Vagabundeo (Wanderings) , the second album from Alexa Weber Morales , and her first for producer Wayne Wallace 's Patois label, follows the groundbreaking footsteps of her 2004 debut release Jazzmérica . This vibrantly imagined collection melds warm acoustic jazz with flavors from across the vast spectrum of Latin, Cuban, Brazilian, and African music for a mix that's at once rootsy and cosmopolitan, street-wise and sophisticated. The singer's dynamic vocals, innovative rhythmic sense, and emotive phrasing bring a sizzling, soulful power to every note she sings. Her multi-octave range and command of four languages lends authenticity to songs as diverse as the haunting “Calling You,” from the Bagdad Café soundtrack, and the seldom-heard Brazilian gem, “Ave Rara .” Like Ella Fitzgerald, one of her first inspirations, Weber Morales uses her warm mid-range tone as a foundation, effortlessly leaping into a dulcet higher register or swooping down to deliver earthy, purring lows.
Vagabundeo is a rich album that highlights the striking sound of Weber Morales, the arranging and trombone skills of three-time Grammy nominee Wayne Wallace , and a who's who of the San Francisco Bay Area's top Latin and jazz players, including percussionists John Santos and Michael Spiro , bassist David Belove , montuno maestro Murray Low , drummer Paul van Wageningen , sax men Ron Stallings and Melecio Magdaluyo , and pianist/synth player Frank Martin . The arrangements combine Latin jazz, Afro-funk, gospel, salsa, samba-canção, and pop, but they're delivered in a seamless blend of sparkling musicianship and understated virtuosity.
“Ave Rara” is a s amba-canção written by composer Edu Lobo and Aldir Blanc, longtime lyricist for João Bosco and Guinga. The tranquil vocal track is complemented by Rick Vandivier 's guitar solo and Frank Martin 's lush piano excursion. Weber Morales's overdubbed harmonies intensify the feeling of saudades , the dreamy wistfulness that makes Brazilian music so poignant, while the outro has a Middle Eastern feel. “Calling You,” from the film Bagdad Café , is an a cappella tour de force. Bryan Dyer 's bass vocal and Kenny Washington 's baritone/tenor provide a foundation for Weber Morales's aching lead vocal.
“Angelitos Negros,” a poem by Venezuelan poet Andrés Eloy Blanco, was set to music by Manuel Alvarez Maciste and made popular by Mexico's Pedro Infante in the 1948 movie of the same name. Wallace's vocal arrangement for the choir— One Voice (Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir members Patricia Bahia, Kimiko Joy, Vernon Staggers and Helen Bernard Gray ), Sandy Cressman , Ron Stallings , and Weber Morales—gives the song a soaring, soulful aura. “Agua de Beber/Aguas de Março” combines two familiar tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim, likening water to love, essential for life. The straightforward bossa arrangement keeps the focus on Weber Morales; vocals and percussion intertwine to produce a giddy, percolating outro.
“The Goddess of War,” a Weber Morales original, is the album's funkiest track. John Santos and Michael Spiro lay down a diabolic Afro/Latin/funk groove accented by Frank Martin 's sinister synthesizer and David Belove 's driving bass. Weber Morales's growling vocals convey the terror and fascination we all feel in the face of uncontrolled violence. There's also “Habanera,” the famous aria from Bizet's Carmen , recast as a pilón-salsa with Melecio Magdaluyo 's rumbling baritone sax; “El Cantante” a Ruben Blades tune (famously recorded by salsa bad boy Hector Lavoe) with a Wallace horn arrangement that tweaks the original Fania track; and the Weber Morales original “Her Ways Wander,” a smoky cha-cha ballad that tells the story of a mysterious femme fatale.
Overall, Vagabundeo mirrors the gumbo of global influences currently simmering in the Bay Area, a Latin sound as unique as anything coming out of Miami, New York, and San Juan. With Vagabundeo and the exceptional singing she contributed to Wayne Wallace 's recent The Reckless Search for Beauty project, Weber Morales is ready to step out and take her place in the first rank of the Bay Area's—and the nation's—jazz singers.
