Buyu Ambroise

Blues In Red

Tracks

Album Details

Consummate tenor saxophonist and longtime New Yorker Alix Ambroise weaves together traditional Haitian rhythms with contemporary jazz to create a New World interpretation bridging together two related musical styles, and reuniting the oldest nations in the western hemisphere Haiti and the United States.

Blues In Red, a celebration of Haiti’s Bicentennial through music, is not just an innovative mélange but a recognition of a cultural exchange spanning over two hundred years. The repertoire draws from the music of the Haitian countryside as well as Haitian pop music, and blends them seamlessly into the sound and style of American jazz.

Blues In Red is a quintet composed of sax, drums, piano, bass, trombone with the addition of a percussionist and two Haitian drums. The music on the CD is an impassioned gesture of reciprocation between Haitian music and American jazz, a vision of the traditional folklore songs and anthems Ambroise grew up with, recast smoothly in a cosmopolitan jazz style befitting Buyu’s New York experience, and that of other Haitian expatriates who have made their home in America.

The resulting pieces represent a project that has never been done before. Alix describes his project as a cross-pollination. In the artist’s own words, he explains the development of the project that gave birth to Blues in Red:

“I’ve noticed that the greatest jazz artists have rendered thoughtful interpretations of Spanish and Portuguese language Latin music and have weaved jazz from the sounds of West Africa and South Asia, but I have yet to hear more done with Haitian music. That is the goal of my project”.