Moy Eng and Wayne Wallace - The Blue Hour

[GA Russell]

Artist Title Time           Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Filthy Gorgeous 06:05       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Sleepless in Paris 04:52       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace You Put A Spell on Him 06:21       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace I Love A Girl Who Parties 04:58       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Hong Kong 05:46       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Wild Plum 04:38       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Magnolia Light 06:06       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Alpha Girl 04:22       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace A New York Moment 07:17       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace Thursdays In May 04:21       Moy Eng & Wayne Wallace "The Blue Hour" Impacting: July 30 2019 Format(s): Jazz   ★★★ ½ "Part travelogue, part emotional exploration, The Blue Hour is a deeply felt experiment in unconventional musical storytelling. Eng’s lyrics often speak to her heritage as a Chinese-American, and Wallace has couched them in sumptuous arrangements that span rock, chamber music and more." Carlo Wolff, DownBeat, July 2019   MOY ENG, WAYNE WALLACE “THE BLUE HOUR” Patois Records PRCD026 Poet-vocalist Moy Eng debuts with original lyrics set to original music by 4-time Grammy nominee Wayne Wallace Suggested Tracks: 1, 3, 6 Latin 2, 5, 9   Recording debuts often provide only a starting point: the seeds of a musician’s artistic vision, which may or may not flower and grow in the course of a career. The Blue Hour, the debut recording from vocalist and poet-lyricist Moy Eng, is something altogether different. It introduces the measured and mature work of a new (not young) artist – a woman who has excelled as a visionary arts administrator and philanthropic executive, embarking on a second-act career that she had hardly anticipated.  In collaboration with her songwriting partner and producer, the four-time GRAMMY-nominated trombonist and bandleader Wayne Wallace, Eng has created a debut masterwork. The songs on The Blue Hour, slated for release by Wallace’s Patois Records on July 26, 2019, embody the lessons of a lifetime even as the writing retains the wideeyed delight of a gifted sensualist. Eng’s lyrics are a blend of autobiography and her expansive imagination, and they range across the emotional landscape. There’s the spiky sass of “Filthy Gorgeous,” her inspired description of the dichotomies inherent in a new relationship; the ethereal sweep of “Magnolia Light,” a lazing dreamscape that transforms the sky itself into a lead character; and, in the ramp-up to “I Love A Girl Who Parties,” Eng’s remembrance of the impact Aretha Franklin’s music had on her, growing up in a traditional Chinese-American family during the 1960s.  Traversing themes related to love, loss, travel, and identity, Eng presents these songs as a colorful basket of individual gifts, each wrapped in a gently sumptuous and frankly beautiful alto – a silky but unruffled singing voice as warmly clear as the poetic “voice” that infuses her writing. To complement her words, Wallace’s compositions – and especially his spot-on arrangements which draw on his eclectic musical experiences in pop, rock, jazz, and Latin music – enhance each of Eng’s lyrics, underscoring emotions both spoken and implied.  Eng’s achievement is all the more impressive when you consider that, despite having “always had an affinity” for literature and writing, she only started putting pen to paper about 15 years ago. Since then she’s written some 500 poems, finding that genre best suited to what she needs to express. “Trusting myself with the process of capturing a memory, a scent or an experience – there’s something powerful that unfolds,” she explains. Her affinity for music runs even deeper. “I’ve never not sung,” she says; “it’s part of my earliest memories, since I was 4 or 5. It has always been part of my daily life, like breathing.” Nonetheless, and despite her early classical voice training, she has performed only occasionally on stage; this explains why most people are hearing her now for the first time. But in the arena of philanthropy and grant making, she’s a superstar, with more than three decades’ experience supporting initiatives in the arts, renewable energy, gender equality, and human rights.  Wayne Wallace requires no such introduction to modern jazz listeners. He is perhaps best known as a powerful trombone soloist with expertise in a startling range of Afro-Caribbean and South American rhythms, as displayed in his eponymous Latin Jazz Quintet, which has earned three of his four GRAMMY nominations. These accomplishments rest upon a hidden foundation forged in San Francisco’s pop, soul, and Latin music scenes of the 1970s and 80s – one of his first gigs placed him in a James Brown cover band – and as a coveted writer and producer. The stylistic variety of his work on The Blue Hour offers a glimpse into this extensive resume, demonstrating that, as he points out, “I do more than just Latin Jazz.”  Eng first encountered Wallace more than a decade ago, when she enrolled in a songwriting class he was teaching at a Bay Area music camp. “I wanted to learn what made a great song, even if I were never to write one. I felt that some of the phrasing and imagery in my poems might work as songs. And Wayne was very encouraging,” she recounts. About a year later, Eng called to tell Wallace that she’d written close to 100 pieces of poetry, and asking if they might try writing a song together. His reaction? “I was wondering when you would call me.” Eng sent him close to a dozen poems. Wallace chose three of those as likely candidates, and in 2010 they got to work on their first song, “Alpha Girl,” drawn from Eng’s X-ray observations of “post-feminist women with the ambitious goal to be all things to all people.”  The two have a fairly strict division of labor – music by him, words by her – but as Wallace explains, “We’re almost always in the room together when we write; it’s not like I come in and say, ‘Oh, look what I came up with on my own.’ It’s more, ‘What do you think of this? Then how about this?’ It’s definitely a collaboration – even though Moy doesn’t count herself as having written the music.”  At first they had no plans to make an album at all. But as the partnership continued, they soon found themselves with some 35 fully-fledged songs and began presenting them in Bay Area clubs. Positive reaction from audiences convinced them to cull the ten they thought would best complement each other, while at the same time exploring the full range of the “Eng-Wallace Songbook.” Several tunes – “Sleepless in Paris,” “Hong Kong,” “A New York Moment” – explore the wondrous disorientation of visiting places away from home; the jazz-rock anthem “Wild Plum” uses a Chinese symbol of winter as sexy metaphor.  As Eng explains: “Wayne and I try to create worlds, with words and arrangements, that people can step into and connect with their own experiences.”  Born in New Jersey, Moy Eng received her M.A. in Arts Administration from New York University, then launched her professional career with a bang, as fundraiser for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – where she worked directly with the company’s legendary founder – and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She has been a grant maker in foundations whose assets ranged from $100 million to $9 billion, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Her “day gig,” as she puts it, has earned her honors from the California Arts Council and from the World Affairs Council, which called her a social entrepreneur “who will shape our tomorrow.” She currently leads the Bay Area’s Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), a young nonprofit organization that develops affordable workspaces for the arts in one of the most expensive regions to live and work in the world.  In a career that spans four decades, San Francisco native Wayne Wallace has lent his myriad talents (sideman, arranger, composer, producer) to the likes of Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Tito Puente, Sonny Rollins, and Carlos Santana. His debut album as a leader, 2000’s Three In One (Spirit Nectar), showcased his writing skills and his encyclopedic knowledge of Afro-Cuban rhythms, which he developed in the close-knit Bay Area jazz community, most notably as music director of John Santos’s Machete Ensemble. Wallace’s outsized role in Bay Area jazz includes his creation of Patois Records, with a catalog that includes his own albums and also recordings by vocalists Kat Parra and Alexa Weber Morales, as well as two highly regarded anthologies of Bay Area salsa and Latin jazz. A gifted educator, Wallace now spends the academic year as professor of jazz trombone and practice in jazz studies at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, having previously taught at San Jose State University and Stanford University.       Attachments   ONE SHEET .. Front+Back.. Liner note.. Moy Eng & ..

