Record collector / DJ / Broadcaster / Producer / Brownswood Recordings boss / occasional remixer

“Understanding the order of time is important to anyone hoping to manifest a dream,” says Valerie June. “There is a time to push, and a time to gently tend the garden.”

Since the release of her 2013 breakout Pushin’ Against A Stone, June has been patiently at work in the garden of song, nurturing seedlings with love and care into the lush bloom that is her stunning new album, The Order Of Time. Some songs grew from seeds planted more than a decade ago, others blossomed overnight when she least expected them to, but every track bears the influence of time. See, time has been on June’s mind a lot lately. It’s the only constant in life, even though it’s constantly changing. It’s the healer of all wounds, the killer of all men. It’s at once infinite and finite, ever flowing with twists and turns and brutal, churning rapids that give way to serene stretches of placid tranquility. Fight against the current and it will knock you flat on your ass. Learn to read it, to speak its language, and it will carry you exactly where you’re meant to be.

Official SoundCloud account for Blue Note Records
www.bluenote.com

OKeh short history: 

OKeh was founded by Otto K. E. Heinemann when he set up his own recording studio and gramophone record pressing plant in New York City in September 1918. Heinemann formed the name of the record label "OKeh", from his initials.  OKeh began by issuing popular songs, dance numbers, and vaudeville skits similar to the fare of other labels, but Heineman also wished to experiment with music for audiences neglected by the larger record companies. OKeh produced lines of recordings in German, Czech, Polish, Swedish, and Yiddish for the USA's immigrant communities. In 1920, Ralph Peer's recordings by African-American blues singer Mamie Smith were a surprise smash hit for Okeh. The company perceived the significant, little-tapped market for blues and jazz by African American artists. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Bix Beiderbecke are only a few names of jazz greats that have recorded for the label. By 1926 Columbia Records bought the label and kept it running into the 60's with jazz and R&B recordings. 

In 1994, Sony Music reactivated the OKeh label as a new-age Blues label. Okeh's first new signings included Keb' Mo, Popa Chubby, and Little Axe. By 2000, the Okeh label was again retired, but in 2013 it will see its re-launch as a jazz label once again.

Management:
American International Artists, Inc.
Cynthia B. Herbst, President
+1 (518) 686-0972
Cynthia@aiArtists.com

Much like songbird Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux spent her teenage years busking the busy streets of Paris. Just like the ‘little sparrow’, Madeleine befriended the city’s street musicians and made its Latin quarter her first performing stage. Years later, Peyroux would cite iconic Piaf as an influence on her music and record a rendition of the classic La Vie En Rose, soulfully capturing the tune’s romanticism and melancholy.
 
Born in Athens, Georgia in 1974, Madeleine “grew up in a house filled with music” and from an early age “instinctively realised music’s soothing power” but it was her teenage years in the French capital that turned the childhood notion into an all-consuming vocation for life.

Young Madeleine moved to Paris with her mother in 1987 following her parents divorce. “To soothe me during the upheaval”, she recalls, “I was given a guitar and took to playing in the streets almost immediately.”

Thirty years after her formative busking days Peyroux is the proud curator of nine beguiling albums and an accomplished performer with sell out worldwide tours under her belt. Her atmospheric version of Serge Gainsborough’s La Javanaise was used in the soundtrack of Oscar Winner The Shape of Water and her countless accolades
include the coveted BBC International Artist Of The Year honour.
 
Madeleine’s thirst for creative exploration is unfading and her willingness to face creative challenges remains as solid now as it was three decades ago.

With endearing passion and great curiosity the unstoppable genre-defying virtuoso continues her search for the good and examines life with the treasured William Congreve belief that Music has charms to soothe the savage beast.
 
Madeleine might attribute her success to “mostly luck” but to the industry and loyal fans alike, it is the immense talent and utter dedication to her craft that shines through.
“Peyroux is a tremendous talent and almost a total intuitive” reflects Larry Klein, “she has the capacity to get the magic. When she sings and plays her guitar, great things happen.”

Ray Shattenkirk draws his inspiration from the natural world and humankind's problematic place within it. The grandest statement of this theme is found in American Icons, an hour-long work for five vocal soloists, treble and mixed choruses, and orchestra. The work was premiered in May 2001 by the Grand Rapids Symphony, featuring the Theatre of Voices and four choruses, conducted by David Lockington.

The five movements of American Icons elegize species that have become extinct and celebrate the resurgence of others that have until recently been endangered. In telling his story, Shattenkirk employs a broad range of musical techniques, from plainchant to postmodernism, and a variety of languages: English, Latin, and various Native American dialects. In the final movement, the 23-minute Wings of Hope, Shattenkirk marshals all of his forces in a moving tribute to the nobility of the American bald eagle. The Grand Rapids Press wrote that American Icons is "touching and beautiful . . . In his more contemplative moments, his music calls to mind such so-called holy minimalists as Arvo Pärt. In his more exuberant passages, his orchestrations have the spacious, broad- shouldered appeal of Aaron Copland's ballets. Shattenkirk has been working on this piece for years. It's been well worth the wait." 

The father of 4 children, Shattenkirk took a 'family leave' from formal composition after the premiere of his violin concerto Velicirapsody in 2002. The May 15, 2010 premiere of One Light, for chorus and orchestra brilliantly proclaimed his return. Commissioned by Brady Allred for the Salt Lake Choral Artists, the 5-movement work sets spiritual texts in a moving celebration mankind's shared religious vision. The composer writes: 

"There is a striking similarity in the common focus on the spiritual nature of light as a manifestation of God, of mankind's unity with his Creator and his prophets, and as the embodiment of eternal goodness and heavenly splendor, in the poetry of medieval saints, mystics and prophets – whether they be Christian, Islamic, Sufi, Buddhist, Jewish or Hindu. When one contemplates the fundamental unity of mankind’s spiritual aspirations, the infinite variety of paths to that unity transform from latent curse to blessing. I hope that, in some small way, One Light contributes to such a transformation." 

Born in 1954, Shattenkirk studied at Harvard University (Ph.D., 1987), Yale University, the University of Florida, the Manhattan School of Music, M.I.T., and the University of California Berkeley, with such teachers as Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Donald Martino, John Harbison, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jacob Druckman and John Corigliano. He has had considerable experience as an orchestral doublebass player. Among the awards and prizes he has won for his compositions are a National Endowment for the Arts Composer Fellowship (1995-96); the Lakond Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, "for an established composer" (1994); a fellowship from the California Council for the Arts (1991); and Meet the Composer Awards in 1981, 1993, and 1995. In 1982 he studied with Luciano Berio at the Tanglewood Festival on a Fromm Music Foundation Fellowship and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 1979. 

Shattenkirk has been commissioned by the New Mexico Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, Chamber Music America, and Collage, among others. Tatonka was broadcast on over 200 radio stations in Chorus America's "The First Art" series in the fall of 1995. Other performers of his music include the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Aspen Music Festival, and Paul Hillier's Theater of Voices. Shattenkirk has taught at the Yale School of Music, Harvard University, and the University of South Florida School of Music.

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