Antilles Connection
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Antilles Connection

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"L Magazine (New York City) Daily Pick"

It's jazz, it's calypso...it's Jalypso! Alright we know jazz fusion is almost as tiersome as and not even as spicy as Asian-fusion food, but not so with Antilles Connection. This quartet is equal parts playful steel, and serious reed, featuring original jazz compositions and arrangements of traditional songs from the Lesser Antilles (Grenada, Trinidad, Martinique, etc.). The band includes Oran Etkin on sax/clarinet whose already brilliant stylings are particularly provocative in the Caribbean mode, and composer Jonathan Levy on drums, whose repertoire with the group occasionally strays to the North Country, including Nick Drake and Twin Peaks arrangements. Shaking your head? Trust us, it works beautifully. - Christopher Ludwig


Discography

EP entitled "Carib Song" will be released by Antilles Connection in 2006

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Antilles Connection forges a new path in music, fusing the old and the modern, the American and the Caribbean. Antilles Connection is inspired by the pantheon of calypsonians of Trinidad and Grenada including the great Mighty Sparrow, steel pan music and even French beguine dance music from the island of Martinique. Equally, inspiration is found by the works of American jazz composers including, Bill Frisell, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn and Charlie Haden.

Featuring the great Curtis Fowlkes on trombone (Bill Frisell, Charlie Haden, John Lurie) who has himself backed up some of the greatest calypsonians in history, Antilles Connection features the highest calibre of musicians that New York City has to offer. Antilles Connection has been featured at many of NYC's most distinguished venues and was a finalist in the State Dept. and Jazz at Lincoln Center's 2006 American Music Abroad Program.

Background:
Inspiration for Antilles Connection was had by bandleader Jonathan Levy after living on the island of Grenada. The sights, sounds, tastes and graciousness of the people of the island simply floored his concept of reality. He was witness to everything from glorious 100 piece steel bands to the calypso king/soca monarch competition to reggae dancehalls to shango religious drum and dance ceremonies within which particpants went into trance states. Antilles Connection is a mouthpiece for what all the joy and mystery of this event instilled in him.