Cristina Black | |
---|---|
Born | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States |
Genres | Pop |
Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter, musician, journalist |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, harp, baritone ukulele, piano |
Years active | 2010–present |
Website | www |
Cristina Black is an American musician and writer. She regularly contributes to a number of publications in New York and Los Angeles. Her first album, The Ditty Sessions, was released in 2010 and her music has been featured on the TV series Parenthood. She collaborated with Big Star and Box Tops lead singer Alex Chilton, who made his last appearance on Black's EP The Ditty Sessions before his death. [1]
Cristina Black was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [2] and trained as a classical pianist and harpist. Black moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire her later work. In the mid-2000s, she moved to New York City, where she learned how to play the baritone ukulele from Michael Leviton and took up songwriting. She is currently based in Los Angeles.
Black has written for The Village Voice , Nylon, Dazed & Confused, Time Out New York, LA Weekly and is a former Foam entertainment editor. [3] [4] Her articles profiled a wide range of musical artists, including Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Lykke Li, Jack White, Pink, Lionel Richie and Nick Cave.
As a musician, Black is compared to Nico for her vocals and Joni Mitchell for her songwriting. [5] Black has collaborated with Galactic's Ben Ellman, singer-songwriter and regular on HBO's Treme Alex McMurray, Maelstrom Trio keyboardist Brian Coogan and late Box Tops and Big Star lead singer Alex Chilton. [4] Black’s "Drunk Rich People" appeared on NBC's family drama Parenthood on season 2, episode 13, "Opening Night," which aired on January 18, 2011.
Released on March 11, 2010, Black's first album, The Ditty Sessions, was recorded in September 2009 at Number C Studios in New Orleans, home of the funk band Galactic, while Trombone Shorty's album Backatown was being produced. [1] [6]
In addition to Black, musicians featured on The Ditty Sessions are Alex McMurray on guitar, Brian Coogan on piano, Wurlitzer and Hammond B3, and Alex Chilton on bass. Chilton's performance would be his last studio session before his passing on March 17, 2010. [1] [3] [4] Ben Ellman engineered the tracks. [6]
Some of the songs on the five-track EP were inspired by Hurricane Katrina. "It is safe to say this album would not exist had Hurricane Katrina not hit New Orleans. It wouldn’t have needed to," Black said. [2]
Black released the single "Summer’s Over" on August 2, 2013. The track was produced by Rob Laufer, who has worked with Fiona Apple and Frank Black. [5]
"When I Think of Christmas" was released on November 21, 2011. It was produced by Lewis Pesacov, who worked on Best Coast's Crazy For You among others. [7]
"Alvarado" was released on January 1, 2015. Produced by Lewis Pesacov [8]
(Black played harp on "Funny Girl," the album's lead single)
Kevin Ayers was an English singer-songwriter who was active in the English psychedelic music movement. Ayers was a founding member of the psychedelic band Soft Machine in the mid-1960s, and was closely associated with the Canterbury scene. He recorded a series of albums as a solo artist and over the years worked with Brian Eno, Syd Barrett, Bridget St John, John Cale, Elton John, Robert Wyatt, Andy Summers, Mike Oldfield, Nico and Ollie Halsall, among others. After living for many years in Deià, Mallorca, he returned to the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s before moving to the south of France. His last album, The Unfairground, was released in 2007. The British rock journalist Nick Kent wrote: "Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them."
Tremé is a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana. "Tremé" is often rendered as Treme, and the neighborhood is sometimes called by its more formal French name, the Faubourg Tremé; it is listed in the New Orleans City Planning Districts as Tremé / Lafitte when including the Lafitte Projects.
The dB's are an American alternative rock and power pop group, who formed in New York City in 1978 and first came to prominence in the early 1980s. Their debut album Stands for Decibels is acclaimed as one of the great "lost" power pop albums of the 1980s.
Third is the third album by American rock band Big Star. Sessions started at Ardent Studios in September 1974. Though Ardent created promotional, white-label test pressings for the record in 1975, a combination of financial issues, the uncommercial sound of the record, and lack of interest from singer Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens in continuing the project prevented the album from ever being properly finished or released at the time of its recording. It was eventually released in 1978 by PVC Records.