[GA Russell]

Bump for new Wayne Wallace release.

[GA Russell]

"Part travelogue, part emotional exploration, The Blue Hour is a deeply felt experiment in unconventional musical storytelling. Eng’s lyrics often speak to her heritage as a Chinese-American, and Wallace has couched them in sumptuous arrangements that span rock, chamber music and more." Carlo Wolff, DownBeat, July 2019   "Impressively fresh, personal and upbeat" George Harris, Jazz Weekly - July 29, 2019   "Highly intoxicating imaginative jazz vocals Moy Eng – The Blue Hour" As you listen to Moy's vocal on "Sleepless in Paris", you'll realize that even though this is a debut release, Ms. Eng is already in the "master class"...I just love this tune (and the sheer artistry that went into it)." Dick Metcalf, Contemporary Fusion Reviews - September 12, 2019 "A stylish and refined debut recording" One Hundred Words On…Moy Eng / Wayne Wallace - The Blue Hour C. Michael Bailey "A different jazz course for Wallace and an auspicious debut for Eng, this personal set comes right up to the line of art jazz without crossing over...Art without being artsy or precious" Chris Spector, Midwest Record – July 27, 2019 “The Blue Hour” creates its own singular statement...And just like the light in every day's genuine blue hour, this light is always changing, every time you listen here" -Chuck Graham, Let The Show Begin     On this last winter solstice for the decade, I was reflecting on what an extraordinary 10 years it's been and wanted to share a few highlights.    In the fall of 2010, I began a now decade-long collaboration with Wayne Wallace.  What started as a lark to write one song together...has led to writing more than 40 songs and our recording, The Blue Hour.  Released in the summer of 2019, The Blue Hour has garnered critical praise and airplay in the US, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and Peru!   The Blue Hour was thrillingly under Grammy consideration in the female vocal jazz and vocal jazz arrangement categories. While the recording didn't move forward to become one of the five nominated recordings, we're honored to have been considered, given the many artists making such great music, including Jazzmeia Horn and Tierney Sutton, two of the 2020 nominees.   This summer, as we premiered our first album, Wayne and I began work on our next music project.   In the meanwhile, I continue to perform with such fine artists, including guitarist and composer, John Stowell, master storyteller/writer Brenda Wong Aoki, and guitarist, Bill Murphy - my long-time duo partner.  Performances to come on January 24, February 14, and February 15 at Vino Locale in Palo Alto and a house concert on the Peninsula in late January.     I send you my thanks for your interest and generous support of my musicmaking and my warmest wishes to you for a holiday season of joy and wonder.

Edited May 10, 2020 by GA Russell