Leni Stern

Artist Information

Biography

Leni Stern is in the 26th year of her career as a recording artist, and with her latest release “Sabani”, produced entirely in Bamako, Mali, she continues to define herself as a genre-bending master guitarist and timely songwriter. Ms. Stern established her vocal and guitar abilities in jazz, rock, and folk while more recently drawing upon studies and collaborations from her international travels to such places as Kenya, India, Mali, Madagascar and Senegal. Having been awarded the Gibson Guitar’s Female Jazz Guitarist of the Year for five consecutive years, Ms. Stern has also been acknowledged for her songwriting talents by the International Songwriting Competition with 2009’s Honorable Mention in the world music category.
In 2005 Ms. Stern traveled to northern Mali to participate in the Festival in the Desert. It was here that she was introduced to master musicians Bassekou Kouyate and his wife singer Ami Sacko who later joined Ms. Stern in an UNESCO Global Alliance project at Salif Keita’s Bamako Studio, Moffou. Immediately falling in love with the music, the people and the country, Ms. Stern would return to Mali for the better part of two years, fully immersing herself in the griot tradition. Her 2007 EP “Alu Maye”, 2007 full-length “Africa”, and 2009 EP “Spirit in the Water” feature the collaborations she established during her studies and explorations to West Africa.
Born in Munich, Germany Ms. Stern came to the States to attend Berklee College of Music where she studied film scoring and composition. It was there that she began to hone her guitar skills, ultimately moving to New York City to start her first band with Paul Motian and Bill Frisell. It was not long after that she established her own label Leni Stern Recordings, ensuring that she would retain full artistic control of her diverse projects.

The Los Angeles Times: “Leni Stern’s geographic journey yields spiritual fruit.”
The Washington Post: “Stern doesn't collaborate with Sacko and fellow West Africans so much as commune with them, she never sounds out of her element, even when her pop and jazz sensibilities are most apparent.”
Downbeat Magazine: “The integration between Stern's music and the Mali musicians' mastery is nearly seamless.”

Instrumentation

Harvey Wirht - Drums
Brahim Fribgane - Oud, Cajon
Yacouba Sissoko - kora
Mamadou Ba - Bass
Kofo - Talking Drum
Leni Stern - Electric Guitar, voice, n'goni
Allyn Faye - Sabar

Discography

Clairvoyant (1985)
The Next Day (1987)
Secrets (1989)
Closer to the Light (1990)
Ten Songs (1992)
Like One (1993)
Words (1995)
Separate Cages (1996)
Black Guitar (1997)
Recollection (1998)
Kindness of Strangers (2000)
Finally The Rain Has Come (2002)
Ice Cold Water...$1 (EP) (2003)
When Evening Falls (2004)
Love Comes Quietly (2006)
Alu Maye (Have You Heard) (EP) (2007)
Africa (2007)
Spirit in the Water (2009)
Sa Belle Belle Ba (2010)
Sabani (2011)

Links

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter

Audio

• still bleeding
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• sorcerer
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• Sa Belle Belle Ba
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• Smoke's Risin'
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• Child soldier
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• My Name is Oumou (edit)
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• 10 000 Butterflies (edit)
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• Inshaallah
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• My Name is Oumou
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• Tell Me
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• Sa Belle Belle Ba
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• Smoke's Risin'
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• Souma Chamon
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• Nan Jeya
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• Farafina Cadi
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• Born Bad
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• Babakar
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• Namu
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• Madoumba
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• Sera
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Lyrics

• Love Everyone
• Ice Cold Water...$1
• When Evening Falls
• Let Me Fly
• watch over me
• My Name is Oumou
• Finally the rain has come
• child soldier
• 1,000 stars
• The House of Thieves
• My Name is Oumou
• Tell Me
• still bleeding

Video

Leni%20Stern-%20House%20of%20Thieves

Tell Me Europe 2010

Tell Me Europe 2010

Photo Gallery

Press

• MetalJazz.com 8/11 [+ Show ]
  

  Leni Stern, "Sabani" (LSR). Longtime survivors often show a combination of depth and lightness -- de...Leni Stern, "Sabani" (LSR). Longtime survivors often show a combination of depth and lightness -- depth because they've seen the bottom, and lightness because the earth can't hold them anymore. Stern's journey into African music reaches a point of peaceful knowledge with this mostly acoustic set, performed with a few African musicians in Mali. The rhythms are subtly complex, the songwriting clean, as Stern ponders and loves. And dances.

• All About Jazz 8/11 [+ Show ]
  

  Stern's Most Uplifting, Optimistic Album in Years, as 'Sabani' Suggests an African Dreamscape Str...Stern's Most Uplifting, Optimistic Album in Years, as 'Sabani' Suggests an African Dreamscape
  
  Stripped Down Trio Album Showcases Guitar, N'goni Ba, Camela N'goni, Calabash and Tama—Stern Thrilled with Result: “I Don't Know Why I Waited So Long to Record Like This"
  
  Recorded and Mixed in Bamako, Mali at Salif Keita's Mouffou Studio
  
  Acclaimed Global Music artist Leni Stern delivers her most uplifting and optimistic album in years with the September release of 'Sabani.' The stripped down African trio album was recorded and mixed at Salif Keita's Mouffou Studios in Bamako, Mali, and its austere beauty, at times, evokes such powerful U2 ballads such as “One" and “Red Hill Mining Town."
  
  'Sabani' means 'three' in Bambara, and all of the tracks on the album are trio compositions - a stark departure from the multi-instrumental African/Indian/Global orchestrations Stern has delivered as her sound evolved on recent albums 'Sa Belle Belle Ba,' 'Africa,' 'Spirit in the Water,' 'Alu Maye' and others. Perhaps it's the simplicity of the arrangements that has allowed Stern to find such a mystical quality to the music. Stern is thrilled with the result: “I don't know why I waited so long to record like this."
  
  'Sabani' features Stern on electric guitar, vocals and n'goni ba, Haruna Samake on camela n'goni, and Africa's Mamadou Kone dit Prince ('MK Called Prince') on calabash and tama. Highlights include the album's gypsy-inspired centerpiece 'Like A Thief,' and the powerful track 'Still Bleeding,' the first song Stern has ever written on n'goni ba. See song notes, below.
  
  Select song notes—by Leni Stern:
  
  “like a thief" was inspired by the flamenco singer diego el cigalla and his record “corren tiempos de alegria." when i was a little kid and wouldn't behave my grandmother used to tell me that i had fallen off the back of a horse when the gypsies came through town. she had taken me in out of the goodness of her heart, but if i didn't start behaving myself, she would give me back to them. i don't know if it's true that my great grandmother ran off with a chimney sweeper, a gypsy, and that i have a little gypsy in me, but i have always loved their music.
  
  “the cat stole the moon"—that's what little kids in mali shout on new moon nights.and you have to give them candy or coins for letting you know.
  
  “an saba" means the three of us or just us three. that's what haruna said when i told him of my idea to make a trio cd. we have spent so much time just playing like this. it's effortless for us and full of memories. of places we have been together, of adventures we've had. i don't why i waited so long to record like this.
  
  “djanfa" means betrayed. this song features zoumana tareta, the great malien soukou player and singer. he's been around longer than the rest of us, so it is his job to share some of his wisdom when we are together. those are the times when i feel most privileged to be part of an african community. i remember the time he told abou, our engineer that he was too skinny and he had to eat more. he talked about the time when he didn't have anything to eat for days. how he made it through those hard times. we all sat and listened like children when he got going that way. in this song he sings about all of us, haruna, prince, abou and me. it's a real special honor.
  
  “papillon"—when my friend adam's wife got sick, they talked about what they would like to be, if it was true that there is reincarnation and we all have more than one life to live.she said she would like to be a butterfly. i met adam in a little cafe on the lower east side, to see how he was doing and i swear when we stepped outside i almost collided with a few butterflies that came towards us and started flying around adam. it happens a lot he says.
  
