Music For Life

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With his ARTizen Music Group debut Babysoul, 26-year-old Jackiem Joyner is the latest saxophonist in contemporary jazz history to musically chronicle the experience of emerging from the ranks of extraordinarily busy sideman to center stage on his first recording. An instantly engaging, soulful release, Babysoul will astound listeners with its musicality and accessibility. After several years of playing with keyboard greats Marcus Johnson and Bobby Lyle and saxophonist Jaared, co-headlining a 30 city tour in 2004 with Ronnie Laws and jazz and soul singers Angela Bofill and Jean Carne, and opening gigs for everyone from India Arie to Boney James, Spyro Gyra and George Benson, Joyner took a full year off to focus on writing and recording an album that marks his status as a baby coming into the world, a new soul emerging into the music business. Babysoul is more than just a title- it is a true description of his professional re-birthing. Jackiem's insistent and seemingly limitless invention on the thumpin , finger snapping title track is all about the urgency of getting out there and showing everyone what he s got. Thinking back on dealing with difficult characters on the business side of things along the way, Elevation finds Jackiem in a retrospective place ruminating upon his life so far in the music business while the tune's ebullient character suggests an inner resolution and dedication to move only onward and upward. The dreamy, ambient closer Innocence strips away the obstacles and gives him a fresh, optimistic mindset towards the future. Considering that this past New Year s Eve, he held his own jamming onstage during the Jazz Spectacular at the Hyatt Regency in La Jolla, California with genre greats Gerald Albright, Richard Elliot, Jeff Golub and Peter White whose graceful acoustic guitar graces Babysoul s sensual, soprano driven first single Stay With Me Tonight it s clearly a gift that comes naturally to Joyner. For this record, I m really trying to communicate the soulful sound I have cultivated as much as possible, he says, delivering the message that I m not only an emotionally strong player, but also technically on par. I have the best of both worlds on Babysoul, with a lot of dance groove elements up front and then the second half of the disc that slows down into a slightly more romantic mindset. Even during the time that I was growing as a sideman, it felt right for me to step up front and take solos.