For Immediate Release

Bidi Dworkin

bidi.dworkin@gmail.com

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“Beautiful Souvenirs is a showcase for Bidi Dworkin’s sparkling voice at its finest.”

– NYC Jazz Record

 

Beautiful Souvenirs: CD Release May 29, 2020

     Bidi Dworkin’s debut album offers a fresh spin on gems from The Great American Songbook, as well as blues and folk anthems, many arranged by jazz legend Jay Clayton. Recorded in Vermont, the band consists of some of New England’s finest, including Eric Hangen (piano), Steve Cady (bass) and Claire Arenius (drums) Our band’s coming together was a process that naturally unfolded over time. It was well worth the wait.

Grammy Award winning Benjamin J. Arrindell served as our sound engineer at Old Mill Road Recording in East Arlington.

      On May 29, 2020, as the world was being locked down, the CD Release Party was cancelled. Instead, vocalist Bidi Dworkin freely delivered newly minted CD’s, leaving them on the porches of neighbors and friends. Though an isolating time for a CD release, an unexpected surprise lifted her spirits. Arriving to unload her recycling at the local transfer station, aka dump, she heard Beautiful Souvenirs blasting from the enormous speakers there.

     Beautiful Souvenirs has taken on a life of its own, offering apropos songs of social justice, consolation and healing. Having extracted lyrics from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s (Peter De Rose) Autumn Serenade, to name Beautiful Souvenirs, one could never have imagined that these twelve treasured musical relics from the past would serve as a balm for the present.

 

Background Info

     As a young child in Providence, Rhode Island, Bidi was influenced by her musical father, who in addition to being a physician, was a passionate bandleader, sax and clarinet player. It was there on the top landing late at night in her pajamas, listening to the living room jam sessions waft through her childhood home, her ear for jazz was stoked. A few of the tunes on this album, she first heard while sitting on those stairs.

     She performed as a folk singer in Burlington, Vermont and Providence, RI in the ‘70’s, was a working modern dancer in Manhattan in the 80’s, a yoga teacher in the ‘90’s, and in the 2000’s she took a slight departure to work alongside NGO’s in India creating artisan handlooms. The threads that dangled, with each wholehearted endeavor, seamlessly wove into what would come next. No surprise that she has circled back to her origins, to singing jazz.

     She thanks her mentors~ Jay Clayton, Laurie Antonioli, Theo Bleckmann, Sheila Jordon, Rhiannon and Fay Victor as well as the Vermont Jazz Center. She has primarily honed her “chops” the old-fashioned way– via gigs on the bandstand, in New York City and throughout New England.