  More about the musicians and the evolution of the project—by Leni Stern:
  
  I have been playing the n'goni since i first came to Mali in 2006 to perform at The Festival in the Dsert. I met Bassekou Kouyate there, Mali's most famous n'goni player. He and his whole family have been teaching me ever since. Last September we performed together at the presidential palace to celebrate the 50th anniversary of independence. 50 years? n'gonies. In the 50 n'goni orchestra, I sat next to the n'goni ba, the instrument of Basskou's father, played by his bother Fousseni. I fell in love with it's warm, soft sound. The n'goni ba is tuned to C, a forth below the jelly n'goni in F hat I had played so far. 'Still Bleeding' is the first song I composed on this instrument.
  
  Haruna Samake was born in a small village near Bamako, the capital of Mali in West Africa. His father was the imam and all the villagers came to pray in his mosque, at least once a week. The camela n'goni is the instrument of the hunters. Most hunters in West Africa are also doctors. By observing the animals they track, they learn about the plants in the forest. They see an injured dear rub his leg against a particular tree and cut the bark to make bandages for people's injuries, for example (penicillin is found in the bark of a tree). The wisdom of traditional African medicine is passed on through the hunters. They are also sorcerers, a belief that originated in their extraordinary courage. They faced a lion armed with only a spear, they caught poisonous snakes to milk the venom in their mouths and make heart medicine from it. Hunters spend days, even months in the forest, where it is believed the spirits live...and they learn from them. They communicate with the spirits with the help of cowrie shells or a blackboard with lines and spaces drawn in white flower. People speak about them in hushed voices. So it was highly inappropriate for the little son of the imam to sit in the large courtyard of their house and play with a small camela n'goni that he had carved himself out of a calebash half, a stick and some fishing line! The hunters however liked the little boy and started to teach him how to play the instrument and they gave him a real camela n'goni after a while. A famous Malian singer named Sidibe heard people talking about the imam's little son that played the hunters harp and hired him to play in her band. That's how Haruna came to Bamako and eventually joined Salif Keita's band, where I met him. The camela n'goni is a pentatonic instrument that is most popular in Wassoulou music from the south of Mali. Haruna has taken the instrument far past its origin and can play any style of music on it, from the mandingue scales of segou and guinne, to the Congolese guitars to American blues.
  
  MK Called Prince was born in Mopti, the city of the 3 rivers, the West African center of trading since hundreds of years. Mopti is located in the middle of the country, halfway between Bamako and Timbuktu. 4 of the Malian ethnicities, the peul, the bamabara, the dogon and the bobos, meet in mopti. Prince knows all of their rhythms and dances. He is half peul, half bobo. The rhythm of this song comes from the bobo people.
  
  Prince plays it on the calabash. One day before the recording he took me on his mo-ped to the market and we bought a calabash. They are used for so many things in Africa, instruments like the kora and the camela n'goni, household purposes like salad bowls and water containers they often get decorated with cowrie shells and used as shakers in wassoulou music. Prince uses his upside down, like a bass drum when he plays with his fists and a rimshot when he play with his rings. He can actually sound like a whole drum set on a calabash. The man that cleaned and carved the calabash while we where waiting was a samake, like haruna. Prince said that you can trust a samake.

• New Music Weekly 9/2010 [+ Show ]
  

  Leni Stern has earned the most glowing reviews of her eclectic career with her Global ensemble pro...
  Leni Stern has earned the most glowing reviews of her eclectic career with her Global ensemble project, ‘Sa Belle Belle Ba’. iTunes Editorial raved about the album’s “bewitching grooves,” “sweltering rhythms” and “incantatory lyrics”. Other recent press coverage has described Stern as “among the most adventurous musicians of her generation,” and has noted, “Her CD is an eclectic collection of fused musical styles and genres.” By showcasing multiple guest performers, highlighting indigenous instruments from Africa and elsewhere, and allowing the collaborative process to shine, Stern has delivered a complex, hard-hitting, funky, international rocker.
  
  
  
  On September 15th, in an extraordinary example of the respect Stern has earned in Africa, she will perform at the Presidential Palace in Bamako Mali, playing n'goni with Bassekou Kouyate's n'goni orchestra.
  
  
  
  Upcoming U.S. Tour dates will include 9/25 at the Town Crier in Pawling, NY; 9/26 at Rose Live Music in Brooklyn; 10/7 at Coda in San Francisco; 10/9 at Blue Whale in Los Angeles. More dates will be announced soon.

• Blogcritics 8/2010 [+ Show ]
  

  I guess the first time I really got interested in the fusion of the pop music aesthetic with world m...I guess the first time I really got interested in the fusion of the pop music aesthetic with world music was back in the eighties when Paul Simon resurrected himself with his award winning Graceland album. Certainly there had been world music influences in some of Simon's earlier music, "Mother and Child Reunion" for example, but the new album suggested a commitment beyond a single here and there. Collaborating with musical groups like Ladyship Black Mambazo, and Los Lobos; he combined multicultural rhythms with his trademark poetic lyrics to produce gems like "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" and "All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints." The Rhythm of the Saints which followed never had the same success, but it did show a similar cultural outreach.
  
  There is a lot about Leni Stern's new CD Sa Belle Belle Ba that reminds me of Simon's landmark album. She comes to world music with a successful resume as a jazz guitarist and infuses track after track with swinging guitar riffs and mellow highlights. Listen to the twanging guitar punctuating the vocal on "Nan Jeya" and the electrical improvisation on "Born Bad." There is also some nice improvisation on the kora (a 21 string West African lute like instrument) by Yakouba Sissoko in the Arabic flavored "Yakhai Bi Khali" and the lilting "Souma Chamon." She makes it her business to collaborate with authentic voices. Guest musicians include Haruna Samake, Ami Sacko, Bouba Sacko, Bassekou Kouyate, and Zoumana Tareta. They join Stern in chorus and with individual solo work, most often providing an African counterpoint to her English lyrics. For example listen to the choral background to the bluesy "Smoke's Risin'." It is unfortunate that individual solo work isn't always credited in the album notes.
  
  Her English lyrics range from the deceptive simplicity of "Souma Chamon" and "Sera" to the poetic eloquence of "Now I Close My Heart" that begs comparison with Simon at his best. There is a prayer like quality to her paean to Africa the motherland of humanity, "Farafina Cadi." She combines English lyrics with African and Arabic lyrics, in a sense illustrating the need to go beyond linguistic barriers and find the humanity that fills us all. In the same way her fusion of musical genres symbolizes her desire for cultural fusion. So, for example, there is the combination of traditional African chants with rap on the title song, "Sa Belle Belle Ba." She melds jazzy blues and a swinging electric guitar solo to a backdrop of African rhythms in "Born Bad."
  
  
  Read more: http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-leni-stern-sa-belle/#ixzz12vVONudQ

• Itunes 8/10 [+ Show ]
  

  The bewitching grooves of singer/guitarist Leni Stern’s Sa Belle Belle Ba brilliantly fuse Western a...The bewitching grooves of singer/guitarist Leni Stern’s Sa Belle Belle Ba brilliantly fuse Western and African musical idioms. Building upon the breakthroughs on her acclaimed 2007 release Africa, Stern once again taps into the rich culture of Mali in tandem with such master musicians as oud player Brahim Fribgane and vocalist Ami Sacko. Sweltering rhythms and incantatory lyrics give “Babakar,” “Smoke’s Risin’” and “Born Bad” an otherworldly power. Echoes of American funk and blues can be heard in the serpentine flow of “Nan Jeya” and the title track. The caressing, lullaby-like “Sera” and the string-draped ballad “Now I Close My Heart” work equally well in a softer strain. Stern’s acoustic and electric-guitar work displays their trademark precision and grace on the slow-boiling “Souma Chamon,” among other numbers. From the chant-like “Madoumba” to the Middle Eastern-accented “Yakhal Bi Khali,” Stern and her collaborators embrace a wide swath of sonic terrain. The spell-casting “Namu” makes the mystical content of the album’s songs clear.

