Hope Kevin Hays & Lionel Loueke

• 1Violeta05:09
• 2Hope06:11
• 3Aziza04:48
• 4Feuilles-O05:26
• 5Milton06:56
• 6Twins03:36
• 7Veuve Malienne05:20
• 8All I Have04:51
• 9Ghana Boy03:58
• 10Loving You03:54
• 11Sweet Caroline04:17
• Total Runtime54:26

Info for Hope

Tension in music often leads to some of the most rewarding recordings and performances – when there’s cross-talk around who should take the lead, when someone is pushing and someone else is pulling, when the band isn’t resting in the beat but subjugating it. Duke Ellington’s great 1962 trio recording, Money Jungle, featuring Max Roach and Charles Mingus, was famously tense. You can hear it in the way Roach and Mingus are constantly snapping at each other, but their respect for Ellington takes precedence and leads to one of the finest trio records ever made.

Lionel and Kevin don’t need to find a balance between them because they are both serving something else. Whatever you want to call it -- “truth,” “higher power,” “music” -- that’s the third party here. I’ve been blessed as a musician and a producer to witness some incredible and even historic music. I’ve never been around anything like when Lionel and Kevin stepped into the studio.

Chemistry is a strange word for it. What microcosmic reactions are going on here when two musicians connect so viscerally? Often musicians talk about “feeling time” the same way. Can there be a blunter description of a fundamentally mystical idea? Lionel Loueke’s home country of Benin in West Africa is a long way from Kevin Hays’ hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut. Is there a deeper truth that they’ve both discovered?

The compositions on this record have their own synchronicity as well. Violeta was written by Kevin for the great Chilean singer, musician, folklorist and composer Violeta Parra. Kevin first heard Parra on a recording with the iconic Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento, immediately fell in love with her voice and dedicates this song to her “great spirit.” Hope was written by Lionel during a difficult time in his life. Lionel said, “Hope kept me alive,” and describes the song as “another song for peace and love.” As for Aziza Dance, he remarks: “Aziza is a little creature you can find in the forest if you are lucky, the god of inspiration in Beninese mythology.” Feuilles-O is a traditional Haitian song that Kevin fell in love with and arranged (that’s Kevin singing the melody in Haitian Creole). The song is about a medicine man healing a sick child. Hays’s Milton was written for and inspired by Nascimento, whose influence is clear in the falsetto intro, driving 5/4 rhythm and contagious exuberance. Twins was written by Lionel for his friend, the producer Mikele Locateli, when Mikele had twins, but it’s also about the “deep connection you can have between two people.” Veuve Mallienne, which means “Malian widow,” is a cry from a wife who lost her husband to war and a demand for peace. Kevin actually wrote lyrics to All I Have, which speak “of the discovery of the wealth of spiritual truth that's always there, but often gets obscured by our involvement in things of the material world and our (even more often) cluttered minds.”

There’s a commonality of intention and inspiration here. A search for—or rather, a reliance upon—something beneath the surface. This is, of course, something that is represented and searched for in all music, not just improvisational music, but the connection between Lionel and Kevin is so clear and warm that it is hard not to try to understand it. For these musicians who grew up across the globe from each other, to pull at the subterranean strands of connection, expose them to the world, and turn them on so they glow and illuminate -- this is fundamental to the very idea of “hope.” For whether you find solace in the divine, the spiritual or the human, it’s this sort of communion that we’re all searching for, and relying upon. (Elan Mehler)

Kevin Hays, piano, vocals
Lionel Loueke, guitar, vocals

Kevin Hays
Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist, composer, and singer/songwriter Kevin Hays, is internationally recognized as one of the most original and compelling musicians of his generation. His many recordings have received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine and Jazz Times, as well as the “Coup de Coeur” award from the Académie Charles Cros (France).

Kevin has appeared on over 60 albums as a guest artist, recording with Chris Potter, Bill Stewart, Joshua Redman, Jeff Ballard, Nicholas Payton, and Al Foster, among others. Notable collaborations include a widely-acclaimed piano duo project with Brad Mehldau (Modern Music – Nonesuch), performances with James Taylor, Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Joe Henderson, and Roy Haynes.

