Album Notes

If the music that touches us most is music that speaks directly to our best impulses toward living, loving and the joy of creating, then surely the world will heartily welcome the release of Latin vocalist Ana Nitmar’s first CD, Forest in Spring, along with Ana Nitmar’s emergence as a delightful, effervescent singer on the Latin jazz/World music stage.
Ana Nitmar, blessed with a beautiful voice puts her vocal instrument to delightful use on her new CD, singing in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian.
Ana Nitmar, artfully displays her musical skills and infectious joie de vivre on Forest in Spring. She infuses the CD with a triumphantly joyful spirit, inspired by the grand diversity of color and life contained in the tropical rain forests of her homeland Guatemala. Indeed it is the rain forest itself from which Ana Nitmar derives a great deal of her artistic inspiration.
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Listening to Ana Nitmar’s new CD “Forest in Spring” is like taking a lovely vacation to a warm climate. Her voice is haunting and can be at times filled with longing as in the song sung in Spanish, “Querer,” or joyous and uplifting as in the song “Samba de Bencao” sung in Portugese. The CD opens with one of her original compositions, “Forest in Spring,” also in Spanish, that paints the picture of her homeland, Guatemala, and the beauty of the tropical rain forest. There is wonderful musicianship throughout, but the recording is noteworthy for the wonderful spirit of Ana Nitmar that shines through in all 12 tracks and 4 languages. A beautiful and very listenable CD.

Maye Cavallaro (San Francisco Bay Area Jazz Vocalist)

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Growing up in Guatemala, Ana Nitmar was passionate about music from a very young age. In her teens, Ana began singing in competitions across Guatemala. After winning a major national singing competition, Ana was awarded a contract to sing regularly on one of the country’s leading television stations.

After finishing her secondary education, Ana moved to California. The United States offered a new and exciting musical path for Ana Nitmar. The cosmopolitan musical community of the San Francisco Bay Area exposed her to new forms of music. Jazz, Italian Pop and Brazilian music soon became Ana’s love and mainstay within musical performance. She encountered the contemporary, the traditional and the exotically beautiful aspects of music at the renowned Jazz School in Berkeley, California.

Ana has shared her music and her joy of singing at a wide range of venues, events, festivals, and performance stages. She appeared at the Latin American Festival de la OTI, sang on the Latin American television show Sábado Gigante, and represented Guatemala on Star Search in Hollywood

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FOREST IN SPRING CD'S MUSICIANS

VOCALS Ana Nitmar
BASS Felipe Pumarada
KEYBOARDS Claudio Vargas Silva & Richard Kuhns
ACCORDION Richard Kuhns
DRUMS Claudio Bebianno & Jeremy Shanok
BRAZILIAN PERCUSSION Claudio Bebianno
PERUVIAN CAJON Pedro Rosales
GUITAR Robin Lewis & Jeff Buenz
CELLO Marcie Brown
VIOLIN Julian Smedley
MARIMBA Gerry Grosz
MARIMBA BAND "Mi Bella Guatemala”