• The Washington Post, 2/2008 [+ Show ]
  

  A SPIRITUAL CURRENT always powers Leni Stern's recordings, especially on "Africa," an album inspire... A SPIRITUAL CURRENT always powers Leni Stern's recordings, especially on "Africa," an album inspired by her immersion in Malian and Senegalese culture. Clearly the German-born, New York-based singer-songwriter-guitarist has found another home. Recorded mostly at singer Salif Keita's studio in Bamako, Mali, "Africa" is a cross-cultural prayer meeting of sorts. The album has its share of purely insinuating charms; Stern's shimmering guitar work and an indigenous brew of vocal harmonies, blues bends and percolating beats see to that. But she isn't merely interested in having listeners succumb to the polyrhythmic weaves that distinguish "Alu Maye (Have You Seen)" and other tracks. Much of the music is deeply soulful, a quality underscored by Malian vocalist Ami Sacko, whose robust contralto stands in sharp contrast to Stern's plaintive soprano, and by lyrics addressing sociopolitical nightmares -- the pleading "Childsoldier," for example -- and personal loss. The late saxophonist Michael Brecker, who appears on "Africa," inspires the elegiac ballad "1000 Stars," while the haunting "Saya (Farewell)" is dedicated to percussionist Don Alias, who died in 2006. Because Stern doesn't collaborate with Sacko and fellow West Africans so much as commune with them, she never sounds out of her element, even when her pop and jazz sensibilities are most apparent.

• Downbeat Magazine 1/2008 [+ Show ]
  

  Leni Stern has had a remarkable journey. Known for years as a talented guitarist who held down a wee...Leni Stern has had a remarkable journey. Known for years as a talented guitarist who held down a weekly gig at New York's 55 Bar, Stern today is as different from that persona as night and day …Stern has shed multiple skins while taking her music – and her guitar playing – to new, daunting heights. A cancer survivor, Stern has always brought a sense of seeking and solace to her music. Africa is the culmination of those desires. She recorded the album in Mali with a stellar cast of local musicians. It is life affirming and questioning, an accomplished amalgam of native musicians performing African rhythms and tableaus, Stern's vocals and evocative guitar. The integration between Stern's music and the Mali musicians' mastery is nearly seamless. Stern is accompanied on vocals by Ami Sacko, Yagar Damba, Mah Soumano and Dally Kouyate, who bring serenity to the music. Stern also laces Africa with sadness, not only from the tributes to Michael Brecker and Don Alias, but in its ability to capture the enormity of Africa's plight. Throughout it all, Stern fingerpicks gorgeous, subtle guitar solos that blur the lines between blues, jazz and African sounds. DOWNBEAT Magazine, 1/08,
  
  
  

• Los Angeles Times 12/2007 [+ Show ]
  

  "Guitarist, singer and songwriter Leni Stern's geographic journey yields spiritual fruit" Staging..."Guitarist, singer and songwriter Leni Stern's geographic journey yields spiritual fruit"
  
  Staging benefit concerts and adopting babies are great, but musician Leni Stern has her own way of spreading the vibration of Africa: She has become an African. The people of Mali have even given the Bavarian-born guitarist and singer-songwriter a little piece of land, because they want her to stay. She's lived there about half-time for more than two years, and she wants everybody to know she's not suffering.
  
  "We all come from Africa; it's the birthplace of humankind," Stern says by phone from the New York City apartment she shares with her husband, guitarist Michael Stern. "When you go there, you feel like you're coming home."
  
  Consequently, she says, "we have a lot of things that we owe Africa, so we try to raise money, and our televisions are filled with images of terrible things.
  
  "Get rid of malaria, for crying out loud, and get some cheap medicine out there," she adds. That's all well and good, "but we have created an impression of Africa, that it's a dangerous place filled with hardship, everybody there is miserable and crying all the time. You have to be vaccinated to the max, you can't drink the water, and you better not step on the ground. Well, you know what? None of that is true.
  
  "It doesn't mean that we have to stop sending money for medicine," she says, "but Africa is beautiful. Africa is fascinating. You have never been among a nicer people. They really make it your quest that you should be happy. The food -- oh my God, the only thing that's a disaster is that I keep gaining pounds."
  
  Stern allied herself with another white person in her new home. Only this one happened to be black.
  
  That would be the renegade Afro-pop singer Salif Keita, an African albino. The blond Stern, who plays at Cafe Metropol downtown tonight, met Keita in Mali while using his studio and soon found herself splitting time between her own music -- influenced by the many months she's spent among Mali's Tuareg tribe -- and Keita's band.
  
  In October, when Stern played on Keita's recording of U2's "One," the odd juxtaposition looked like an alliance of exiles.
  
  Stern left a German acting career in 1977 to become a jazz fusion player in the U.S., later leaving fusion too (and America, really). Keita, born into the aristocracy, bucked tradition to become a lowly musician.
  
  Malians aren't sure how to regard Keita. "They all say he's a sorcerer and has special powers, because they have this belief that albinos are different," Stern says. "And they act around him with a mixture of devotion and hatred. It's a strange situation I have gotten myself into."
  
  It's not the first time. Stern has traveled to such disparate destinations as India, Kenya and New Orleans -- not just as a tourist, but also as a seeker who wanted to steep herself in the local musical cultures, each of which has influenced her own work.
  
  Asked about the source of her wandering spirit, Stern wonders if a childhood admonition didn't contain some truth. "Whenever I was misbehaving, my grandmother used to say, 'Young lady, when the Gypsies ran through town, out of the kindness of my heart I took you into the house. If you don't stop, I will give you back to them!' "
  
  Stern's Malian residencies have run the longest of her post-New York affiliations. She's been living among the Tuareg, whose nomadic ways, following their camels, sheep and goats as they graze, have butted up against the ever tighter restrictions of modern sprawl. She has learned to play North African instruments such as the skin-stretched n'goni (guitar or banjo) and the pole-necked guimbri, a kind of bass.
  
  Most important to Stern, she's made friends. There's smiling Ami Sacko, the woman whose warm, sliding incantation, rather than Stern's intimate, vibrating soprano, is the first voice heard on Stern's new album, "Africa." There's Bassekou Kouyate, Sacko's husband, whom Stern describes as the only musician his peers allow to break harmonic rules with his aggressive, full-toned n'goni plucking. There's Keita, challenger of convention, who enjoys offsetting his own distinctive onstage image with a band that may include a white woman or a dwarf.
  
  The interpersonal roots add a lot to the richness of Stern's "Africa," which sounds like anything but the standard cut-and-paste "world" collab. The feel is light -- in the auditory, emotional and even visual senses -- but serious observations on genocide ("Childsoldier") and drought ("Aman Iman") drift through like dust. And spirits hover, as two of Stern's old friends, saxist Michael Brecker (who played on the album) and percussionist Don Alias, were alive when she started recording "Africa" about two years ago but not when she finished.
  
  Stern has wrought a work of variety and complexity that could nevertheless be mistaken for background music because of its surface beauty.
  
  It requires little concentration, though, to reveal the depth of its art: the guitar droplets and bass pond-plunks of "Aman Iman," the inviting clay-drum rhythms of "Dakkan (What Is Written)," the bent Howlin' Wolf Afro blues of "Forest Song."
  
  Many strands twist together into a flexible rope, lent a singular identity by the long, flowing lines of Stern's silvery electric guitar. A song's beginning often supplies little hint of where it will end. We're traveling here.
  
  Least obvious and most impressive is the way Stern has locked into and condensed the mystery of Malian groove, especially on "Keita," whose title is its tribute. Shoulders shake; drums pop up all over; the rhythm and momentum grow big, bigger and biggest, despite the urgent sense of something . . . disappearing.
  