Alexa Weber Morales was born to a musical family in Berkeley, California. Her father was a stay-at-home novelist and freelance writer who loved piano rags; her mother, a university administrator and aspiring vocalist. They placed an emphasis on language from early on. “Partially due to our heritage, and to their taste for well-aged wine ,” Weber Morales laughs, “my parents started the Ecole Bilingue in Berkeley, where my two brothers and I learned French. We also lived in France briefly after my parents got divorced.”
Growing up, she alternated weeks staying on her father's sailboat in the Berkeley Marina, her ex-stepmother's artist commune, and her mother's place. She began classical piano lessons at five and sang her first solo at eight at Malcolm X Elementary, during a performance with Bobby McFerrin . “ Dick Whittington [legendary jazz pianist and music educator] was my teacher. He liked my husky alto, but when I studied classical voice later on, they called me a high soprano.
“I've been singing as long as I can remember. I can sing an aria and sight-read, but my voice is contemporary. As with everything in my life, there's a broad range: I'm drawn to the street and the intellectual, the refined and the folk.”
During her final fling with academia, Weber Morales studied languages at Bryn Mawr College. Desperate for music, however, she performed in cabaret and theater, and listened to k.d. lang . She left college in her sophomore year and took several months to drive cross-country, playing Take 6 , the Gypsy Kings , and the soundtrack to the movie Bagdad Café all the way. One evening, sitting alone on top of a green hill in South Texas, she wrote her first song.
Back in the Bay Area, Weber Morales worked as an apprentice carpenter for a salty storyteller, an auto mechanic for a saucy old Hungarian, a roofer for a randy New Englander, a translator for a crazy government agent, and a freelance writer for a frazzled magazine editor. She also delivered singing telegrams, sang on boats and in malls, performed at Renaissance Faires and cafés, soloed with chamber choirs and at Grace Cathedral, and fronted big bands. While she continued her independent music studies, she worked her way up through the Bay Area music scene:
“It's been a long road, but I'm so lucky to have played with Carlos Federico and studied with Ed Kelly , just to name two of many heroes. It seems like you're not making any headway, and then you look back and see that those first lessons with Faith Winthrop and Macatee Hollie , those kind words I received from Madeline Eastman or Mark Murphy or Nancy Wilson —there are hundreds of milestones like that on a path that has led to this pretty cool place where I am today.”
It did take years, however, to find a way to reconcile making money and making music. “I married young, and my husband told me that music is a nice hobby, but it will never be some-thing big. I told him we'd get married on two conditions: I'd have a lot of animals and eventually, I was going to make it as a singer.” Her husband was a recent immigrant who came equipped with his own Mexican cultural force-field, resulting in plenty of clashes for the newlyweds.
The insider perspective on Latin America had its positives, though, helping Alexa land a job editing a Spanish-language magazine. When the company decided to launch a Brazilian edition, she taught herself Portuguese by memorizing singer Gal Costa 's repertoire. She honed her Portuguese during several trips to Brazil, where she was often mistaken for a Carioca, or Rio native. Subsequently she traveled to Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Cuba.
It was in 1999, during class at Jazz Camp West taught by Wayne Wallace , that she began to understand that not only her singing voice but her songs were viable. “Wayne respected me as a musician and songwriter,” says Weber Morales. “He has wide-ranging interests and can approach a song melodically, or groove-wise, or as a lyric or a concept. I have a lot of words in my head and he has a lot of notes in his, so it works out well.”
A mother of two young boys, Alexa began preproduction on Vagabundeo while pregnant with her second child and maintained demanding recording and gigging schedules just weeks after giving birth. She once struggled with balancing art and commerce; now her priorities are motherhood and music. “I was laid off from my magazine job when I was pregnant in December 2005. Everyone wonders when to quit their day job. In my case, it quit me. Now I'm applying everything I learned from ten years in that creative business to my full-time focus as a musician.”
It appears the timing couldn't have been better. Wallace produced her first album, Jazzmérica , an eclectic brew of salsa, jazz, and Brazilian influences. Despite the fact that she had no promotion budget, Jazzmérica slowly built a buzz. Rave local and national reviews led to airplay across the nation. Its success led to profiles on such syndicated radio programs as “Listen Here” and the BBC's “Have Your Say”; guest performances with the Reno Jazz Orchestra; working with Wallace as a Monterey Jazz Festival Latin Jazz Clinician; and contributing lead vocals to The Reckless Search for Beauty (Patois Records, 2007), Wallace's latest release. Their successful collaboration continues on Vagabundeo , another exciting step in the lifelong musical journey of Alexa Weber Morales.
