ONTOLOGY (Deluxe) Roxana Amed

• 1 Tumbleweed 06:51
• 2 Chacarera para la Mano Izquierda 04:28
• 3 Peaceful 05:23
• 4 Virgo 05:31
• 5 Blue in Green (Sky and Sea) 05:45
• 6 Last Happy Hour 05:47
• 7 Milonga por la Ausencia 05:30
• 8 Ontology 04:10
• 9 El Regreso 05:42
• 10 Danza de la Moza Donosa, Opus 2 from Danzas Argentinas 04:51
• 11 Danza del viejo boyero, Opus 2 from Danzas Argentinas 04:15
• 12 Goodbye, Rose St. 03:11
• 13 Amor 06:46
• 14 Winter 04:10
• 15 Zamba para la Viuda 06:41
• 16 Love 06:46
• Total Runtime 01:25:47

Info for ONTOLOGY (Deluxe)

Isolation, nostalgia, a sense of not belonging, and living in the in-between are themes that have long resided in Roxana Amed’s songs. The Argentinean singer/songwriter’s latest full-length, Ontology, released by Sony Music Latin, is the culmination of a six-year journey filled with similar ruminations, leading Amed to reaffirm a musical identity unrestrained by genre or geography. “I ended up finding the spot where I should stand to watch myself as an Argentine artist and as a North American artist,” Amed reflected from home in Miami. “That is what I found that was ontologically happening with this music. I was standing on the fusion, on the confluence of these two worlds. In that sense I think this album is the one that best describes me.”

Born in Buenos Aires, Amed has been living stateside since 2013 and is acclaimed in her native country as one of the foremost jazz voices of our time, blending Argentine folk and rock with jazz, a distinction cemented by an eminent career comprised of six critically-acclaimed albums, a DVD, as well as countless performances, collaborations, and awards. Ontology, her seventh release, is a compendium of mostly original pieces created and performed during the last several years.

Framed mainly within a quintet setting, Ontology features bandmates – Martin Bejerano on piano, Mark Small on saxophone, Edward Perez on acoustic bass, and Ludwig Alfonso behind the trap set, as well as an assortment of other guest musicians as Rodolfo Zuniga on drums, Lowell Ringel and Carlo De Rosa on acoustic bass, Tim Jago and Aaron Lebos on electric guitar -masterfully coalescing around the singer, as she leads with her rich and deeply-rooted vocal instrument. Produced by Amed, the album was recorded in Miami’s iconic The Hit Factory/Criteria Recording Studios over three sessions beginning in March 2019 through August 2020, in the midst of the global pandemic. “It was stressful,” Amed recalled. “That whole process was not really happening all together in the same room. It felt interrupted and distant.”

Nonetheless, Ontology came together seamlessly – fourteen tracks fluidly crafted to swing and glide with Amed’s velvety vocals as the unifying force. Amed has mastered the art of laying no distinction bare in music. “My challenge was always trying to find a sound that could sound like jazz but in Spanish,” Amed said. “Where I could scat, but naturally. It was an exploration into both languages. I wanted them to live together in one album again.”

“One of the best jazz albums of 2021”. “This seventh album from the Buenos Aires-born, US-based singer-songwriter Roxana Amed presents a supremely atmospheric collection of 14 songs.” (Peter Quinn, Jazzwise, UK)

"It is as though Amed and her brilliant band have just invented jazz, and put a unique slant on it that is partly exhilarating Latin flights and partly the hushed, interval-leaping options of contemporary art music. It is not just sophisticated musically, but emotionally, primarily speaking to us from the abyss of love and death; leading us to complex places and leaving us there to find our own way home. Exceptional.” (John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald)

Roxana Amed, vocals
Martin Bejerano, piano
Mark Small, saxophone (tracks 1 – 7, 7 – 9, 13)
Tim Jago, guitar (tracks 3, 5, 12)
Aaron Lebos, guitar (tracks 1, 13)
Edward Pérez, acoustic bass (tracks 1, 2, 6, 9)
Lowell Ringel, acoustic bass (tracks 3, 5, 12)
Carlo De Rosa, electric bass (track 13), double bass (track 7)
Rodolfo Zúñiga, drums (tracks 3, 5, 11, 12)
Ludwig Afonso, drums (tracks 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 13)

Roxana Amed
Argentina’s Roxana Amed is a dusky, virtuosic singer songwriter whose music blends South American folk traditions with sophisticated rock and post-bop jazz.

A postgraduate in Spanish literature and film school student, she has earned acclaim for her albums with fellow Argentine multi-instrumentalist and former Pat Metheny bandmember Pedro Aznar including 2004’s Limbo and 2006’s Entremundos. More albums followed, in 2010’s Cinemateca Finlandesa, a duo album with pianist Adrián Iaies (Latin GRAMMY® nominee), Inocencia in 2011, followed by 2013’s La Sombra de Su Sombra, with pianist Frank Carlberg featuring the poems of Alejandra Pizarnik.

Since relocating to Miami in 2013, Amed has worked with a bevy of globally minded luminaries including Guillermo Klein, Emilio Solla, Leo Genovese, Frank Carlberg, and vocalists Christine Correa and Sofia Rei, among others.

In 2017 was commissioned, with Brazilian pianist André Mehmari, to pay tribute to the legendary Astor Piazzolla at the Buenos Aires International Jazz Festival. She earned a scholarship to pursue her master’s degree in vocal jazz graduating in 2018 with a performance award. Along with being embraced by American audiences, she remains connected to her home country. Amed is a recipient of the Carlos Gardel Award for Argentine Music and the Martin Fierro Award for best song in a TV production.

In 2019, she returned with Instantáneas, an album of live-in-studio performances including her rendition of Joni Mitchell‘s Blue. Amed, exclusive author for Sony Music Publishing, has written for different artists in various genres. For ten years she has led a memorable vocal workshop for hundreds of jazz vocalists at the Buenos Aires International Jazz Festival and she is currently teaching as a professor at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami and Miami Dade College, as well as in her private studio, working on her training method for popular music singers.

In 2021, she released Ontology, which featured her group with pianist Martin Bejerano and found her interpreting songs by Wayne Shorter, Alberto Ginastera, Miles Davis, and own repertoire.

In August 2021 she is awarded the “New Jazz Works” grant supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through Chamber Music America to write new music to be performed and recorded in 2022 and on September 28th, 2021, her album Ontology receives two Latin GRAMMY® Awards nominations for Best Latin Jazz/Jazz Album and Best Arrangement categories.

This album contains no booklet.