  Stern hasn't spent her whole life flying over desert in a dune buggy, sponsoring a sheep sacrifice, losing her credit card at a Timbuktu river crossing and playing Strat under the appraising gaze of local imams. ("The real religious leaders are unbelievably charming and open-minded," she says with a laugh.)
  
  Her journey has taken many turns, including a severe smackdown with breast cancer two decades back.
  
  "Through the skill of my oncologist and my doctor, and several witches and wizards from all over the world, I'm here to talk to you," says Stern, who'll be backed tonight by oud and doumbek player Brahim Fribgane, saxophonist George Brooks and percussionist Mamadou Makane Kouyate.
  
  "I had chemotherapy, cosmetic surgery and then intensive rebuilding of the immune system with Ayurvedic medicine, with Western medicine, with Chinese medicine. I went to Tibet -- and yes, I got a mantra from Buddha!"
  
  Stern began to reconsider her path, evolving away from respected fusion work with the likes of drummer Paul Motian, guitarist Bill Frisell and guitarist Wayne Krantz. She got involved with promoting cancer awareness and decided she wanted to start her own label and sing her own songs.
  
  Although Stern is capable of making a universal connection, the commercial part of that universe doesn't know it yet. She's not religious; she says her music is her prayer.
  
  But maybe there's a hint of her potential in her song "Finally the Rain Has Come."
  
  Every time she played the song, "it would rain, and I would get soaked, and my amp would malfunction," she says. "I played it in San Diego, and the guy said, 'Don't play any earthquake songs.' "
  by Greg Burke

• All About Jazz 12/2007 [+ Show ]
  

  Songwriter and guitarist Leni Stern’s Africa (LSR, 2007) marks a significant new chapter in a career...Songwriter and guitarist Leni Stern’s Africa (LSR, 2007) marks a significant new chapter in a career marked by bold changes. Her fearlessness as an independent traveler, and her endless curiosity about the workings of the world which surrounds her, are reflected in her music. Her lyrics are tender, poetic and, above all, truthful.
  
  As a singer, she has variously been described as a combination of Marlene Dietrich with the phrasing of Billie Holiday, and as a cross between Joni Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. Five consecutive Gibson Best Female Guitarist Awards are testimony to her distinctive playing style, elegant and emotive, and almost an extension of her voice.
  
  After abandoning a thriving career in the theater, Stern left her native Germany and made her way to Boston’s Berklee College of Music to study film scoring, and eventually found herself, to her surprise, leading a band boasting guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Paul Motian. Over the years musicians such as guitarist John McLaughlin, tablaist Zakir Hussain, saxophonist Michael Brecker, violinist Jenny Scheinman, drummer Dennis Chambers, percussionist Don Alias and songwriter/guitarist Larry John McNally have collaborated on her projects.
  
  And just when you think you’ve got her pegged, she can be found rubbing shoulders and trading licks with giants of the African stage such as Salif Keita and Babaa Maal. Leni Stern, it is safe to say, is a woman with more than one string to her bow.
  
  All About Jazz: Leni, where did you grow up?
  
  Leni Stern: I was born in Germany and I grew up in Munich.
  
  AAJ: What place did music have in you house in Munich when you were growing up?
  
  LS: It was very, very important. My parents weren’t musicians themselves but they were music lovers. My mother would have liked to be a singer but my grandfather didn’t think that was a decent profession [laughs]. He forced her to study, so I guess in a sense I’m living her dream because I became a musician.
  
  I have to say that in Europe music is a bigger part of education, I think, than in America, so there was a lot of music in school too. In our house there was a lot of music. I had one brother who was a drummer, one that still is a piano player, and my sister writes poetry; it was really very, very, present. The rest of them made it a hobby but my brother and I made it our life.
  
  AAJ: And yet you followed a path into the theater; did that mean, at that stage, that you had no ambition for a musical career or did you consider it an unreachable dream?
  
  LS: It was just a problem of making money as a female electric guitarist, because then nobody wanted to hire you. I do love acting and still love it and in the theater I had the possibility to do music hands-on because you always needed music there. I was the so-called musical director of the whole thing and I got to have a band, which was the theater band.
  
  ”LeniAAJ: The theater company which you started as a teenager has been described as radical; in what way was it radical?
  
  It was radical because it was political, in content and in form. It was very influenced by the American Living Theater. I had studied with Marcel Marceau in Paris. It was performance art and music had a huge place in it, a very big place in it.
  
  AAJ: You gave up an already successful theatrical career to study film scoring at Berklee; what prompted that divorce from the theater and your more serious courtship of music?
  
  LS: I couldn’t do both. You find a lot of actors who have a music career on the side and I didn’t really want that because my first love was music and my second love was the theater. I never meant to give up acting but it was just so hard to do everything, there weren’t enough hours in the day. My acting jobs were in Europe and my musical jobs were here so running back and forth after a while just got to be too much.
  
  So I went to Berklee to study film scoring and composition because you couldn’t really study that in Munich. I had made a lot of money in a TV show so I could afford to take some time off. I was a jazz guitarist, a blues guitarist and I really wanted to go where it all came from, because I always knew that you had to be in the place and live with the people, and inhale the vibes to really get a sense of it. And here is where I met [guitarist Mike] Mr. Stern. For a while I traveled back and forth, but then I settled here in New York.
  
  AAJ: How useful a discipline was film scoring for you?
  
  LS: It’s a great way to learn how to compose because you have to write music which has emotional content and tells a story. You know, you get a lot of money to do music which is not the norm in the music business.
  
  AAJ: So do you think film scoring was good preparation for your development as a songwriter later on?
  
  LS: Yes, it was. In film school you get asked to provide a certain emotion. Usually they come to you when something isn’t working, when a love scene isn’t romantic enough or an action scene isn’t really exciting enough, and you’ve got to do just that. It’s an excellent school for a songwriter.
  
  AAJ: Within a few short years of arriving at Berklee you changed course again by leaving aside film scoring to form a band which included guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Paul Motian, which is not a bad line up for starters you’d have to say. How did you rope those guys in?
  
  LS: [laughs] Bill is actually responsible for me marrying Michael. I heard Bill play and I just asked him to be my teacher. He didn’t really want to teach, it can be quite tedious, and he said that in order to really play you have to have a gig. I said, “Okay, how do I get a gig?” And he said, You just go some place and you ask to get a gig.” He got a little tired of my continuous questions and he said, “If you do I’ll play with you,” thinking I’d never get a gig, I think. But of course the first place I went, being a pretty, young European actress, the club owners said yes to anything! [laughs] so I asked for a gig and I got one.
  
  Paul Motian had just left Keith Jarrett and was doing nothing, and he always loved to play with women…
  
  ”LeniAAJ: He has good taste in people.
  
  LS: [laughs] I was terrified. The whole thing was terrifying and quite surreal. But I was very used to being on stage and performing and to relating to an audience so it wasn't like I was a total beginner.
  
  AAJ: What did you learn about the guitar from studying and playing with Bill Frisell?
  
  LS: I think the most important thing was to really develop your own voice, and to really go deeply into the jazz and blues tradition, and just to play a lot. A lot of playing guitar and playing music can't really be explained all that well; when we can explain it that doesn't mean that the other person will be able to do it, so you've got to learn by doing. Bill was a very in-demand player at the time, so I had to learn the music he had to learn and I learned by accompanying him.
  
  AAJ: What is it about Frisell that you only need to hear two notes or one chord and you know it can only be him?
  
  LS: That’s exactly what it was about him that was fascinating. When you come from acting personality is very important, and I was bored with people that all sounded the same, all sounding like Pat Metheny. So I really loved that Bill had his own voice. He had that great, great rock sound. I never saw myself playing a big, fat guitar, it would have been impersonating an American and I didn't want to, because I wasn't. I wanted to find a new sound and I really loved rock 'n' roll guitar--I loved Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page--and I didn't want to say goodbye to that sound.
  
  AAJ: You were categorized very early on in your career as a jazz guitarist, but over the years you've defied easy labeling, and your new album Africa really isn't going to help the labelers at all, but it seems to me that you are a singer/songwriter who plays very fine guitar. How do you see yourself?
  
