Description

Annie Lee Moffett:

A native of Chicago now based in New York City, multidisciplinary artist Annie Lee Moffett was most recently heard as the primary vocalist for the accompanying album to the children’s music book El Mundo Es Mi Casa, music by Laura Koulish and poetry by Ana Isabel Saillant Valerio. Over the past year, she has created educational content for and was seen on the PBS children’s show Let’s Learn, teaching music literacy and body percussion. Before the pandemic, Annie Lee was most recently seen as Naranja in the Julian Sheppard play Buicks at The Gene Frankel Theatre. Before that, she was in a staged reading of Sick: The Musical, a musical adaptation of the Moliere play, Le Malade Imaginaire, by composer Nick Scarim. She was also seen in and composed music for the art film Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera (screenings at various museums and institutions around the world including The Whitney Museum and The University of Chicago). She played two parts (Annie Turnbo/Eloise) in the musical Madam Walker and the Divine Dream as part of The New York Musical Theatre Festival. She can also be seen in the films Shades of Gray (Tasha Pictures), and the psychological thriller Devoured (Secret Weapon Films). Past credits include Ghosts With Insomnia (Gena) with Prometheus’ Fire at The Stratford Theatre (dir: Ray Aranha), Ascension (Ruth) at The Cherry Lane Theatre and The National Black Theatre Festival (dir: Petronia Paley), The Ghosts of Christmas Past (Samantha) at The Gene Frankel Theatre, The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammie Louise and Safreeta Mae (Safreeta Mae) at Queens Theatre in the Park and New Jersey Performing Art’s Center, the Off-Broadway production of Absolute Clarity (Belle) at the Player’s Theatre, Crowns (Yolonda) at American Stage, the touring production of First Lady with Theater Garden, Repo! The Genetic Opera (Blind Mag) at Wing’s Theatre, and CouchFullaLuv (Nessa) at The Looking Glass Theatre. She has been in numerous showcases at The Bank Street Theatre, The Flat Iron Theatre, and The Producer’s Club, and was a featured soloist with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, singing at various venues from The Kaufmann Center to Carnegie Hall. Listen for the sound of her voice in the musical score of the film Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. She is also a featured artist on the albums “The Mercy Suite,” produced by Tomas Doncker with music set to the poetry of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and “For Lost Words,” written by Vince Di Mura with words again by Yusef Komunyakaa. Annie Lee graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Music and a BA in Voice Performance and African American Studies respectively. Appointed to the faculty of Third Street Music School in 2008 and National Children’s Chorus in 2018, she conducts and teaches music throughout New York City.

Photo by Mark Torres Photography.

Mamiko Watanabe

“Unafraid to explore and incorporate different styles, Mamiko Watanabe plays and composes with passion and direction” – jazzreview.com

“Watanabe’s piano playing and leadership on both discs is deft, challenging and always solid.” – All About Jazz NY Magazine

“Like the best Piano trios, Watanabe’s threesome has the focus and interplay of a working band.” – Jazz Inside Magazine

“Throughout Mother Earth Watanabe displays talents as a pianist,composer and arranger that makes a listener smile and shake their head with the pleasure of it all. And on this disc, the pleasures are many.” – The New York City Jazz Record

“Ms.Watanabe already has a sound of her own plus impressive technique. Her creativity is impressive throughout these modern mainstreem performances and she is a skilled songwriter.” – Scott Yanow; The Los Angeles Jazz Scene Magazine

In 1999 she revived a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music and studied Jazz piano, Improvisation and Composition. She was a semi-finalist at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition in Montreux, Switzerland both in 2002 and 2003. She has toured Germany, Italy and Japan and has performed with several jazz greats such as Joe Lovano, Kevin Mahogany, Bobby McFerrin, Tiger Okoshi and Phil Wilson while in college.
In 2003 she received the DownBeat Student Award in the Jazz Soloist Category before she made the decision to move to New York and expand her musical horizons. Since then, Mamiko has performed in the 2010 Clifford Brown Jazz Festival, the 2012 Super Jazz Ashdod Festival in Israel, 2013 Penang World Music Festival in Malaysia and many other notable venues such as The Kitano NY, Blue Note NY Sunday Brunch & Late Night Groove Series,The Iridium, Dizzy’s Club , The Lenox Lounge, Blues Alley (in Washington, D.C.), The Kennedy Center, Victoria Theater (at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center), Joe’s Pub and S.O.B.’s, just to name a few.
She is currently working with Valery Ponomarev Big Band & His Septet besides leading her own group.
As a leader, Mamiko recorded her album, “One After Another” in 2005 and released her second album,”ORIGIN/JEWEL” in 2007 which in fact is actually the combination of two separate discs; “ORIGIN” is a collection of the Funk and Latin influences compositions and “JEWEL” contains works recorded in a more straight-ahead jazz piano trio format. Her third release, entitled “Mother Earth” was completed in 2010 received excellent reviews from the writers of Jazz Inside Magazine, New York City Jazz Record and Jazziz Magazine. She released her forth piano album “Flying Without Wings” in 2018.