The GRAMMY® nominated vocal supergroup, säje (rhymes with “beige”), is the brainchild of vocalist/composers Sara Gazarek, Amanda Taylor, Johnaye Kendrick, and Erin Bentlage. Born out of close friendship and deep admiration, these world-renowned artists, composers, and arrangers have come together to explore, create, and celebrate the music that moves them. As individuals, each artist has crafted their own notable solo career, and now are delighted to bring their collective voices to this union, traversing a vast array of compelling original material, beloved jazz standards, and contemporary re-imaginings (The Bad Plus, YEBBA, Björk, etc). After debuting an inspiring and energized set at the 2020 Jazz Education Network Conference in New Orleans, säje went on to tour multiple jazz festivals and clubs from January to March.
During quarantine, säje received their first GRAMMY® nomination, for their composition “Desert Song” in the Best Arrangement Instruments and Vocals category. They were awarded the John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize Award for their second composition “Wisteria”, as well as their first Jazz Journalists Association Award Nomination for “Best Vocal Jazz Group”. The union of säje is rooted in the tradition of joy, curiosity, lush harmony, heart-felt expression, and profound sisterhood.
Fun Facts about säje:
-
The group won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals for “In The Wee Small Hours of The Morning” from their debut album with British harmonic genius Jacob Collier.
-
säje is an artistic acronym for the first names of Sara Gazarek, Amanda Taylor, Johnaye Kendrick, and Erin Bentlage, four vocalists/composers who came together in the desert without really knowing what they were getting into and ended up finding a well of inspiration in one another deeper than any of them could have imagined.
-
Recently, Gazarek added animator to her role in säje. Her just-released stop-motion cardboard cutout video for “Dusk Baby” is an impressively simple and indisputably charming partner to the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDkX0KCltIw
-
A dedicated educator, Johnaye Kendrick serves as Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. In 2014, she founded her johnygirl record label in efforts to release honest music representative of her world, removed from the superficial constructs surrounding contemporary music in today’s recording industry.
-
Kendrick elaborated: “We’re taught, as you’re coming up [as an artist], ‘It’s a male-dominated field, you have to be one of the boys, and know how to hang, and what to say, and all of that,’….I didn’t think to immerse myself and surround myself with women.” But, she realized, “It’s amazing to be surrounded by powerful women with endless ideas and the desire to uplift; it has changed our lives.”
Tickets available at
https://www.venuepilot.co/events/98566/orders/new
https://www.venuepilot.co/events/98565/orders/new
KUVOLE presents Grammy and Latin Grammy Nominated Duo –
OKAN at Dazzle 8/20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r67MWBJ0oYg
Fusing Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, folk and global rhythms in songs about immigration, resistance and love, OKAN takes their name from the word for heart in their Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. With vocals in Spanish, Yoruba and Spanglish, OKAN is led by the Cuban-born violinist and vocalist Elizabeth Rodriguez and percussionist and vocalist Magdelys Savigne, both Grammy and Latin-Grammy nominees. Magdelys and Elizabeth’s mesmerizing harmonies, virtuosic musicianship and potent lyrics, as well as an unfailing ability to connect with audiences on a deep emotional level, are earning the duo a dedicated audience worldwide.
Building on their Juno-winning sophomore Espiral (2020) and the Juno-nominated debut Sombras (2019), Okantomi (2023), passionately advocates for freedom of expression, queer rights and gender equality through what CBC Music calls “joy as a form of resistance.”
Part of the next wave of Cuban women composers and multi-instrumentalists who embrace genres that have not historically fostered women artists outside of the role of singer, OKAN co-leaders have faced many challenges. Magdelys talks about the obstacles she faced in pursuing percussion in her native Cuba and how “coming out as a percussionist” to her family was as significant as revealing her sexual orientation in a culture that was very homophobic.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Elizabeth Rodriguez is a classically trained violinist who served as concertmaster for Havana’s Youth Orchestra. Magdelys Savigne hails from Santiago de Cuba and graduated with honors in orchestral percussion from Havana’s University of the Arts.
-
Both trained at Havana’s University of the Arts but they were in different years and didn’t really come to know each other until after they had both made it to Toronto looking for wider opportunities.
-
The other irony here is that the co-leaders had to come all the way to Canada to fall in love with each other. They married around the same time OKAN took off in 2017.
-
The two award-winning singers, players and composers are exploring older traditional Afro-Cuban sounds that you don’t hear very often back in Cuba.“The music that people are listening to back in Cuba now has so much to do with pop. But one thing that Cuba has is a great legacy in music.
-
“Being such a multicultural city, Toronto turned out to be a great place for musical opportunities. It was an open door for them and it has opened their eyes and ears to all kinds of music. They were able to play Turkish music, Brazilian, Jewish, bluegrass, pretty much everything.”
-
They’re quite direct about their politics and the realities of life back in Cuba. “To be honest,” Rodriguez says, “every Cuban is running away from the dictatorship, so when you get the opportunity to go to another country, you take it.
