CD Reviews

Sangria is billed as an Indo Latin Jazz Musical Experience. While we weren’t quite sure what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised as the opener “Waterwheel” bathed us in relaxing harmonies. The blending of musical cultures here works extremely well! Parker plays piano and santur with support from Matthew Montfort […]

Sangria: An Indo Latin Jazz Experience Mariah Parker, Ancient-Future.com Records If Seven Serenades for Scalloped Guitar were considered the original, then Sangria: An Indo Latin Jazz Experience by Mariah Parker would certainly be a sequel of sorts. Parker produced this debut recording with Serenades Matthew Montfort. She composed and played […]

Smooth Jazz Now (SmoothJazzNow.com) is an Internet radio station based in Calgary, Canada, with a worldwide audience that generates over 4 million hits per month. Two tracks from Mariah Parker’s 2009 debut release, Sangria, “Pente” and “Waterwheel,” made the SmoothJazzNow.com Top 100 Songs of 2009 list. Mariah Parker joins an […]

Translation: The subtitle of Mariah Parker’s album Sangria reads “An Indo Latin Jazz Musical Experience”. Parker also plays in the world fusion group Ancient Future led by Matthew Montfort, and Montfort and members of the band also perform here, on Parker’s solo-album. Parker wrote all compositions, and plays piano and […]

Pianist Mariah Parker cooks up a heady stew of jazz/world fusion on Sangria, a spicy intoxicating mixture of straight-up jazz inflected with ’70s era fusion (think original Return to Forever, circa Light as a Feather) and global influences from both South America and India. The CD cover reads “An Indo […]

This album with its mixture of East Indian and Latin rhythms was a terrific audio surprise. Ancient Future pianist Mariah Parker throws some quirky jazz into her World fusion mix and the results are quite appealing. Overall, the music has that upbeat Latin tempo, but it is created with Middle […]

Parker, on piano and santur, explores the exciting sonic terrain that blends the driving rhythmic syncopations of Latin jazz with the entrancing, asymmetrical meters of East India. Add intriguing melodic ideas to the mix and the result is compelling, at once adventurous yet accessible. Features original compositions that draw musical […]

Prolusion. As the press kit of this release says, Mariah PARKER is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who has degree in music at UC Santa Cruz and has also studied with jazz great Art Lande and Latin Jazz pianist extraordinaire Rebeca Mauleon. The document also suggests she is currently a […]

Other Licks, by Margaret Coble Instrumental albums rarely catch my ear, but this world fusion set by the acclaimed California jazz pianist is a hypnotic tour of global grooves, melding Indian and Middle Eastern instrumentation with Latin rhythms. Indian and flamenco music collide via cello and tabla in the title […]

My first reaction to Mariah Parker’s Sangria was “Muy caliente!” Joined by a stellar cast of guest artists, including luminaries such as scalloped fret board guitarist Matthew Montfort and renowned saxophonist Paul Mc-Candless, Parker infuses enough heat, passion, sultriness, and sass into Sangria’s eight tracks to power the city of […]