Why does she write songs? Because novels take too long. Because humans, like birds, have to sing. Because her head is filled with wordless tunes and tuneless words. When does she get depressed? When a gruesome headline catches her eye, when radio commercials blare, when the punishment doesn't fit the crime, when there is no more instant coffee, when the sky is the color of concrete. What are her songs like? Beautifully melodic, overflowing with ideas and occasionally fixated on rockets. They tell stories of bad loves, smoldering obsessions, resourceful outcasts, unrepentant sinners, captured souls and freed spirits. What is her vocal range? Four octaves: E below middle C to E above high C. What styles does she sing? Jazz, latin jazz, salsa, Brazilian, blues, gospel. Who does she perform with? Alexa performs originals, latin and jazz tunes with such Bay Area stars as Wayne Wallace, Jeff Chambers, Murray Low, Dave Mathews, Frank Martin, David Belove, Michael Spiro, Michael Golds, Vince Mansel and Vincent Robinson. On Sunday nights at 6 p.m. she is the soloist for a popular service at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Where has she performed? Jazz at Pearls, Zebulon, The Canvas Gallery and Café, Rassela's, the Top of the Mark, the Carnelian Room, the Fairmont Hotel, Grace Cathedral, Hornblower Yachts, Club 17, The Lake Merritt Hotel, Yoshi's Café, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, First Unitarian Church, The Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mr. E's, The Jazz School, St. John's Presbyterian Church, All Souls Church. Where does she live? Oakland, California, the most culturally diverse city
in the United States.
What else does she like to do? Observe nature, dance, hike, climb trees, do the shuffle, garden, do the running man, play with animals, run fast, scuba dive, travel, paint, laugh, do things the hard way, read to children, write, make things and play piano rags by Scott Joplin. What languages does she speak? Spanish, French, Portuguese and English. What vocal groups has she sung with? Sacred and Profane (a longstanding Bay Area chamber choir performing unusual works by such composers as Darius Milhaud), the Oakland Youth Choir, the Oakland Jazz Choir and the Mistletones, plus a capella ensembles in high school and college. What countries has she visited? Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, France, Spain, Switzerland, Cuba.
What was her closest brush with greatness? In sixth grade, while attending Malcolm X Elementary school in Berkeley, California, Alexa sang a solo rendition of "God Bless the Child" during a Bobby McFerrin concert in which McFerrin did his soon-to-be-famous abridged version of the Wizard of Oz (ending with "I'm melting, I'm melting!"). In 1997, she met Brazilian songwriter Gilberto Gil backstage after a stupendous concert he gave in Rio de Janeiro. He said "Você é americana?" She said "Sim!" He kissed her on the cheek and nevermore has she washed her face.
Who has she studied with? Cabaret singer Faith Winthrop, classical pianist Annie Nalezny, operatic baritone Macatee Hollie, Laney College music professors Elvo D'Amante and Lucy Kinchen, composer and trombonist Wayne Wallace, performance and acting coach Vicki Kaplan, singer Stephanie Bruce, singer Molly Holm, arranger and pianist Jackie Hairston, singer Madeleine Eastman, gospel artist Terrence Kelly, jazz pianist Ed Kelly, bassist David Belove, salsa pianist Bob Karty, latin percussionist John Santos, composer and pianist Rebeca Mauleón, cabaret artist Paula West, blues singer Brenda Boykin, jazz singer Kellye Gray, singer/pianist Dena DeRose, pianist Mark Levine, and jazz singer Mark Murphy, among others. She has thrice attended Jazz Camp Weekend at Mills College, twice attended Jazz Camp West and once attended the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
In February 2003, she attended the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba and studied with Adrian McPherson, Odalys Villavicencio, Andrés Olén, Cesar "Pupy" Pedrosa and other teachers for two weeks of intense salsa piano, dance and popular music classes, culminating in a performance for the national conservatory. While there, she also wrote and performed her first salsa tune, inspired by the pure and pulsing energy of Cuba.