  LS: I see myself as an improvising musician, and I sing so… singer/songwriter is someone that sits with an acoustic guitar in open tuning…
  
  AAJ: I meant that as a compliment.
  
  LS: Thank you. I love songwriting, and I love storytelling, which is why I'm so in love with Africa.
  
  AAJ: You write all your own songs, though one songwriter whose songs you have sung is Larry John McNally. What do you like about his songs?
  
  LS: His lyrics. He’s a great, great poet and he’s partially responsible for me starting to write. Initially in our collaboration he just wanted some fancy jazz chords for his beautiful songs but he ended up liking what I said, and he kept writing it down and asking me if he could use it, and that encouraged me to write my own lyrics. That’s what gave me the courage to start writing songs, because I worked with one of the great American songwriters and I learned a lot about songwriting from him. I continue to be a huge fan of his music.
  
  ”LeniAAJ: You set up your own record label Leni Stern Records, at about the same time you started recording vocally; from an artistic point of view that must have been very liberating, no?
  
  LS: Yes it was. I used Hiram Bullock as producer for my first two records because he was my friend and he always insisted I should record, record, record. I didn't quite understand why at the time but I didn't want to offend him [laughs]. It was good to be fully in charge and to have control over the music because when you record for a label a lot of the time you find someone who's not really familiar with what you do, or where you want to go.
  
  AAJ: Quite early on in your recording career, I think you'd recorded three or four albums, you were diagnosed with breast cancer; you overcame that and you've gone from strength to strength as an artist, what did you learn from that traumatic episode in your life?
  
  LS: Well, I learned what was really important to me. I found the strength that I needed to overcome it, and had from then on. It's an interesting experience when you confront your mortality. We all walk around as if we were all to live for ever. I mean, we sort of have to, but when you realize the finite nature of our existence, it messes up your head but in actuality it really helps you a lot.
  
  AAJ: Let's talk about your new album Africa which I think marks a new chapter in your career.
  
  LS: I think it does.
  
  AAJ: To record in Africa with African musicians, was this a concept that you had wished to explore for some time?
  
  LS: I was involved in Indian music, and the great thing about jazz is that you can integrate all of these influences and enrich your music. It happened because I was invited to play the Festival in the Desert in Mali, which was a festival I always wanted to play because it's so romantic and I met African musicians there that ended up on the record.
  
  We performed together, I asked them to sit in with me and we just really clicked. Bassekou [Kouyate] is sort of the historian of west African n'goni, which is the ancestor of the guitar, and he has recorded with people like Taj Mahal, who shares my opinion that when you go there, and play with them there, you really find the roots of what you're doing, so it was very easy to play with them and it was just loads of fun.
  
  ”Leni
  
  I returned just by accident and started recording because at the time Salif Keita had created this program with UNICEF for young African recording engineers, who would get a chance to record with European engineers and then go to Europe to continue the training. I met the engineer in the hotel and they were looking to give these kids an experience with just a regular artist. You know, throw them in at the deep end and see if they swim. They asked me if I would come and volunteer for this project.
  
  But the recordings came out so good that I kept them and made an EP Alu Maye (LSR, 2007) out of them. I continued to record here in New York with the tracks I'd brought back, but at the time I didn't know if that was anything we could use, except to inspire to create projects like that. It's a fantastic opportunity for all these very talented young people in Africa and I've always wanted to do something good with the music and not just perform.
  
  That's how I met Salif. It was his program, and he called me to thank me for being part of it. It wasn't such an effort because they were amazing talents because they learn to do everything with nothing. They can take a Mac apart and put it back together and it works! It was fascinating to be with them, and so inspiring. I ended up using one of those engineers for the final project because we worked so well together. His name is Abu Cisse.
  
  AAJ: The playing on Africa is beautiful but for me a real star is the singer Ami Sacko. Is she a recording star in her own right?
  
  LS: A big, big star. She's Bassekou's wife, so she came and sang with us at the festival and we developed a friendship, and we were kind of writing songs together. She would make up her own words or say in her language what I was saying in English, so that people could understand what I was talking about. I actually went to Paris to write with her, and I later on I recorded on her record and we did her videos together.
  
  AAJ: Your own guitar playing, and I'm thinking of a track like “Simbo,” speaks the local lingo, and I think that's also true to an extent of your singing, and it seems very effortless. I wonder how much of that ability to sing or play in an authentic-sounding African or Indian style, which you've also done, is down to hard work?
  
  LS: It's hard work, but when you love it it's not so hard. I've always loved African guitar and it just slips into jazz and rock and pop so well and I've tried to learn how to do it. It was so clear, like trying to play jazz in Munich, that it's hard to play African music when you're not in Africa.
  
  I kept returning to just learn the scene, and learn the rhythmic intricacies that are just tremendous, on the spot, because it's best when you play with African percussionists and African rhythm sections and you find how they feel these rhythms, how they nail all these rhythms that are going on simultaneously. I really went more to study; the record is more of a by-product of my interest in this music.
  
  ”LeniAAJ: Bassekou Kouyate plays beautifully on Africa, is he a big star in Mali?
  
  LS: Oh, he's a big, big star, the biggest n'goni star in west Africa right now.
  
  AAJ: Africa also marked some of the final recordings of the great saxophonist Michael Brecker, it must have been quite an emotional record to make in more ways than one.
  
  LS: Yes it was. He was one person who encouraged me to do these things, because it was a little bit of a crazy undertaking but he just thought it was the best idea and he was very involved. He insisted on playing on the EP Alu Maye, and we worked on the following tracks together in Paris. He had some requests on what he would like to play. I was heartbroken when he died in the middle of the project. We did a tribute to him, but he was meant to play on many more tracks but unfortunately he died before we could record them.
  
  AAJ: Plenty of men have gone to Africa to record with local musicians but I can't think of too many women; you must have broken a few molds and a few stereotypes while you were there, how did people react to this white woman wielding an electric guitar?
  
  LS: Well I really have to thank Salif because he doesn't fit in anywhere, he loved having other people not fit in and he got a big kick out of it. They were pleased that I was so interested in their music. The women were the ones who really went crazy when they saw a woman trade solos with a man. They were my biggest supporters and, since their social situation is quite difficult, it was a joy for them to see somebody not fit into a stereotype, and do well.
  
  There were many funny episodes of me trying to be respectful to the Moslem tradition. Even at the first festival in the desert I was given a traditional robe with the notion that I should please wear it and not walk around like a westerner, and the first thing that happened was that I stepped on the damn thing and got completely entangled in it!
  
  But it was a great experience as a woman to be able to stand for something in a nice way, because the guys like it when you play well and sing nice love songs to them. They don’t quite know what to make of it. Africans are very loose; if it grooves it’s okay.
  
  AAJ: It took a couple of years and half a dozen trips to Mali to make this record. Did it ever become a grind to go back and forwards?
  
  ”LeniLS: Not at all. African people are so warm and welcoming and there hospitality is legendary. I feel like it’s a part of my family over there now and I actually have two godchildren there now, and it’s just a joy. It was a joy from beginning to end.
  
  The part that becomes tedious is that there’s malaria and typhoid fever and you have to have a bunch of vaccinations when you go [laughs]. You are covered in mosquito repellent and you have to be careful about what you eat and all of that but that’s really minor. Actually, I have more trouble at home here, picking up a cold from the terrible weather we have here, but in Africa I do very well.
  
  AAJ: I believe you came away from Africa with more than one honorific name.
  
  LS: [laughs] My Africa name is Oumou and Moussa Guitar Foe. (Women Guitar player) It was fun.
  
  AAJ: What’s the story behind the name Oumou?
  
  LS: Omou was the daughter of the prophet and Bassekou gave that name to me; as a member of his family he made me a griot, which is an African storyteller, because he said I was already a storyteller. I was very honored, but I really felt it; my function as a storyteller is to keep record of what’s going on, how we feel, how our world works and put it into song. It was very fitting I thought.
  
