Deva Epica Freedom (2018)

American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom is a studio album by the John Daversa Big Band and produced by Kabir Sehgal and Doug Davis, released on September 21,2018. The album was recorded with more than 50 singers and musicians who entered America as children. Daversa intended the album as a message to politicians to protect immigrants. The album has been described as "invigorating" and "one of, if not the most, important musical statements across several genres this year aimed at bringing unity and healing divisiveness".

Sometimes in improvised music there can be a distance between listener and players, a sense you’re sitting back and admiring their interplay and abstraction – but with Szun Waves’ second album, you’re right in there with them, inside the playing, experiencing the absolute joy the three musicians feel as they circle around each other, exploring the spaces they’ve opened up.

With every record, Damon McMahon aka Amen Dunes has transformed, and Freedom is the project’s boldest leap yet. Enlisting a powerful set of collaborators that included Parker Kindred (Antony & The Johnsons, Jeff Buckley) on drums, keyboardist Jordi Wheeler, Chris Coady (Beach House) as producer, and Delicate Steve on guitars, Freedom was recorded at the legendary Electric Lady Studios in NYC and at Sunset Sound in L.A. All told it took three years to make.

One of the most celebrated singers in the world, Barbara Hendricks was invited by Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Festival, to take her first steps in the world of jazz in 1994. In fact, what could have been more natural? This music has lived in her for ever, it is part of her roots, of someone who first started singing with the Negro spirituals in the church of her father, a pastor in Arkansas.