Alexa was born and raised in Berkeley, California and is the eldest of three musically gifted siblings. Her father, a novelist and freelance writer, mostly worked at home; her mother, a university administrator, sent her to private school to learn French. After her parents divorced (only to remarry seven years later), her father took up with an artist who ran a commune and her mother married a radio astronomer who was shaped like an S. She and her brothers lived briefly in France with her mother and stepfather until he couldn't stand it and they returned to the U.S., where he promptly disappeared in what may have been an alien abduction. Later, she alternated weeks living on her father's sailboat in the Berkeley Marina or at her mother's house. She began piano lessons at age five, and sang her first solo in a school performance at eight. She studied gymnastics and ballet and played soccer throughout her childhood.
Her favorite records growing up were Ella Fitzgerald's "The Cole Porter Songbook," The Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Stevie Wonder's "Inner Visions," Randy Newman's "Little Criminals" and Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come." In high school, her best friend gave her a mix tape with all the music her parents hadn't listened to (Janice Joplin, CSN&Y, Rory Block), plus some newer songs ("Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega).
After high school, she dreamed of applying to a music conservatory but instead took her father's well-intentioned advice and attended Bryn Mawr College, a women's college outside of Philadelphia. The East Coast never quite agreed with her and though she learned a tremendous amount, there was no musical curriculum other than some musty appreciation courses. Some of her greatest college experiences were doing cabaret and theater performances, listening to k.d. lang, and sitting in a smoke-filled dorm room painting with friends. She left college after a year and a half.
Soon thereafter, she fell in love with Take 6, the Gipsy Kings and the soundtrack to the movie Bagdad Café, which she played while she spent several months driving across the country and living in her VW. Feeling lucky to still be alive after a week in the tiny town of Boquillas, Mexico, and sitting alone on top of a green hill in South Texas, she wrote her first song. Back in her native Bay Area, she worked as an apprentice carpenter for a salty storyteller, an auto mechanic for a saucy old Hungarian, a roofer for a randy New Englander, a translator for a crazy government agent and a freelance writer for a frazzled magazine editor.
She also attended Laney College, where she studied music theory and performance. But it wasn't until she took a class at Jazz Camp with composer and trombonist Wayne Wallace in 1999 that she began to understand that her songs were more than just ditties. A favorite teacher of hers, Wallace has continued to be a mentor ever since.
She met her husband, a recent immigrant from Mexico, at age 20 while dancing at La Peña, a music club popular with Latin American university students. From that point on, she became immersed in Mexican music, culture and language. Not long after, she got a job editing a magazine in Spanish and Portuguese; in order to learn Portuguese, she surrounded herself with Antonio Carlos Jobim tunes and memorized much of Gal Costa's repertoire (a favorite was Gal Costa doing Caetano Veloso's "Luz do Sol"). Several trips to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte honed her Portuguese, and Brazilians often confused her for a Carioca, or native of Rio.
She has studied jazz, theory, composition, voice, dance, percussion and acting extensively for more than a decade and has performed throughout the Bay Area. Ever since hearing Ella Fitzgerald as a small child, jazz has always been her first love, but her diverse repertoire has expanded to include works by Stevie Wonder and John Lennon, jazz ballads, blues, Jacques Prevert tunes in French, boleros and guarachas in Spanish, bossa novas and sambas in Portuguese, and Alexa's own songs.
Copyright © 2005-2008 Alexa Weber Morales
:: Crazy Monkey Productions
:: Oakland, California, USA
:: 510-532-3757
:: song@alexawebermorales.com
Produced by triple Grammy nominee Wayne Wallace and featuring John Santos, Frank Martin, Michael Spiro, Murray Low, David Belove, Paul van Wageningen, Rick Vandivier and many others, Vagabundeo (Patois Records) is distributed by RNLG LLC and KOCH Entertainment! Check it out on Amazon!
Produced by Wayne Wallace and featuring Andre Bush, John Santos, Frank Martin, Michael Spiro, Murray Low and many others, Jazzmérica is Alexa's debut CD. Get sound clips, read reviews and buy at CDBaby!
Jazzmérica is distributed by NorthCountry.
Alexa sings lead vocals and contributes lyrics to Wayne's fourth CD, The Reckless Search for Beauty, which recently reached number 29 on the JazzWeek charts. Check it out at CDBaby.com!