  AAJ: You’ve traveled extensively which obviously provides you with inspiration for your songwriting and you’ve been going to India for a number of years to study Hindustani classical vocal technique, how did you get connected to Indian music in the first place?
  
  LS: I think John Coltrane was the one who pointed out how Indian improvisation had been going on for four thousand years and had a lot for us to learn from, so I had studied the raga form and the way of improvising. I was a great fan of Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin and then I was invited to a festival in India, which gave me the opportunity to study with a local singer, and I did that and recorded with that singer on the album Finally the Rain Has Come (LSR, 2002), with Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin as well. That kind of brought me to India and I played many festivals there and traveled there. I just love their way of singing. The way I look at singing is the way I look at playing guitar, so I chose to train my voice in that fashion.
  
  AAJ: It must have been a real thrill to have Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin playing on that album.
  
  LS: That was so much fun, it was fantastic.
  
  AAJ: Has your vocal training in Hindustani classical technique had a wider influence on the way you sing in general?
  
  LS: Yes it has. It’s also influenced my guitar playing/. I didn’t intend it to but I was a more prolific guitar player and I learned it on the guitar first, and it really changed my articulation and my embellishment in a way that I was thrilled [about].
  
  ”Leni
  
  It was, very, very interesting. Jeff Beck also did some studying of that Indian stuff and it’s kind of related to the way modern guitar is played, not just musically, but how you play. And again it’s a very emotional way of playing the guitar. The guitar is a difficult instrument to not just rattle off some fast, fabulous line, but to really make it sing like a voice. It’s a metal string on a piece of wood, and to put some life into that is not an easy task. The Indian way of looking at things really helps with that.
  
  AAJ: Can you see yourself following up Africa with an album of Indian-inspired music at all?
  
  LS: Well, yeah, I am combining the two things. Both of them are Moslem traditions. The Mogul emperors of India were the big supporters of music there. They had court orchestras in a Moslem tradition and they have that in common with African music.
  
  AAJ: Returning to Africa for a second, you were recently back in Africa recording the U2 song “One,” with Salif Keita. What’s the story behind that?
  
  LS: Salif asked me to do it. He always wanted to sing in English and when I came back recently he asked me if I would help him to sing in English. He’s very uptight about English, but I thought, “You speak English very well, why not sing it?” And he asked me to put the guitars down for the track. I’m not sure what he’s going to do with it but it came out fabulously. His version is wonderful.
  
  AAJ: Your whole African adventure sounds like it was an edifying experience. Where do you think it’s going to lead you to?
  
  LS: I don’t know, I don’t know. I just got a call to do another African festival. Many jazz musicians go to Europe to do a lot of their playing and I guess we’ll be doing a lot of our playing with African musicians, with African bands.
  
  ”LeniAAJ: You practice Hung Ga Kung Fu, how good are you?
  
  LS: I have a black belt. It helps when you can defend yourself like a man. I do like to take the privileges that men have, and I think with that comes the responsibility. All men know how to defend themselves and women have to find somebody that will defend them. I think it’s only fair that if you don’t want to live by the rules of women, if you want to live by the rules of men you have to do what men have to do.
  
  AAJ: Might you take another change of career and take up a career as a martial arts instructor?
  
  LS: [laughs] No, no! It’s mainly for my health and for my wellbeing, and to enable me to do what I love doing which is having adventurous travel. No problems sleeping by myself in a tent in the middle of the desert surrounded by wild Tauregs. I really sleep very well, and I don’t think I would if I didn’t train.
  
  AAJ: What would you like to do next?
  
  LS: I would love to tour the world with this music. I have put together a great group of African musicians and I would love to continue touring in America, in Africa, in Europe…

• Spinner 12/07 [+ Show ]
  

  "Leni Stern Promotes a Give-and-Take Relationship With African Music" Like many musicians these d..."Leni Stern Promotes a Give-and-Take Relationship With African Music"
  
  Like many musicians these days, Leni Stern is looking for some innovative marketing and distribution avenues for her latest album. But it's not the digital frontiers that she is exploring with her newest scheme. Quite the opposite: She's just struck a deal for a campaign centering on selling the album in little stalls throughout Africa. On cassette.
  
  It's only right, the Munich, Germany-born guitarist says. Mali is where most of the music on the album, simply titled 'Africa,' was made. And while that's hardly unique these days, with an increasingly large stream of American and European musicians having made their way to the African continent for recording projects of late, she thinks not enough of the results have been given a presence in the lands of their origin.
  
  "Most people come to Africa and make the music and then take it back to France or America or wherever," Stern says. "They never take it back. I want to go back and take all these little colored cassettes. I signed a deal to make sure they get sold in market stalls all over Africa. I'm going to have a big concert promoting the cassette, do the African TV shows, all the things you do with a new record."
  
  With her music released by her own company, Leni Stern Recordings, she can do whatever she wants, and her approach is as fluid and personal as the playing that marks her music throughout nearly 25 years in which she's earned acclaim both as an instrumentalist and, in recent years, as a singer-songwriter, as well. So, there her album will be, right alongside tapes and CDs (pirated in many cases, of course) by such regional leaders as Salif Keita, the late Ali Farka Toure and, from neighboring Senegal, Baaba Maal, not to mention such international icons/staples as Bob Marley. It's not so much that she thinks this is an economically fertile territory for her but something more meaningful to her. In some respects, it's a way to thank and recognize the local musicians with whom she collaborated on this album's weaving of her individualistic styles with African forms and sounds. One event on this trip is a concert celebrating the release of an album by Ami Sacko, a featured vocalist on Stern's album and the wife of Bassekou Kouyate, whose plucked ngoni playing is also highlighted on 'Africa.'
  
  "Her album is being released, and I played guitar and sang on it," Stern says. "I'm going to be in her video and play at the concert for her. And I want to bring my record for everybody. African artists often never see the CDs they play on. I want them to see their names in print on the CD."
  
  Stern knows that as a very blond, very white woman with a German accent and roots in instrumental jazz she may be a bit of an odd presence on the African promotional circuit. "It's not a piece of cake to walk into there as a blond girl playing guitar," she says with the easy, lively laugh that is a continuous presence in her rapid-fire conversation. "I am the shock of the century!"
  
  It's not a new feeling to her -- she notes that even playing blues and jazz, as a German, she can "feel slightly like an impostor. But she says in her first visits to Africa in past years she was put at ease. "They asked me what I do and I say, 'I'm an electric guitarist and sing songs,' and they said, 'You're a griot!' "
  
  And the local support system has been quite strong. Baaba Maal even had Stern join him onstage last year in a concert celebrating the end of the Ramadan holy month observance. "They want to make a point, that we are all citizens of the world," she says. "Baba has the phrase "Friends of Africa." He speaks about it on TV, says to stop blaming the white folks for what their parents did."
  
  She's also thrilled to be part of the expanding network of American and European artists working in Africa. She notes her friendship with jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, whose recent 'Red Earth' album (the subject of an earlier Around the World column) was also recorded in Mali. So, undaunted, Stern is planning to play two Ramadan concerts this spring, one with Maal and one with Keita, and expects to make Africa a regular destination on her travel itinerary.
  
  "My husband [New York jazz guitarist Mike Stern] last weekend flew to Italy for a gig, and I can fly to Dakar," she says. "Really, just the same distance and no harder to do. Promoters say you shouldn't do tours there because you don't make any money. But of course. I make a record and have an independent company, so it's easy for me to move the way the times are moving and do what I want. I can make videos in Africa and put them up on YouTube."
  
  Meanwhile, music is not the only thing she's taking back to Africa. "I'm working with the organization Eyes on Africa," she says. "We've brought hundreds of eyeglasses to old people. I have bad eyes, so I have all these glasses. You see a lot of suffering and you can't help everybody. But helping Tuareg goatherds see their goats for the first time is a great thing. It's such a great way to visit -- you go and be a good guest. It's really very simple."

