Music FridayLive!

New York-based Niva the Soul Diva is a singer, songwriter and performer known for blending R&B, rock, hip-hop, dance and soul and crowd-pleasing performances. A Houston, TX, native, Niva grew up in the rough part of Houston and moved to New York  for a career in the entertainment industry. In early 2008 she responded to an ad for a singer from the New Black Music production company and the rest is history.  Niva released her first full-length album, Rollercoaster Love, in 2010, with her debut single “I Will Make It” and released her sophomore album, Unrivaled in 2013. Currently she has several songs from her latest EP " Life, Love & Music  on the 2018 Grammy Award ballot for a Grammy nomination while she is also in the studio working on her full album. 

Mad Hawkes is a rock trio +1 from the South Bay region of LA, led by high-energy rock singer/songwriter Maddi Hawkes who is totally unafraid to say what she thinks in raw lyrics and dance-until-you-drown-in-sweat beats. While interning at Parts + Labor Records in Venice Beach, Maddie so immersed herself in songwriting that label owner/producer Jimmy Messer saw a rising talent so he encouraged her to tap into her truth and write with passionate, emotional honesty. She did and the rest is history – a history of songs that carom from angst to heartache, from dismal lyrics to upbeat melodies. And always, she is flaunting her flaws regardless of any judgement in a sound that she calls “Babe Rock” She released her first single, "Fantasy" Janauary of this year and the second single “Face Pnch” is out now.

Multi-instrumentalist and soothing soul singer Sam Ravenna  released  his self-titled debut EP in 2017  after years as a sideman for bands including  Eric Lindell, Cas Haley, Tubby love, and Peter Joseph Burtt & The Kingtide.  A Berklee College of Music graduate the Lake Tahoe based Ravenna is a seasoned touring musician and has produced and collaborated on albums for many national acts.  His prior projects include the funk powerhouse band “Rapplesauce” and the reggae-dub project “Samily Man”. He is releasing his 14-track album Fragile featuring guests artists Rob O’Block. Scott Flynn of Odesza, Pretty Lights and John Brown’s Body, Max Ribner and Tim Snider (Nahko and Medicine for the people) contributed strings and horns and Mark Sexton (Sextones).  The album will be premiered  this Friday at La’s renowned Hotel Café.

Many performers live for applause. Michelle Lewis just wants to make you cry.  She tours globally from her current home in Los Angeles, from Belgium to Wyoming. This Fall she’ll tour her new full-length album, All That’s Left, through Europe and the US. She has been a regular at The Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, and at Club Passim in Boston. Her first full-length album release, This Time Around, arrived in 2004. She has been a longtime collaborator with producer Anthony J. Resta (Elton John, Duran Duran, Shawn Mullins), spanning their work on her EPs Broken (2009) and Paris (2011), her second full-length album, The Parts Of Us That Still Remain (2014), and her forthcoming album All That’s Left (2018).

Whitney Tai is a singer-songwriter daredevil who creates dream pop on the edge between pop and indie, rooted in emotional honesty and personal integrity.  She is simultaneously totally authentic and other worldly. Tai lost her mother to cancer when she was 10 years old, surfacing her own health issues including severe anxiety, depression and weight loss. But  she channeled her feelings into songs and poems and performing no matter the darkness inside of her. Singles led to albums like her debut Metamorphosis, then the EP Forever, followed by a series of single releases, ‘Truth Be Told” ,”How Was I Supposed To Know” and breathtaking videos and then “Shockwave”.  She is now appearing in venues across LA.

Nurit Siegel Smith has been appointed as the new Executive Director Music Forward Foundation of the House of Blues , an organization that contributes over a million dollars year to music programming and education. Smith assumes leadership as the foundation’s Music Forward program embarks on its 25th year as one of the nation’s leading nonprofits creating opportunities for youth in the music industry. She comes to Music Forward after serving as Deputy Director at Grand Performances. She has extensive experience in arts and entertainment social sectors and has held positions within the Blue Man Group and Highways Performance Space and spent over a decade at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. She will join us to lay out her vision for the future of the Music Forward Program, so vital to music in America.

Award-wining singer/songwsriter/musical director / producerand voice actor AOEDE  drops by to talk about her forthcoming memoir.

“The hardest thing you can possibly do is walk away from someone that you viscerally love and feel is a part of you.”  Singer-songwriter, Joy Autumn, explores this declaration in depth in her latest music video for her single, Go and expands the search for meaning in her album Midnight, exploring the underbelly of the music industry. A singer-songwriter originally from the small town of Olympia, WA., the glitter of Hollywood quickly faded for her as she discovered a dark culture of late night and early morning partying with trust-fund babies, the offspring of celebrities, and industry execs, with drinking, drugs and predatory behavior. There were days when she couldn’t get out of bed and that’s when she re-discovered her love of utilizing songwriting as a form of therapy, She co-produced Midnight, a moody and cinematic pop record, with the support of producer, Bill Lefler (Ingrid Michaelson) to shine the light on the underground.

