For those unaware, Laura Chu Wiens (she/her), also known as AurallaurA, is a jazz composer and vocalist who grew up in a biracial Chinese-American household, and thus having lived extensively overseas, is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.

Her brand new album, Exetastes is a veritable tour-de-force, showcasing Laura’s expansive global influences, with tracks spotlighting the blues, Latin, funk, bembe, and even traditional folk music from Mexico, the Balkans, and China.

Key collaborator, arranger and music engineer Greg Lutz is a Grammy-nominated music educator and plays virtuosic solos on keys, sax, clarinet and flute.

Bassist John Dahlman, who has performed over 50 times at the White House for five Presidents and toured with seven Broadway musicals, is also featured heavily on this album.

1. But, You Know
2. Shelter, Storm
3. Icarus
4. Second Summer
5. Mind the Gap
6. City Sister, Homestead Heart
7. The Last Nostalgic Wait
8. Zapjevala Sojka Ptica
9. Press the Word
10. December Song
11. Yuan Fen

This wonderfully vibrant new voice in the jazz composition scene opens up her new album with the twinkling melodies that make up But, You Know and the playfully strident Shelter, Storm and then we get the veritably shimmering Icarus and the delightfully rhythmic Second Summer and the delicately jagged Mind the Gap.

Along next is the swirling jazz-pop of City Sister, Homestead Heart and the ornately-hued ballad The Last Nostalgic Wait, which are then in turn backed by the flourishing dancing swirls within Zapjevala Sojka Ptica, the recording rounding out on the descriptive piano jazz balladry sewn through Press the Word, the more dedicated December Song, coming to a close on the coltish Yuan Fen.

Chu Wiens has studied and performed folk music in Chiapas, Mexico, township jazz in Cape Town, South Africa, Roma music in Belgrade, Serbia and Lisu minority folk music in Yunnan, China. Laura studied vocal jazz at Williams College, but her skills as a performer have been refined as a regular performing musician in the DC and Pittsburgh area over the last 17 years.

She performs regularly with the group RML Jazz at festivals, performance venues and restaurants, and has previously fronted the big band The Jazz Conspiracy, Speak Low Jazz in the Washington DC region, and Lora and the Belgrade Boys in Serbia.

Laura has also composed and performed vocal music for three BBC Radio 4 Dramas produced by the Prix Italia and Sony Gold Radio Academy Award-winning audio artist, Gregory Whitehead. Those pieces were broadcast nationally across the UK and at the Glasgow Radio Festival “Radiophrenia.”

www.aurallaura.com

AurallaurA @ Soundcloud