• Jazziz Magazine - 7/07 [+ Show ]
  

  Folk, rock, and pop elements have variously informed Leni Stern's always-interesting work as a guita...Folk, rock, and pop elements have variously informed Leni Stern's always-interesting work as a guitarist and composer for practically 20 years, since she vacated the strictly-jazz terrain of her first few solo releases, including 1985 debut album "Clairvoyant." As an artist, she has become practically unclassifiable. To everyone but the bean counters, that's a strength.
  For "Alu Maye (Have You Heard)", and EP recorded at Salif Keita's studios in Mali, Stern effectively allies her throaty vocals and thoughtful six-string playing with the hypnotic rhythms, percussive textures, and singsong choruses of West African music. The kaleidoscopic flickering of multiple-stringed instruments makes an entirely natural sonic backdrop for the leader.
  In addition to documenting Stern's affinity for African music, "Alu Maye" serves as a tribute to two friends and collaborators. Michael Brecker, on one of his final recordings, spins his tenor around and through the gently undulating grooves of "Ousmane," and he offers a slinky line in unison with the melody of the airy ballad "Saya." The latter tune was penned in memory of percussionist Don Alias, whose death Stern learned about during rehearsals for the album.
  The inclusion of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe" would be jarring on any other album nominally classified as jazz. Not here. Stern's singing of the melody is affecting, as are the laidback acoustic picking and gorgeous background vocals, elements that are also integral to the success of the jaunty Dylan-referenced opener, "My Name is Oumou."

• Jazziz Magazine - 8/06 [+ Show ]
  

  STERN FAMILY BUSINESS In the Stern household both Leni and Mike are musicians and guitarists. Nat...STERN FAMILY BUSINESS
  
  In the Stern household both Leni and Mike are musicians and guitarists. Naturally, as they’ve pursued personal interests and careers, they have become profound influences on each other’s work.
  “Leni brings in all this weird, cool-sounding stuff from all over the place,” says Mike, pointing to a 5-foot-high tamboura next to the bed in their East Side apartment. “I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from her.” His 'Voices'— a 2001 release with vocalists Richard Bona and Elizabeth Kontomanou, on which the guitar virtuoso reinvented his sound — was mainly composed while visiting his wife in India. In recent winters Leni has gone to India to study North Indian Hindustani Raga.
  “In order to see me, he had to go there,” laughs Leni, who also recently made the transition from guitar burner to singer-songwriter. Her latest expeditions have been to Mali, where she spent quality time with n’goni player Basekou Kouyate, with whom she will collaborate on a recording in Paris this June. “I got taken into their family officially,” says Leni, who doesn’t do anything halfway. “I was given a name — Oumou Kouyate. It’s very nice.”
  She continues to fuse popular songs, jazz, and world music on her current album, 'Love Comes Quietly' [LSR], which she says is “more open than the previous few, with more instrumental excursions.” “In live performance, we go on a journey with every song, but for the record, I cut apart journeys that originally belonged to one set of ideas and made a suite. As in the theater, I create stories with beginnings and ends, catharsis, and surprises,” she explains. “But I like being an instrumentalist because as I travel throughout the world, I can communicate with anybody when I play guitar — whether they speak Bambara or Hindi or Urdu. Those are actual conversations, and it's an elaborate understanding. They go much further than broken conversations in parts of each other's language trying to make each other understood.”
  Meanwhile, Mike Stern maintains the continuity with his recent work on 'Who Let The Cats Out' [HeadsUp], titled for their four Oriental shorthairs. He says that in his new disc, he wanted to keep some of the influences from Richard Bona and Leni’s world-music interests, “but also burn out like I do live, playing more and keeping it loose.” The recording features Roy Hargrove on trumpet; Bona on bass and vocals; Me’Shell NdegéOcello on bass; Gregoire Maret on harmonica; and Kim Thompson and Dave Weckl on drums. “Since I’ve opened up this can of GOOD worms using voices recently, I wanted to use Bona singing without much interaction and also to get him scatting and soloing on one tune,” says Stern. “I go nuts making these records, and lately I’ve been feeling more able to let go. The handcuffs are looser. If it works, it works. Like Miles used to say, ‘Make it fit.’ He had that beautiful balance between doing what he wanted and knowing that it’s about communicating with people. I would be lucky to get half of that.”—Ted Panken, Jazziz Magazine - Lead 'Prelude' interview, 8/06
  

• Washington Post - 2006 [+ Show ]
  

  Friday, June 9, 2006 LENI STERN "Love Comes Quietly" LSR LATE LAST YEAR singer-songwriter and ...Friday, June 9, 2006
  
  LENI STERN "Love Comes Quietly" LSR
  
  LATE LAST YEAR singer-songwriter and guitarist Leni Stern released a
  four-song EP called "10,000 Butterflies" that pointed at intriguing things
  on the horizon. Now comes the payoff: a new CD featuring those tracks and
  nine others that will only enhance Stern's reputation for creating music
  that radiates a haunting power and beauty.
  
  These days it's impossible to neatly sum up Stern's sound. Elements of folk,
  pop, jazz, soul and funk clearly inspire her, along with an increasingly
  strong current of world beat influences. On "Love Comes Quietly," a
  collection of songs and instrumentals, Stern embraces everything from Motown
  grooves to Indian modes, and yet there's nothing that sounds fashionably
  eclectic or the least bit showy. Instead, a chamber-like intimacy often
  prevails, a quality enhanced by a series of imaginatively woven arrangements
  featuring Stern's yearning voice, poetic imagery, liquid guitar lines and
  the nimble support of bassist James Genus, slide guitarist Stephen Bruton,
  violinist Ernesto Villa-Lobos and others. A sense of wonder and hope marks
  some of the ballads -- the album's title cut and "Have Faith in Me," for
  starters. But that doesn't mean that Stern's songwriting lacks a sharp,
  ironic edge. Just listen to "Beauty Queen," a perceptive vignette about
  Manhattan street life, or "10,000 Butterflies," the album's foreboding
  highlight, or "The Road to Hell," which sounds like something Rickie Lee
  Jones and guitarist Bill Frisell might have concocted. In the end, though,
  it's hard to imagine anyone but Stern pulling all of this together with as
  much charm and conviction.
  
  
  -- Mike Joyce
  
  Appearing Wednesday at Blues Alley.
  

• LA Weekly - 2006 [+ Show ]
  

  It's Personal Written by GREG BURK All over the world, Leni Stern is the instrument Photo...It's Personal
  Written by GREG BURK
  All over the world, Leni Stern is the instrument
  
  Photo by Ebet Roberts
  Learning, learning. Leni Stern wants to know and grow and hoe that row. Her thirst has pulled her all over Africa, India and Asia to absorb the rhythms, the scales, the feelings into her voice and her electric guitar, to make herself into that universal translator in the pink capris. In a way, she’s learned to learn.
  
  “I was always a bad student,” says Stern, brow knit and lips pursed as if remembering rapped knuckles in Catholic school back in her native Bavaria. “I have a really emotional connection with music that makes me hard to teach. Because it’s . . .” She lets go of a laugh, high and piercing. “It’s personal!”
  
  Personal, yeah, but Stern didn’t shut herself up in a cave to plumb her soul; she kicked open all the doors. It seems she can be Leni only by plugging in the many natural connectors that stick out of her, much like her hair — always going in some stray direction. In chemistry, they call that polyvalent bonding. New molecules form every day.
  
  “Wherever you are, the place makes the music sound different,” she thinks. “Because you are the instrument.”
  
  Stern, who’s known mainly as a jazz artist, has reconstituted herself in amazing ways over the past decade. The process has had much to do with breast cancer — surviving it, loving others who did not survive, recognizing that, hey, we’ve got things to do here. Friends in Nepal said confronting her own demise was a blessing.
  