 The Vagabond Tales is a multi-instrumental music project that is centered around the songwriting of Eva Mikhailovna, lead singer and song writer.  Eva was born to a musical family in Russia and  began writing songs and lyrics as a child. She learned how to play the piano before she could read or write, but it was always just for her own pleasure and that of her family’s.  After  moving to California, an invitation to play some of her music at a local college led her to put together a band and live perform  her unique brand of western/old folk,/ragtime  melting pot music.  Recording soon followed,  and she  released  Letters From the Moon in 2013, and the EP La Douleur Exquise in 2016.  Eva and the Vagabond Tales  is now touring in California. (Eva photos by Fernanda Frias)

Laura Saggers is a British singer/songwriter based in Los Angele,. For some time she has been arranging, recording and performing covers each week and has just released her debut original album Chasing Dreams. Classically trained on piano since the age of 4, Laura picked up the guitar while backpacking through Latin America as a teen, and later acquired and mastered the keytar.  She was was endorsed by Roland for the keytar in 2013 and was rated as their top 25 keytarists worldwide alongside Lady Gaga and Keisha's keytarists. Laura's original singles have won the  Summer Fling Best Song award for 2015 in the Unsigned Only International Music Competition, er and her song 10'000 Bitcoins was featured in the LA Times and Wall Street Journal.

lauara saggers

Atlanta-based songwriter Anita Aysola infuses jazz and blues with classic rock and traditional Indian influences. Using lyrical wit, virtuosic piano runs, and a sultry-sweet voice , she seamlessly bridges worlds.  Her debut album More Than Maybe showcases her broad range of influences from Norah Jones to Tom Waits. Her focus goes beyond jazz into traditional Indian music, most apparent in "Long Way Home", a ballad channeling influences like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ravi Shankar.  

Gina Chavez is a bilingual Latin-folk singer/songwriter who blends the sounds of the Americas with  cumbia, bossa nova, vintage pop, reggaeton, and folk combined with sharp social commentary. She is the 2014 John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize Winner , a eight-time Austin Music Award winner,she also won Musician of the Year, Album of the Year(Up.Rooted), Song of the Year , Best Latin Band , and the Esme Barrera Award for Music Activism and Education. She brings us her new personal EP, Lightbeam. 

Karen Dezelle is a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California whose acoustic indie folk songs played at SXSW and famed venues across the United States and UK, including the House of Blues, The Hotel Cafe, Hotel Utah, and The Bitter End. After the success of her 2013 and 2014 albums, Lost and Found and  Bloom, Unfold, Wither, Dezelle’s 2016 EP, Room For Two, pushed boundaries that are extremely personal and heartfelt even for her.   She will be talking about an upcoming event she is singing at, Create a Smile.

This Friday we premier Ch’usay  the newest album by Novalima, the explosive Afro- Peruvian band that travels the world bridging cultures, genres and generations in their music. Started by four friends from Lima with a shared passion for traditional Afro-Peruvian music and global DJ culture, Novalima has garnered worldwide critical acclaim from mainstream media like NPR, UK Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Billboard, and underground media like  Remezcla, Sounds & Colors, and Nat Geo for their  legendary performances at festivals, their string of hit albums and  their Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album.  Last year Novalima went back into the studio to explore new sounds from Peru and produced  Ch’usay  which will be released this Friday, celebrating Novalima’s 15th Anniversary.

Chicago –born Matt LeGrand has explored the wide variety of musical inspirations that the windy city had to offer,  learning guitar, drums, and even dabbling with songwriting. He also experimented with different bands and duos in college that finally inspired him to find a sound all his own. Legendary artists manager Bryant Reid  discovered LeGrand in 2015 and is confident he’s found another potentially explosive new artist, saying , "In all of my years in the recorded music business, I must say that Matt LeGrand is one of the hardest working young artists that I've encountered. “  With an ever growing fan-base who call themselves The Legrand Girls.  He released the highly successful “All Good” song and video  in 2017, released  “12:00 AM”  this year, and debuted live in NYC this summer.

Plus, The duo Mitre drops by at the beginning of the showwith the new song, "El Callejón Del Beso" .

In 2016 Ali Stone was named by Billboard as one of the  6 artists to watch – the only woman on the list. Billboard was right. One of the youngest film composers for film in the world she went on to produce  the full soundtrack of the thriller  Demental, her remix for the official soundtrack of the Disney film Monsters University was chosen from more than 2,000 participants and she has become the  Colombian spokesperson of the international campaign Women Working for Women. The talented Colombian producer, singer / songwriter & DJ, just released her new single " Follow Me " after Latin and Central American  tours where she DJ’d and played for amphitheater crowds.  Now in LA, she is writing, producing and engineering songs for artists such as Alan Walker  and Prince Royce ...and taking time to sit down with Music Friday Live. This is a special extended interview so there is only one guest.

Taylor Grey began her musical career at 12 years old writing her own lyrics, while she took opera training and taught herself the piano and guitar.  Musical theater, classic rock, jazz and 90’s hip-hop  all contributed to her sophisticated and cross-generational refined pop alternative music.  She debuted in 2016, with “Mind of Mine I & II”, a two-part EP that caught the eyes and ears of Pop Artist, Jacob Whitesides  and put her on his summer “Lovesick” Tour as his opening performer. Her fan base exploded when she joined The Summer Set’s sold out “Made For You” Tour as a special guest in the fall of 2016. She released her  first full album, SPACE CASE in the spring of 2017. (photgos by Nikko Lamere)