Blackman Akeeb Kareem Tomorrow

How often do you walk into a situation without knowing what will happen? Do you fear it? Or do you embrace it? The unknown is a ubiquitous phenomenon that can be found in the essence of a person, place, or thing. Many musicians welcome musical situations where they are unaware of what will happen. That could be during improvising or performing with musicians for the first time. Both take an incredible amount of vulnerability and trust. The unknown seems to drive them into a space and time that controls them, not the other way around. And more than likely, that’s what they want it to do. Musicians prefer the unknown to utilize them as vessels to reach their audience or even to experience their own liberation.

Virtuoso drummer and vocalist Cindy Blackman Santana will release a 17-song tour de force album on September 18, 2020. The album highlights Cindy's incredible versatility both behind the drum kit and in front of the microphone and features the creme de la creme of guitarists, including eight songs with Carlos Santana, two songs with John McLaughlin, three songs with Vernon Reid, and one song with Kirk Hammett. With multiple tracks produced by Grammy Award-winning Narada Michael Walden, the album is an eclectic mixture of old school funk and radio-friendly rock/pop combined with rock and jazz instrumentals.

Tomorrow's sole album was a solid effort, with quite a few first-rate tracks. "My White Bicycle" was one of the first songs to prominently feature backward guitar phasing, "Real Life Permanent Dream" has engaging English harmonies and sitar riffs, "Revolution" is an infectious hippie anthem, and "Now Your Time Has Come" features intricate riffing from Steve Howe. "Hallucinations," with its irresistible melody, gentle harmonies, and affectingly trippy lyrics, was perhaps their best track. The more self-conscious English whimsy - populated by jolly little dwarfs, Auntie Mary's Dress Shop, colonels, and the like - is less successful, although the band's craftsmanship is strong enough to avoid embarassment.

The City of Tomorrow releases Blow, a collection of three works for wind quintet, anchored by the premiere of a multi-movement work written for them by Hannah Lash. Guided by their virtuosity and commitment to polished interpretation, the album is an exploration of finely crafted compositions that take advantage of the rich colors of the instrumentation in all of its permutations.