Jennifer Lee And The Ever-expanding Universe at Rendon Hall

"Jennifer Lee and the Ever-Expanding Universe will perform songs from their 2018 release ""My Shining Hour"" and a few tracks from the upcoming 2020 release. Mostly original material penned by Jennifer Lee, stylistically this music spans many facets of the jazz genre straight-ahead swing, ballads, bossa nova, samba, tango, fusion, and more. The lyrical content is soulful, joyful, uplifting, poignant, tender, wistful, heartbreaking, cathartic, transformative, whimsical, playful, psychedelic what C. Michael Bailey of ""All About Jazz"" refers to as ""a rich and original repertoire addressing what it is to be human in all of its glory."" Nine years is a long time between albums, but Jennifer Lee has been busy taking her music into rarely explored emotional terrain. My Shining Hour, the third album by the esteemed Bay Area jazz vocalist, guitarist, and pianist, reintroduces an artist long known as a gifted interpreter of the American and Brazilian Songbooks. But with her ensemble the Ever-Expanding Universe and a stellar cast of special guests, including trumpet legend Randy Brecker, bass master Bob Magnusson, Grammy Award-winning violinist Mads Tolling, and percussion maestro John Santos, Lee has emerged as a songwriter with an unusual gift for evoking uncanny experiences, hard-won wisdom, unbridled joy, and liminal states of consciousness. Her evolution from her former creative identity as an arranger/interpreter to her present calling as a composer took Lee by surprise. “I always wrote a little bit, but I certainly never thought of myself as a songwriter,” she says. “Then a shift happened and all this music started channeling in. It’s like some crazy, overactive muse attached itself to me. While My Shining Hour marks a sea change for Lee, she’s still swimming with longtime collaborators, which is one reason why her music sounds so finely wrought and fully formed. Like on her previous, critically-hailed albums, 2003’s Jaywalkin’ and 2009’s Quiet Joy (both on Peter Sprague’s label SBE Records), Lee draws on two deep pools of talent from San Diego and the Bay Area. The line of continuity runs through Peter Sprague, the brilliant San Diego guitarist known for his extensive work with Chick Corea, Charles McPherson, and Hubert Laws. For Lee, the collaboration has provided, among many other things, an education. “Peter is an extraordinary musician and a deeply soulful player,” she says. “Working with him over the years, watching how he’ll reharmonize or phrase a line, I’ve learned so much. It’s definitely influenced my writing.”...

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"Jennifer Lee and the Ever-Expanding Universe will perform songs from their 2018 release ""My Shining Hour"" and a few tracks from the upcoming 2020 release. Mostly original material penned by Jennifer Lee, stylistically this music spans many facets of the jazz genre straight-ahead swing, ballads, bossa nova, samba, tango, fusion, and more. The lyrical content is soulful, joyful, uplifting, poignant, tender, wistful, heartbreaking, cathartic, transformative, whimsical, playful, psychedelic what C. Michael Bailey of ""All About Jazz"" refers to as ""a rich and original repertoire addressing what it is to be human in all of its glory."" Nine years is a long time between albums, but Jennifer Lee has been busy taking her music into rarely explored emotional terrain. My Shining Hour, the third album by the esteemed Bay Area jazz vocalist, guitarist, and pianist, reintroduces an artist long known as a gifted interpreter of the American and Brazilian Songbooks. But with her ensemble the Ever-Expanding Universe and a stellar cast of special guests, including trumpet legend Randy Brecker, bass master Bob Magnusson, Grammy Award-winning violinist Mads Tolling, and percussion maestro John Santos, Lee has emerged as a songwriter with an unusual gift for evoking uncanny experiences, hard-won wisdom, unbridled joy, and liminal states of consciousness. Her evolution from her former creative identity as an arranger/interpreter to her present calling as a composer took Lee by surprise. “I always wrote a little bit, but I certainly never thought of myself as a songwriter,” she says. “Then a shift happened and all this music started channeling in. It’s like some crazy, overactive muse attached itself to me. While My Shining Hour marks a sea change for Lee, she’s still swimming with longtime collaborators, which is one reason why her music sounds so finely wrought and fully formed. Like on her previous, critically-hailed albums, 2003’s Jaywalkin’ and 2009’s Quiet Joy (both on Peter Sprague’s label SBE Records), Lee draws on two deep pools of talent from San Diego and the Bay Area. The line of continuity runs through Peter Sprague, the brilliant San Diego guitarist known for his extensive work with Chick Corea, Charles McPherson, and Hubert Laws. For Lee, the collaboration has provided, among many other things, an education. “Peter is an extraordinary musician and a deeply soulful player,” she says. “Working with him over the years, watching how he’ll reharmonize or phrase a line, I’ve learned so much. It’s definitely influenced my writing.”
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