way You Are). He has won five Grammy’s and four Latin Grammy’s to date. Miguel is known for his well-produced albums and strong live performances. He was the first artist to see two Spanish-language albums, Romance and Segundo Romance, go platinum in the US. With his tours he regularly breaks records for the number of concerts, audience numbers and revenue per tour. His latest album is 2010’s Luis Miguel.
The Roots
Hip hop/neo soul band The Roots originated in Philadelphia and was formed in 1987 by Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter en Ahmir ‘?uestlove’ Thompson. The band is famed for their jazzy approach to hip hop with live instruments. Besides making their own albums, the band is also known for their many collaborations with artists such as Jay-Z, John Legend and Betty Wright, with whom they released the album Betty Wright: The Movie in 2011. During their years of existence, The Roots have been nominated for and received many Grammy and other awards. Well-known singles were 2003’s The Seed (2.0) featuring Cody ChestnuTT and 2010’s Wake Up Everybody, with John Legend, Common and Melanie Fiona. In 2009, The Roots became the house band on popular talkshow Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
Raphael Saadiq
Singer and multi instrumentalist Raphael Saadiq was born as Charles Ray Wiggins and started playing music at age six. He played bass guitar in church and at local events and aquired a real taste for music. After touring with Prince, in Sheila E.’s band, he started for real: with his brother and cousin, he formed successful eighties band Tony! Toni! Toné!. After that, Saadiq went solo, apart from a stint with supergroup Lucy Pearl. He is renowned for his old school R&B and in 2003 received a Grammy Award for the song Love of My Life (Ode to Hip-Hop). Besides as a musician, Saadiq has also been immensely successful as a producer, working with such artists as Mary J. Blige, Joss Stone, John Legend and d’Angelo. In 2011 he released his latest album Stone Rollin’; in that same year, he performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam.
Los Lobos
Los Lobos was formed in 1973 by highschool friends from East Los Angeles. From the very beginning, the band members refused to limit themselves to a certain genre, instead taking influences from rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues and traditional Spanish and Mexican music. In 1987, the five-piece band scored a worldwide hit with La Bamba, the title track of the film with the same name. Tours followed, supporting such acts as U2, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. Through the years, Los Lobos produced a long list of albums of which the latest, Tin Can Trust, was released in 2010. For that, the band members went back to their East L.A. roots to record. Their resume also includes several Grammy Awards.
Christian McBride Big Band
Bassist Christian McBride discovered his love for jazz and the bass from an early age: his father Lee Smith and great uncle Howard Cooper, both renowned bass players from Philadelphia, were his mentors. McBride studied at Julliard. He recorded and performed with many jazz legends and ensembles, such as McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny, as well as artists from other genres, among which Sting and James Brown. Before age 40, he had already played, as a sideman, on over 300 recordings. Besides all that, McBride is also co-director of The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, New York. After 15 years of studying big band charts, experimenting and writing, McBride developed sufficient material for a CD, recruiting some of New York's best players. The result was The Good Feeling (2011), for which he wrote six original pieces. In 2013, he brings his big band to Curaçao.
New Cool Collective
New Cool Collective originated in 1994, when Dutch saxophone player Benjamin Herman started experimenting with DJ Graham B in Amsterdam nichtclub Soul Kitchen. The in that time unique combination of musician and DJ evolved into the eight-piece ensemble that is now equally at home in clubs as it is at festivals. New Cool Collective plays a mix of jazz, dance, latin, salsa, afrobeat and boogaloo and has released six albums so far. Next to Herman, New Cool Collective includes guitarist Anton Goudsmit, drummer Joost Kroon, percussionists Frank van Dok and Jos de Haas, pianist Willem Friede, bassist Leslie Lopez and trumpeter David Rockefeller. For performances as New Cool Collective Big Band, the ensemble is expanded to a total of nineteen band members.
Esperanza Spalding Radio Music Society
Esperanza Spalding taught herself to play the violin at age five, but discovered the bass, her big passion, ten years later. Now known as a singer and gifted bassist, she attended Berklee College Of Music and was asked to become an instructor there immediately after her graduation. Spalding had her big breakthrough with third album Chamber Music Society, gaining the respect of both jazz lovers and a mainstream audience. In 2011, she surprisingly received the Grammy Award for Best Newcomer, beating teen idol Justin Bieber in the process. Radio Music Society is the successor to her 2010 album, and was released last year. Also very successful, the record features a wealth of well-known guest artists, such as saxophonist Joe Lovano, rapper Q-Tip and legendary drummers Billy Hart and Jack DeJohnette. After four previous performances at North Sea Jazz in Rotterdam, Spalding is coming to the Curaçao version for the first time.