In addition to his celebrated work as pianist and composer, Kevin has become increasingly known as a gifted and expressive singer/songwriter. In 2015 he released the critically acclaimed recording New Day (Sunnyside), on which he performed his own songs and a riveting performance of the Jimmy Webb classic ‘Highwayman’.

In 2017 Hays joined the Steve Gadd Band. The group released their eponymous album which garnered a 2019 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. He co-wrote several compositions with the other band members, and the album features Kevin’s own “Spring Song”, the sole vocal track.

Hope, a highly anticipated August 2019 release on Edition Records, will highlight the beauty of Kevin’s duets with Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, who came to the world’s attention through his stellar work with Herbie Hancock.

Lionel Loueke
Starting out on vocals and percussion, Lionel Loueke picked up the guitar late, at age 17. After his initial to exposure to jazz in Benin, he left to attend the National Institute of Art in nearby Ivory Coast. In 1994 he left Africa to pursue jazz studies at the American School of Modern Music in Paris, then went to the U.S. on a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. From there, Loueke gained acceptance to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, where he encountered his Gilfema bandmates Biolcati, Nemeth, Parlato and other musicians with whom he would form lasting creative relationships.

In 2008 and 2009, Lionel Loueke was picked as top Rising Star guitarist in DownBeat magazine's annual Critics Poll.

Praised by his mentor Herbie Hancock as "a musical painter," Lionel Loueke combines harmonic sophistication, soaring melody, a deep knowledge of African music, and conventional and extended guitar techniques to create a warm and evocative sound of his own. JazzTimes wrote "Loueke's lines are smartly formed and deftly executed. His ear-friendly melodicism draws both from traditional African sources and a lifetime of closely studying the likes of Jim Hall and George Benson, and his rhythmic shifts come quickly and packed with surprises."

After graduating from Berklee College of Music, Lionel Loueke was accepted to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles where he had the opportunity to study his greatest mentors: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Terence Blanchard.

Soon after his time at the Monk Institute, Lionel Loueke began focusing exclusively on nylon-string acoustic guitar, an instrument on which he's developed a signature voice.

Lionel Loueke released his first album In a Trance (2005) on Space Time Label, then three albums on Obliqsound Label as a leader (Virgin Forest - 2006) and with Gilfema (Gilfema - 2005, Gilfema + 2 - 2008)

His first release on Blue Note Label Karibu (2008), featuring the trio with Hancock and Wayne Shorter as special guests, won widespread critical praise.

His sophomore release for Blue Note, Mwaliko (2010), followed up acclaimed Karibu offered a series of searching, innovative, intimate duets with Angelique Kidjo, Esperanza Spalding, Richard Bona and Marcus Gilmore - artists and allies who continue to have a profound impact on Loueke's vision as a bandleader.

Hailed as a "gentle virtuoso" by Jon Pareles of The New York Times, guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke follows up with Heritage (released in August 2012), co-produced by piano great and Blue Note label mate Robert Glasper. Lionel Loueke, long known for his nylon-string acoustic guitar, releases here a more electric album.

In 2015, Loueke chose to record Gaía, his remarkable rock-infused fourth Blue Note album, live in the studio with an intimate audience in attendance.

Loueke has appeared on numerous standout recordings such as Terence Blanchard’s Grammy-nominated Flow (2005) and Hancock’s Grammy-winning River: The Joni Letters (2008). Lionel appeared on recordings by such legends as Jack DeJohnette (Sound Travels), Charlie Haden (Land of the Sun), Kenny Barron (The Traveler) and Gonzalo Rubalcaba (XXI Century). He has also appeared on recordings by Esperanza Spalding, Joe Lovano, Gretchen Parlato, Avishai Cohen, Kendrick Scott and other leading peers.

He has also toured the world as a member of Hancock’s band for more than ten years and starts touring with Chick Corea this year after recording his last album to be released.

Lionel Loueke is also a member of Blue Note’s 75th anniversary all-star band with Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Kendrick Scott, Ambrose Akinmusire and Marcus Strickland.

These experiences all inform Loueke's extraordinary work as a leader.

This album contains no booklet.