  “They told me, ‘Now you get free of the feel of death. And should you survive, you’ll be a much happier person.’ ”
  
  Having gotten hitched to American fusion-guitar prince Mike Stern after a rather high-profile career on the German stage, the former Magdalena (Leni) Thora earned her oats through most of the ’80s and ’90s stirring up atmospheric, sometimes funky Strat sounds with the likes of Bill Frisell and Paul Motian. Then, spinning outward from her collision with mortality, she rediscovered her voice (literally), adding vocals to her tool kit. “Things need to be spoken about,” she says, “to be in the consciousness of everybody.” Anyway, she ain’t the silent type.
  
  Different thoughts emerged, borne by Stern’s delicately teetering vocal melodies, which cling in the head like burrs, but not as scratchy. There were heart-wringing words of hope after an Italian terrorist explosion, flowing within the extended orchestration of “I See Your Face” (2000’s Kindness of Strangers). There were the polar expressions of “Love Everyone” and “Where Is God?” (2002’s Finally the Rain Has Come). There was a trembling flashback to a former addiction on “Dancin’ With the Devil” (2004’s When Evening Falls). When she sings and when she cuts her guitar loose on untracked mountainsides, the distinction between art and artist gets lost. Music isn’t what she does, it’s what she is.
  
  Which has a lot to do with where she’s been. Asked to draw some lines between her music and her travels, Stern lists a bunch of raga-based songs, and names compositions that came directly out of her knuckles being gently rapped — in Naga, India; in Cambodia and Thailand; among the Samburu tribe of Kenya; and among the Tuareg tribe of West Africa. She picks up languages pretty easily, but the music, she says, is like learning to walk again. Exhilarating effort.
  
  Stern’s insinuating new Love Comes Quietly, the most varied album she’s ever done, wafts a pronounced African aroma amid the sensually inflected strains of her guitar. A hesitation beat that might remind you of its Jamaican descendants prods “10,000 Butterflies,” a prayer in support of refugees; its almost despairing lyrics are balanced by a hopeful musical environment. The dancing casbah chorus of “Inshaallah,” about a woman, her camels, her rifle and the desert, might become your mind’s constant soundtrack. Three colorful instrumentals softly convey a day’s baking heat fading into sunset.
  
  The city also finds its place — the urban madness of Stern’s Manhattan home shadows the menacing “Beauty Queen”; the street jugglers and magicians of “Have Faith in Me” reflect the smile that comes so easily to her face. Further abroad, the way the raga-derived “Love Comes Quietly” tiptoes in and out, sexy and insistent, you’d almost think it was a dream; Stern is at her finest here. That’s one of the things she says, actually: that in the state between waking and sleeping, we come to know ourselves.
  
  Stern’s itinerary this year has included a collaboration in Mali with string player Bassekou Kouyate, and a Gnawa trance-music festival in Morocco. Expect new fruit from these seeds. So much of this “world” music has religious connections, though — doesn’t a German of no particular faith feel uncomfortable sometimes? A previous Moroccan lila (healing jam-ceremony) was one of the few times she can remember, “not because of anything that was actually happening, but because I knew that the participants would eventually use their daggers to cut themselves and go into a trance.”
  
  
  
  Obviously I’m a fan, and Stern puts up with my questions, so I catch up with her whenever she’s in L.A. I’ve collected a few mental snapshots.
  
  1) Playing the Baked Potato in Studio City, Stern is deep in a solo, her eyes closed with an expression of complete involvement; behind her is the very sensitive and thoroughly amazing Texas drummer Brannen Temple. Some of her notes come from especially interesting places — mistakes, some would call them; I think of them as inspirations. Listening, I notice that I’m breathing more deeply. Later I ask how she feels about taking chances. “Maybe I should be a little more cautious,” she says. “But it’s a conversation. Sometimes with Brannen, it’s go-go boing-boing . . . you throw caution to the wind. He has a thing. He understands the guitar, he really does. And the people that play it.”
  
  2) Stern is having an idea session at her hotel with songwriter Larry John McNally, with whom she’s collaborated in the past; she still likes to bounce ideas off him. She’s working on “The Road to Hell,” a lazy blues with a twisty riff that will end up on Love Comes Quietly. He suggests switching a couple of words for rhythm, and she likes that. Then he wonders if she should change the lyric about Canal Street; many listeners won’t know where that is. “The song needs to be in New Orleans,” says Stern. “Even if people don’t know it, they’ll feel it.”
  
  3) Stern isn’t imposing, but she’s studied Shaolin martial arts, and she’s strong — look at the way the Tibetan character tattooed on her left arm ripples when she heaves her amp onto the stage. Some help with the effects case? Sure. But I get the feeling she’d really rather lug it all herself. It’s just one of the things she does.
  
  4) Stern has ordered Japanese eggplant and guacamole: She needs to watch her carb intake since the family diabetes flared up a couple of years ago. The food comes, and she doesn’t even have to taste it; we’re in America. She grabs a bottle of Tabasco. Turns it upside down. And dumps it all over everything.
  
  
  
  Leni Stern, Sat., July 22, 7:30 p.m. at Genghis Cohen, 740 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

• Guitar Player - 2006 [+ Show ]
  

  "Leni Stern's Desert Diary" GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE By Leni Stern | May 2006 The drive from ..."Leni Stern's Desert Diary"
  
  GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE
  
  By Leni Stern | May 2006
  The drive from Timbuktu to Essakane—site of Mali’s Festival in the Desert—takes two hours across the sand. This is no road. The Festival features mostly African artists, along with some Europeans and Americans. Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Eric Clapton, and U2 have all appeared in the past, in the hopes of alerting the world to the plight of the region. The advancing desert is swallowing entire villages, and drought has brought the area to the brink of famine.
  
  After nightfall, the moon shines brightly, illuminating a row of people on fabulously decorated camels. A group from Niger performs on the main stage—n’goni players, percussionists, and singers, with their faces covered, desert style. The groove reminds me of the Tuareg group Tinariwen, but they sound wilder than any recording I’ve ever heard.
  
  A group of guitarists a few dunes away invites me to play with them, and my baritone acoustic causes a stir. It’s tuned to C, like many n’gonis (the primary instrument of Mali, and ancestor to the kora). My knowledge of the pentatonic scale and a few good blues licks are diplomatic passports here. I graduate from “tubab,” or white tourist, to “guitarist.” My heart aches when I see the old, knotted strings some of these artists play. Thankfully, I brought 100 sets to share.
  
  I meet Malian master guitarist Habib Koite, and the country’s most famous n’goni player, Bassekou Kouyate—known as the “Prince of Strings.” We go and play in Kouyate’s tent, where his wife and singer Ami Sacko sit with the rest of the band—a string quartet of n’gonis, with singers and a percussionist playing a calabash (a wooden instrument resembling an upside-down salad bowl).
  
  Many musicians say the blues came from West Africa, and when you play here, you know that it did. West African string players understand American guitarists like a father understands a child. Bassekou, his bass player, and Ami learned my new song, “Inshaallah”—which was written about and for the people of the desert. We performed it together under a blanket of stars.
  
  “Inshaallah” is featured on Stern’s latest CD, Love Comes Quietly.
  
  From Guitar Player Magazine, May 2006

Setlist

Sa Belle Belle Ba
Smoke's Risin'
Bamake
Simbo
Dakaan
Child soldier
My Name is Oumou
10 000 Butterflies
Inshaallah
My Name is Oumou
Calling
Oje Mama, Oje
House on a Hill
What It Is
Love Everyone
I Call You
Bury Me Standing
Carry Me
For The Kindness of Strangers
Empty Hands
Point Falling
Mercy In The Night
La Soilidad by Pablo Milanese
Yolanda by Pablo Milanese
Something is Wrong In Spanish Harlem by Larry John McNally
Black Guitar by Larry John McNally

Jazz Standards:
I'll Be Seeing You
You Won't Forget Me

Sets are two 1-hour sets or three 45-minute sets.

Basic Requirements

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