- Genre :: Blues
- Listen :: Nighttime is the Right Time
- View :: Band Website | Eli Yamin's Blog | LaFrae Sci's Blog
- download :: HiRes Image
Eli Yamin Blues Band plays the blues to dispel the blues. This ensemble welcomes audiences of all ages into the varied and rich world of America’s primary musical art form—the blues. The band explores the healing power of the music and its range from spiritual to classical, from bebop to folk. In some instances, the music is folksy, fiery and brassy. At other times, it is quiet and restorative. The group explores the blues’ unique capacity to bring people together of all different backgrounds. The quartet sings to its audiences, “It’s not just a song for me/ Take a breath and you will see/ Why the blues has the power to be/ A healing song/ A healing song.”
In addition to being spirited performers, members of the Eli Yamin Blues Band are also skilled educators. They have taught with Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music and LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts. During their performances on The Rhythm Road tour, audiences “will be getting up and stomping, really feeling the juice of the blues,” says band leader Yamin. “They will relate their own personal experience to these practices and melodies.” Some members have travelled with previous Rhythm Road tours.
Eli Yamin (piano and voice) is a jazz pianist, composer, educator, broadcaster, bandleader and Steinway artist. Yamin has performed at top concert halls and festivals in the United States, India, China, Mali, Japan and throughout Europe. As a jazz educator, Yamin holds positions as Artistic Director of The Jazz Drama Program and Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Middle School Jazz Academy. He designs and delivers training sessions for business leaders, middle school students, music teachers and college professors. Yamin has recorded many CDs, including You Can't Buy Swing (2008) with the Eli Yamin Quartet and Suns of Cosmic Consciousness (2005) with Solar. His television and radio appearances include CBS Saturday Morning, PBS, Fox News and National Public Radio. Yamin has played, recorded and taught with Barry Harris, Wynton Marsalis, Illinois Jacquet, Walter Perkins, Perry Robinson, Mercedes Ellington, Kate McGarry, Claire Daly and Bob Stewart. Yamin holds a master’s degree in music education from Lehman College, City University of New York.
Chanell Crichlow (tuba) is a native New Yorker and spent most of her childhood on the island of Trinidad and Tobago. From a young age Crichlow was aware of the power of music and soon gravitated to the tuba as her first instrument. As a teenager, she attended both the Manhattan School of Music Prep and The Juilliard Schools’ Pre-college division. She founded the Sakura Brass Quintet in 2004 and in 2007 was selected to the National Orchestral Institute. Crichlow was awarded the Gramercy Horn of the Future Award by the Gramercy Brass Orchestra of New York and was the winner of the Lincoln Center Young Musician Award through her performance with the La Guardia High School of Music Brass Quintet. In 2008 Crichlow received her bachelor’s degree in Tuba Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, as a student of Toby Hanks. Crichlow’s orchestral and solo performances include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Juilliard School and at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with Nedra Johnson and the Fat Bottom Girls. Currently, Crichlow is a Graduate Assistant of Tuba at the Pennsylvania State University, as a student of Velvet Brown.
Kate McGarry (voice) grew up in Hyannis, Massachusetts. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Afro American music and jazz from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she studied with Dr. Horace Boyer and Archie Shepp. She tours nationally and internationally, and recently was invited to the San Sebastian and Ezcaray Jazz Festivals in Spain, as well as to the Tanglewood and Cape Cod Jazz Festivals in the United States. In August 2008, McGarry released her fourth CD on Palmetto Records, If Less Is More, Nothing Is Everything. The recording was recently nominated for a GRAMMY Award for best jazz vocal album. McGarry is a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music.
LaFrae Sci (drummer) moved to New York City in 2000 to pursue her music career. Since then, Sci has participated in countless workshops both locally and overseas that foster jazz education. She has toured France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Switzerland, among other countries, with noted artists. Before moving to New York City, Sci was the program director for Instrument for Kids, a program sponsored by the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society. Sci graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political theory and economics from Oberlin College in Ohio.