Erykah Badu
Though growing up herself with 70s soul and 80s hip hop, Erykah Badu was mainly being compared to Billie Holiday when she had her big breakthrough in 1997 with first album ‘Baduizm’ and single On & On. Her live video of Tyrone was also very successful. After a live album, she released her long-awaited second album ‘Mama’s Gun’ in 2000 and scored another big hit with the song Bag Lady. Ever since, the singer-songwriter is seen as one of the most important neo soul artists. Her lyrics are often politically and socially loaded. Badu’s fifth and latest album ‘New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh’ was released in 2010. A year before that she performed at the Dutch North Sea Jazz Festival.
Gladys Knight
Singer Gladys Knight didn’t get her honourary title “Empress Of Soul” for nothing. At age seven she won a TV talentshow, and just a year started The Pips with her brother, sister and two cousins. Later, the group, with a partly different line-up, was signed to the famous Motown label as Gladys Knight & The Pips. They scored most of their big hits in the 60s and 70s, such as I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Midnight Train To Georgia and Baby Don’t Change Your Mind. Knight went solo in the late 80s. Nowadays, she has eight Grammy’s to her name and even a Las Vegas theatre named after her. In recent years, Knight, now at the age of 68, also appeared as an actress in several films and has been doing a lot of charity work. Her latest album, ‘Before Me’, was released in 2006; new work has been announced.
Edmar Castañeda
Harpist, composer and band leader Edmar Castañeda was born in Bogota, Colombia, but moved to the US as a teenager. It’s easy to see where he got his passion for the harp, which he discovered at age 13: his father was a musician, playing the very same instrument. In his new residence New York Edmar acquired a place in music. Starting out in “oldfashioned” folk, he increasingly developed his own unique style, mixing latin jazz with traditional Colombian music. Castañeda played with big jazz names such as saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and gitarist John Scofield. He regularly tours with his own Edmar Castañeda Trio, but also often works with singer Andrea Tierra. 2012 saw the release of his laters album, ‘Double Portion’.
Sonny Rollins
Now past eighty years old, Sonny Rollins is one of the few living jazz icons. He is the best-known tenor saxophonist of the bop era and still active worldwide. The veteran was first moved by the music of Charlie Parker and later played with the biggest names from the Golden Age of jazz. Several of his compositions have become true jazz standards, such as St. Thomas, Oleo, Doxy and Airegin. His recorded body of work offers the best jazz has to offer, as was shown on his latest albums: Road Shows Vol. 1, 2 & 3.
Oumou Sangaré
Oumou Sangaré (1968) is a Grammy Award-winning singer from Mali. As a child, she sang to help her mother, also a singer, support the family after her father abandoned them. It made her known as a good singer even at age five. In 1990 she released her first album, Moussoulou, which sold over 200,000 copies and made her a superstar in Africa. Sangaré is considered an ambassador of the Malian region Wassoulou; her work has been inspired by the music and traditional dances of the area. She composes her own songs, which often include social criticism, especially concerning women's low status in society. The singer has performed in big venues all over the world and in 2010, contributed to Herbie Hancock’s album The Imagine Project, along with other well-known artists. Her latest album, Kounadia, was released in 2012.
Kris Berry
Singer-songwriter Kris Berry was born in 1982 on Curacao, where she discovered music at a young age: Patsy Cline and Nina Simone were her main examples. After highschool she moved to Barcelona, where the many street musicians reinforced her growing love for jazz music. With her sparkling mix of Caribbean sounds, smooth country and swinging rhythm & blues she is a rising star, and was the very first artist awarded with the title ‘Soul & Jazz Talent’ by Dutch radiostation Radio 6 in 2011. She released her first EP that same year and got to perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. Last year, she released her debut album, Marbles.
Mud Morganfield
Larry “Mud” Morganfield isn’t called “Muddy Waters Jr.” for nothing: he is the eldest son of the legendary Father of Chicago Blues. He looks and sounds incredibly similar, too. And just like his father, that same love and talent for the blues is deeply ingrained. Mud was drawn to music at an early age. His father gave him a drumkit when he was seven, though he later switched to the bass and started songwriting. Just like his younger brother, Big Bill Morganfield, Mud didn’t become a professional musician until after his father’s death in 1983. Blues fans were introduced to Mud at a tribute concert to Muddy Waters in 2007, but his performance at the Chicago Blues Festival that same year brought him instant recognition. Last year, he released his album Son Of The Seventh Son.