Galactic is an American jam band from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Cristina Monet Zilkha, known during her recording career simply as Cristina, was an American singer and writer, best known for her no wave recordings made for ZE Records in the late 1970s and early 1980s in New York City. She "was a pioneer in blending the artsiness and attitude of punk with the joyful energy of disco and pop.... [which] helped pave the way for the massive successes of her contemporaries, like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and anticipated the rise of confrontational but danceable alt-pop acts..." in a mode that was at once "campy, self-aware, and infectious."
Late for the Future is the third studio album by the band Galactic, released in 2000.
Dawn Angeliqué Richard is an American singer from New Orleans, Louisiana. She started her career after auditioning for Making the Band 3 in 2004. Afterward, Richard performed as a member of girl group Danity Kane from 2005 to 2009; she reformed the group with three of its original five members in late 2013. In 2009, Richard formed the R&B duo Dirty Money with fellow singer-songwriter Kalenna Harper, which was joined by Bad Boy Records label founder Sean "Diddy" Combs to form Diddy – Dirty Money. The group released their only album, Last Train to Paris (2010) to commercial success, following up with two mixtapes until their disbandment in 2012. With Danity Kane, Richard released three studio albums.
Stanton Moore is an American funk, jazz, and rock drummer from New Orleans. Most widely known as a founding member of Galactic, Moore has also pursued a solo recording career and recorded with bands as diverse as jazz-funk keyboardist Robert Walter and heavy metal act Corrosion of Conformity.
All Kooked Out! is the debut studio album by New Orleans-based drummer Stanton Moore.
Troy Andrews, also known by the stage name Trombone Shorty, is an American musician from New Orleans, Louisiana. He has worked with some of the biggest names in rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip hop. Andrews is the younger brother of trumpeter and bandleader James Andrews III and the grandson of singer and songwriter Jessie Hill. Andrews began playing trombone at age four, and since 2009 has toured with his own band, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.
Alex Chilton was an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an intense following among indie and alternative rock musicians. He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials appeared in the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.
Best Coast is an American rock duo formed in Los Angeles, California in 2009, currently on hiatus. The band consisted of songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Bethany Cosentino and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno. Cosentino, a former child actress, began writing music as a teenager and was formerly a member of the experimentalist drone group Pocahaunted. After a brief stint at college in New York City, Cosentino returned to the West Coast and began recording lo-fi demos with Bruno, whom she met in the Los Angeles music scene.
Backatown is an album released by jazz musician Troy 'Trombone Shorty' Andrews. The album was released in 2010 by Verve Forecast Records and was produced by Galactic's Ben Ellman. It reached number 3 on the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart and was nominated for the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
"Can't Hardly Wait" is a song by American rock band the Replacements from their fifth studio album Pleased to Meet Me. Written shortly after the sessions for Let It Be, the song was attempted for the 1985 Tim album but ultimately went unreleased until Pleased to Meet Me. The song features Alex Chilton on guitar as well as an arrangement with horns and strings, additions that were controversial within the band.
Raymond J. Bonneville is a Canadian-born American musician, singer and songwriter. Born in Canada, and raised in the United States, Bonneville is a folk and blues-influenced, song and groove man who is strongly influenced by New Orleans, Louisiana.
Anna Coogan is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter.
Emilie Mover is a Canadian singer-songwriter who writes music in genres such as folk, jazz, and children's music. She has released a number of solo albums in diverse styles, and in 2013 her solo album The Stella and Sam Album won the Juno Award for Children's Album of the Year. A frequent guest artist, she performed the vocals for the Lost Girl theme song in 2010, and her music has appeared on Girls, Pretty Little Liars, and Grey's Anatomy.
Ben Ellman is an American saxophonist, harmonica player, and producer most widely known as a member the New Orleans-based funk band Galactic, with whom he has made eight studio albums. He joined the group in 1994, when they were known as Galactic Prophylactic. Ben also works as a DJ under the name Gypsyphonic Disko, where he mixes New Orleans style funk with klezmer, Eastern European and other exotic music.
Into the Deep is an album by the band Galactic. It was released on July 17, 2015.