Claudia Acuña
Encyclopedia
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an vocalist. Born in Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
and raised in Concepcion
Concepción, Chile
Concepción is a city in Chile, capital of Concepción Province and of the Biobío Region or Region VIII. Greater Concepción is the second-largest conurbation in the country, with 889,725 inhabitants...
, she was inspired as a child to perform a variety of music, including folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, by Victor Jara
Víctor Jara
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter, political activist and member of the Communist Party of Chile...
and Violetta Parra. Her attention turned to American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
at the age of 15, when she first heard Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Erroll Garner
Erroll Garner
Erroll Louis Garner was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard...
and Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
. Returning to Santiago in 1991, she quickly gained prominence on the local jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
scene through live performances and radio broadcasts with visiting artists.
In 1995, Acuña moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and began performing at jam sessions and clubs including the Zinc Bar and Smalls. She also performed with her own band at the famous Jazz Gallery. Among the many musical associates she met in this period was pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
/composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Jason Lindner, who became and has remained her musical director. Her debut album, Wind from the South, was released in 1999, followed by Rhythm of Life in 2001 and Luna in 2004. Acuña’s first recording on the Marsalis Music
Marsalis Music
Marsalis Music is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based record label founded in 2002 by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the past 30 years. The label was formed to allow Marsalis and other musicians to document their music free of the commercial constraints...
label, En Este Momento, is scheduled for release in 2009. She has also been featured on record with Peck Almond, George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....
, Joey Calderazzo
Joey Calderazzo
Joey Calderazzo is a jazz pianist.Inspired by a friend who lived next door, Calderazzo began his piano studies at age seven. He progressed rapidly in a house where other family members were also playing drums and singing, and at 14 became the youngest member of brother Gene Calderazzo's rock band...
, Avishai Cohen, Mark Elf, Tom Harrell
Tom Harrell
Tom Harrell is a renowned American post-bop jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer and arranger.-Biography:Tom Harrell was born in Urbana, Illinois but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area at the age of five. He started playing trumpet at eight and within five years, started playing gigs with...
, Antonio Hart
Antonio Hart
Antonio Hart is a jazz alto saxophonist. He attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, studied with Andy McGhee at Berklee College of Music, and has a master's degree from Queens College, City University of New York. His initial training was classical, but he switched to jazz in college...
, Arturo O'Farrill and Guillermo Klein
Guillermo Klein
Guillermo Klein is an Argentine pianist and composer.He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1994, and throughout the 1990s held a residency at Smalls, a jazz club in New York City. Known for his highly original harmonic and stylistic concepts, Klein has garnered much respect from the jazz...
.
Acuña has been named co-curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
of a Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an music festival
Music festival
A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...
scheduled to take place in January 2009. She is also the spokesperson for World Vision Chile, an international Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
relief and development organization that specializes in child-focused development programs.
One of Acuña's covers of the Antonio Carlos Jobim
Antônio Carlos Jobim
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim , also known as Tom Jobim , was a Brazilian songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, and pianist/guitarist. He was a primary force behind the creation of the bossa nova style, and his songs have been performed by many singers and instrumentalists within...
song "Suddenly" was featured on the original motion picture soundtrack from Verve Records
Verve Records
Verve Records is an American jazz record label now owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded by Norman Granz in 1956, absorbing the catalogues of his earlier labels, Clef Records and Norgran Records , and material which had been licensed to Mercury previously.-Jazz and folk origins:The Verve...
for the movie Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova (film)
Bossa Nova is a 2000 romantic comedy film directed by Bruno Barreto dealing with several interwoven stories about people finding and losing love in Rio de Janeiro. The film stars Amy Irving as an English language teacher named Mary Ann.- External links :*...
. She has also recorded three solo albums, two for Verve and one for Max Jazz.
In 2001 she recorded a single with House producers MKL and Soy Sos of 3 Generations Walking called Slavery Days which brought her to a whole new audience.
Claudia is signed to the Cambridge, MA-based record label, Marsalis Music
Marsalis Music
Marsalis Music is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based record label founded in 2002 by saxophonist Branford Marsalis, one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the past 30 years. The label was formed to allow Marsalis and other musicians to document their music free of the commercial constraints...
.
Discography
- Wind from the South (Verve Records, 2000)
- Rhythm of Life (Verve Records, 2002)
- Luna (MAXJAZZ, 2004)
- In These Shoes (Zoho Music, 2008)
- En Este Momento (Marsalis Music, 2009)
External links
- "In Conversation with Claudia Acuña" by Tomas Peña (Jazz.com)
- Studio Session on NPR Music