Sabrina Starke
Singer-songwriter Sabrina Starke was born in Surinam, but raised in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. There, she became known for her first album, 2008’s Yellow Brick Road, and single Do For Love. The album was picked up by Blue Note/EMI, stayed in the album charts for 52 weeks and became certified platinum. That same year, Sabrina received a prestigious Edison Pop Award for Best Newcomer, as well as the Edison Jazzism Audience Award. In 2010, she released her second album, Bags & Suitcases, followed by Outside The Box in June of last year, her first on record label 8Ball Music. This year will see the release of the album Lean On Me, The Songs Of Bill Withers, a collaboration with the Metropole Orkest conducted by Vince Mendoza.
Sherry Dyanne
Sherry Dyanne is a Dutch jazz and soul singer from Rotterdam. Music was there from an early age, as her father often played records by varied artists such as Tom Jones, Aretha Franklin, Stax and Motown, Caribbean stars and traditional Dutch singers. As Sherry says now: “I danced before I could walk.” Though first taking up a career as a Maths teacher, she realized quickly that music was her true path and in 2008 decided to put all her efforts towards a musical career. With her voice, she brings back memories of singers like Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. 2011 saw the release of her self-produced debut album, Sing Me A Song, which contains both original songs and covers of long forgotten jazz and soul songs.
Kizzy McHugh
Kizzy McHugh is a Dutch singer, actress and presenter. Born in Rotterdam in 1979, she was raised on Curacao, where she started participating in musicals, theatre shows and ballet recitals as a child. Her big breakthrough came in 1996, when she won the National Song Contest and was Curacao’s entry at the Caribbean Song Contest, ending third. She graduated from Berklee College of Music and performed for Bill Clinton. In the Dutch Antilles, she became best known for her hit song Pia Di Galina, and as a presenter of a children’s show for TeleCuraçao. For a few years, she lived in Boston, where she worked as a singer and tv-presenter. Moving back to the Netherlands in 2009, she signed a record contract two years later and, in 2012, released her debut album Unspoken Rhyme.
Paul Anka
It’s something not many artists will achieve: singer Paul Anka is still going strong in his eighth (!) decade as a professional artist. Originally from Canada but now officially American, the crooner released his first single, I Confess, at age 14. It didn’t take him long to become a bonafide teen idol, scoring hits such as Diana, Put Your Head On My Shoulder and Puppy Love. But Anka has also had a lot of success as a composer: he wrote the English lyrics to Sinatra’s My Way and composed for and with, among others, Buddy Holly, Tom Jones and Michael Jackson. In recent years, he released two very successful albums of jazz swing versions of well-known mainstream hits; 2005’s Rock Swings and 2007’s Classic Songs: My Way. Following a Christmas album in 2011, his new record, Duets, is expected later this year.
Marc Anthony
He is the bestselling salsa artist in the world. Singer/producer/actor Marc Anthony was born in New York, the son of Puerto Rican parents. He started as a background singer from a young age, but soon got attention as a skillful performer and composer. 1991 saw the release of his first album, When The Night Is Over, to which Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri contributed. After that, Anthony released several Spanish albums. In the late 90s, he crossed over to a worldwide mainstream audience when his English albums Marc Anthony and Mended, as well as his songs I Need To Know and You Sang To Me, became very successful. After that, he went back to applying himself to Spanish music. Anthony is already a familiar face at Curacao North Sea Jazz: last year, he was a part of Sergio George All Star Salsa Friends. A new salsa album, produced by the very same Sergio George, is expected this year.
Pernell Saturnino and Friends featuring Miguel Zenón
Pernell Saturnino is a percussionist from Curaçao. He is continuing a musical legacy established by his distinguished family on the island. His grandmother, granduncle and grandaunt, were among those who originated and developed the island's indigenous folkloric rhythm known as Tambú. Exposed to music while still a toddler, his uncle, who led a prominent musical group, took him to play with them when he was eight years old. He started playing guiro and within a month had learned to play most of the drum patterns from the group's percussionist. Later, he performed all over the world with Curacao’s best-known folkloric band Nos Antias, and also worked with legends such as Joe Zawinul, Hermeto Pascoal, Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea and Dee Dee Bridgewater. At the festival, he will perform with a band including saxophonist Miguel Zenón.
Toto
American band Toto released their first album in 1978. Their big breakthrough came with 1982’s Toto IV and big hits such as Hold The Line, Rosanna and Africa. In its long career, the group released 17 albums, sold more than 35 million copies and won several Grammy Awards. The band members are each also renowned session musicians, having worked on more than 2,000 successful albums in total. Although the band spilt up in 2008, they decided to start touring again in 2010, but the reason was quite a sad one: it was their way to collect money to support former bassist Mike Porcaro, who suffers from incurable disease ALS, and his family. It did make the band members find back their love for the band, resulting in this year’s 35th Anniversary Tour.
