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Sasha Masakowski
Sasha Masakowski is a rising star on the New Orleans music scene. Being raised by a distinguished classical pianist mother and a legendary jazz guitarist father (Steve Masakowski of New Orleans's Astral Project), she has a natural gift and love for music. Sasha began singing when she was very young and decided at a very early age that she wanted to pursue the career of a musicial artist. In high school she attended the prestigious New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and graduated as a highest level senior with a certificate in Musical Theatre. There she studied intensively the art of singing, as well as acting and dancing, and began frequently performing in major musical works around the city. She successfully continued her studies abroad on a full scholarship to a music conservatory in the Netherlands, this time focusing on the art and study of Jazz music. Returning home recently from her time abroad, Sasha has set out to capture audiences and make a name for herself in her hometown, New Orleans. Sasha is constantly seeking to progress the sound of her music and has deeply explored many sub-genres of jazz music to help cultivate her exotic style. She is a current member of one of New Orleans' premier avant-garde improvisational bands, Free Jazz, Brah!, and she is also the leader of her own Latin/Electronica band which performs frequently in major clubs and festivals throughout the city. Sasha has also been featured as a modern straight-ahead jazz singer at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as well as on the stages of prominent New Orleans jazz clubs, such as Snug Harbor, Donna's, Rosy's, Club 300 Jazz Bistro, BeBee's, the Polo Lounge, and the Mystick Den.
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Amina Figarova: Joy
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Amina Figarova released an album in 2005 that was about as far away from the theme of joy" as could be. September Suite (Munich Records) explored the deadly events of September 11, 2001 (she was in New York at the time; she experienced it). It is an album that she called: An Ode to Mourning striving to articulate the various stages of grief in musical terms." In 2022 Figarova turns 180 degrees to embrace optimism and a ...
read moreSteve Masakowski and the Masakowski Family: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
by C. Michael Bailey
Holiday Music...with an edge. The holiday season always provides plenty of inspiration for musicians. Jazzers are especially affected, having produced many notable records, beginning, with the Vince Guaraldi trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965). That recording provides a convenient jumping off point for discussing the Masakowski Family's Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which contains several performances derived specifically from that recording. The Masakowski Family is paterfamilias and guitarist Steve Masakowski (who discharges all arrangement ...
read moreSeven Women (Plus Three) 2018 – Part X
by C. Michael Bailey
Lucia Jackson You and the Night and the Music Roni Music 2018 To a precious few, much talent is given, particularly the young of age, like New York City native Lucia Jackson, who, at the age of 26 has already distinguished herself as an accomplished dancer and model. Now Jackson emerges as a singer, capitalizing on her voice and piano training at the prestigious Escuela de Musica Creativa in Madrid, Spain, where she attended on ...
read moreMasakowski Family: N.O. Escape
by C. Michael Bailey
The NOLA Masakowski's are a household name in the New Orleans area. Singer Sasha Masakowski has released several notable CDs including Sasha Masakowski & the Sidewalk Strutters Old Green River (Louisiana Music Factory, 2015); Hildegard (Self Produced, 2015); and Wishes (Hypersoul, 2011). Her father, the principle member here, multi-instrumentalist Steve Masakowski, is on faculty at the University of New Orleans, an educator under whom Katrina-refugee-now-Little-Rock-native Ted Ludwig studied. Bassist Martin Masakowski, Sasha's brother chips in with the one non-family member, ...
read moreSasha Masakowski & the Sidewalk Strutters: Old Green River
by C. Michael Bailey
There is a rare musical triple point where talent, vision, and a wicked sense-of-humor meet. Damn few artists ever make it there. I believe that it must be the address of one Sasha Hildegard Masakowski. NOLA's own has recently relocated to the cultural hub of the universe, New York City, but not before navigating the choppy and often decadent waters of this past Carnival and Mardi Gras season to record a throwback to not the '30s and '40s but the ...
read moreHildegard: Hildegard
by C. Michael Bailey
If audio releases were ships following one another and I was standing on the deck of Sasha Masakowski's debut recording, Wishes (Hypersoul, 2011), I don't think I could have seen as far away as needed to spy her follow-up Hildegard. Certainly not without a telescope. Like Wishes which Masakowski made with her ensemble, the Musical Playground, the artist inaugurates a new ensemble, Hildegard. The ensemble name is potent with meaning to the singer, whose middle name is Hildegard, and that ...
read moreSasha Masakowski and Musical Playground: Wishes
by C. Michael Bailey
The field of female jazz vocals is somewhat bigger than 40 acres...like, a universe bigger. So congested is the musical ether with this flavor of jazz that it is nearly impossible for an artist to carve out a useful niche. Not that a niche is necessary, but it is nice to have some unifying element or theme in a given project, something not unlike Karrin Allyson's Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane (Concord, 2001). While specifically directed in a different way, New ...
read moreSasha Masakowski - Wishes and Take Your City Eps
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Something Else!
By Nick DeRiso Sasha Masakowski, at once fearless and charming, is featured on two new EPs, one as a leader with Musical Playground (the forthcoming next-gen jazz recording Wishes from Hypersoul Records) and another as part of the New Orleans indie rock/electronic band Bionica on Take Your City. Across these nine songs, we discover a vocalist of startling rangefrom the traditional to the trippy. Her fragile, but musically insistent vocal on St. James Infirmary," the highlight of Wishes, goes a ...
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