Jazz artists Ray Marchica, Oz Noy and Ugonna Okegwo team up for album RIVERSIDE

Ray Marchica, Oz Noy and Ugonna Okegwo are pleased to present Riverside, via Outside in Music. Their first release as a trio, Riverside is a life-affirming new collection of standards that stems from the band’s spontaneously assembled outdoor jams held in Riverside Park, New York during lockdown.

As individuals, this dynamic trio has a wide range of performing credits – Okegwo as a famed sideman with Jacky Terrasson and Tom Harrell, Marchica as a Broadway and session player (plus two albums as a frontman ) and Noy as one of the most wanted in the fusion. individual voices. All three have been on the New York scene for two decades. So when the COVID-19 lockdown hit, it was a blow to both their livelihoods and their creative spirit. Then, summer arrived and the opportunity arose for confined musicians to get together and play outside. Oz enlisted his neighbors Ugonna and Ray and invited them to the park for a jam session – Ugonna upright, Marchica with small drums and Noy on electric guitar, with a battery-powered amp.

Sessions continued through the summer months until the weather turned around in October. But instead of packing up entirely, the band went into the studio, content to have created a sound and a feeling within the band.

The result is RIVERSIDE.

Watch the trio perform “All the Things You Are” below!

https://birdlandjazz.com/event/oz-noy-ugonna-okegwo-ray-marchica-riverside-cd-release-in-the-theatre/?fbclid=IwAR0t58L6jCDOb-gs6ezaBtALCUpgCCXFc2tGpVxWFbMPFIT26dH7xttBwcU

Ada J. Kenney