Artist: GREGG KOFI BROWN
Title: TOGETHER As One
Label: Just Groove
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2006
Release country: Italy
Catalog no.: MXCD 1570 CS
Genre: WORLD Music / Ethnic
Tracklisting:
1. LULLABY To An Anxious Child - w/ STING
2. Live As One - w/Novecento
3. WORLD Spirit - w/Twentieth century
4. Wake Up The Morning - w/Desree & GABRIELLE
5. Sky Flower - w/ STANLEY Jordan
6. Aya A
7. Midnight Flyer - w/Twentieth Century
8. Tender Eyes - w/Dominic Miller
9. Shadow - w/ BILLY COBHAM
10.Je Fre Me Kofi
Musical cannibalism pervades this magnum Opera by GREGG KOFI BROWN for Nicolosi Production.
A work intoxicated with music, colors, voices, perfumes.
A horde of collaborations: from STING to STANLEYBILLY COBHAM to Emanuele Cisi via Des'ree eGABRIELLE , Airto Moreira and Dominic Miller and many others.
Shadows of elaborate jazz, revised, corrected with very pop mixtures - funky, smooth and sometimes danceable.
Accents of good workmanship also in composition, but above all in execution.
LULLABY to an anxious child by the unmistakable STING opens.
A song that cannot be questioned, perhaps.
But the calling card of the entire work.
The presence of the Novecento pervades the album and in fact we immediately find them also in tracks 2 and 3, Live as One and WORLD SPIRIT respectively which leave no room for any imagination.
Of particular merit are certainly the interventions of Emanuele Cisi both on soprano and tenor, especially in the discreet Midnight Flyer (again the Novecento) and in accompanying the voices of Des'ree and GABRIELLE in Wake up the morning.
The track Shadow deserves a separate mention, featuring the BILLY COBHAM duo Fabrizio Bosso who drags the song along with a breathless, enlightening solo .
And then one song among all: Sky Flower with STANLEY Jordan which turbocharges and injects adrenaline.
The groove of MIMMO CAMPANALE and Riccardo Fioravanti who illuminate, with some of their interventions, the darkest sides of the album.
A koine of sounds, they said.
Too many artists, too much meat to cook for.
Gregg Brown disappears a bit in the midst of this sea of artists, styles and genres.
Mother Africa can solo be heard in the background, apart from the robust evocation of Airto Moreira in Aya A.
GREGG KOFI BROWN It has a story behind it.
A story made of WORLD Music and Jazz ( OSIBISA ), made up of collaborations of all kinds and this first attempt is almost a summary of it.