Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based pianist, composer and conceptualist Aruán Ortiz celebrates his 50th birthday year with the release of Pastor’s Paradox, his stirring new album drawing on the power and structure of Martin Luther King’s words. Out October 20, 2023 on Clean Feed Records, the album features Ortiz with clarinetist Don Byron, cellists Lester St. Louis and Yves Dhar, drummer Pheeroan akLaff, and spoken word artist Mtume Gant.
Be assured that even dawning on sixty and with a career spanning more than 30 years, Popa Chubby continues to fight against the injustices of this world! And the least we can say about 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic is that it offered him the “magnificent” inspiration that fed into the creation of his new album “Tinfoil Hat”.
“I’ve been in the game a long time, but I’ve always considered myself a student,” says G. Love. “Finishing this album with Keb Mo’ felt like graduation.” Recorded in Nashville with a slew of special guests including Robert Randolph, Marcus King, and Roosevelt Collier, ‘The Juice’ is indeed diploma-worthy. Co-produced and co-written with GRAMMY-winning icon Keb Mo’, it’s an electrifying collection, one that tips its cap to more than a century of blues greats even as it offers its own distinctly modern pop spin on the genre and solidifies his place in music history as a genre-bending pioneer with a sound The New York Times described as “a new and urgent hybrid” and NPR called a “musical melting pot.”