Valerie Ghent
Unstoppable
© 1996 Valerie Ghent/West Street Records (616548092720)
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Valerie Ghent's "Unstoppable" CD offers infectious, funk-based grooves & gorgeous pop ballads. Val's striking voice and crystal clear record production fills these eleven songs of love and truth, survival and justice. A musical oasis; a must-have.
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- FDNY/PAPD/WTC VOLUNTEERS/NYC MUSICIANS: We'll Carry On
- EMMANUEL GHENT: Songs For Children (and All Their Friends)
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VALERIE GHENT is a native downtown New York artist/producer/composer with a strikingly powerful voice, piano chops to match and "soul-stirring, uplifting songs full of vitality and joy". Val's performances have been described as "an inspiration, Valerie is an unsung hero (who sings!!)".
The recipient of multiple grants and awards, including the Betances Center's Paul Ramos Award for Service to the Arts, Valerie has written music for film, dance and theatre as well as three CD's on her record label, West Street Records: "Unstoppable"; her father Emmanuel Ghent's "Songs for Children and All Their Friends"; and the acclaimed WTC benefit CD "We'll Carry On".
Musician and recording engineer with Songwriter's Hall of Fame inductees Ashford & Simpson since 1989, Val toured with Debbie Harry (Blondie) and has run the successful performing songwriter's night, The Songwriter's Beat, since she founded it in 2000. A volunteer at the WTC site for nine months after 9/11, Val co-founded the World Foundation for Music and Healing and its Feel the Music! program, which brings music and creative self-expression to children and families affected by trauma and loss. As photographer, over 500 of Valerie's photographs of martial arts master Gao Ji Wu are included in the 2007 book, "Essentials of Ba Gua Zhang".
Co-composer for the critically acclaimed 2007 musical, Betty and the Belrays and composer for the sold-out The Hamlet Project (2002), Valerie has performed, toured, recorded with Ashford & Simpson, Deborah Harry, Dr. Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Billy Preston, TM Stevens, Defunkt, and many other artists. For more information please visit: valghent.com songwritersbeat.com musicandhealing.org
Musicians on Unstoppable:
valerie ghent - vocals, keyboards, producer
tony bridges - bass
knox chandler - guitar, cello
nigel hitchcock - saxophone
benjamin orick - drums
yuri zak - accordion
natalia ghent - russian voice
kit hain, napua davoy, deborah berg, sherryl marshall, elise morris, val ghent - backing vocals
Press:
Valerie has been featured in Billboard, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Keyboard Magazine, New York Press, American Songwriter, The Villager, The Aquarian and many others. She has sung live on Oprah, Channel 2's "The Early Show", Rosie O'Donnell, Pat Sajak and been interviewed by NPR. Some reviews are below. For full press please visit http://valghent.com
reviews
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Ghent's spirit and intellect shine bright...songs with impact and sparkle!
author: Titus Levi, KEYBOARD MAGAZINEKeyboard Magazine - March 1998, 'discoveries' by Titus Levi: We don’t think of it often, but African music permeates American music. It’s sort of in the shadows, but check it: that swinging drum beat, that shout, the energy, the feeling, the layering of the lines. Sure, you can find bits and pieces of these elements elsewhere in the world. American music is infused with all kinds of European elements (not the least of which is the whole song structure). But somewhere beneath it all the African spirit remains. Yet that spirit has such depth and breadth that it can form the foundations of very different musics. Both of this month’s discoveries, Valerie Ghent and Tom Roady, mine this rich vein with quite different results. Ghent’s Unstoppable CD covers funk, R+B, rock, and pop in a series that snap between forms like a hiker on switchbacks; Roady’s One Tribe disc ambles across whole ranges of African-based music, from the percussive and trance-like to the danceable and the foot-stomping. Both musicians put these discs together under unusual and taxing circumstances; both took over two years to record. Ghent, who works as an engineer and backing vocalist for Ashford and Simpson, completed her CD at nights after days in the studio with the soul duo. “The first record took so long. I don’t want to do that again. Also, by the time I was done, I felt I’d outgrown some of the songs, although some really developed over the course of the time that I worked on the recording.” Roady, who spends his days as a percussionist in the Nashville studios with such country music luminaries as Tanya Tucker, Merle Haggard, Trisha Yearwood and Hank Williams, Jr., put this CD together as a test of the flexibility of the Zendrum. “I played no acoustic instruments at all on this CD. I definitely won’t do that again, because I really enjoy playing the other drums. And I played everything in real time. That’s a lot of why it took two years.” In both cases the long gestation periods seem justified. One Tribe ranges from ambient pieces of ringing “percussion” and “strings” to rootsy rhumbas, sunny light jazz, toe-tappin’ rock (with the horn section of a Nashville band called Rush Hour) and music taken from the Andean highlands. Through it all, a pulse, a deep reference to the drum, and a richness of rhythm sustains and powers the pieces. Some of it comes from Africa, a lot from Illinois (where Roady used to live), and some from the American South, where he’s resided for more than 15 years. The African spirit comes into Ghent’s music by way of musical associations with Deborah Harry (who always emphasized a certain loopy, funky blues spirit), the hard driving soul/funk/jazz outfit Defunkt, and the afore-mentioned Ashford and Simpson. And while Unstoppable veers into smoother and more laidback pop pieces, the strength of Ghent’s spirit and intellect shines bright on pieces like the title track, “Truth”, “Survive”, and “Place In This World”. On these pieces her straightforward soloing, programming skills (her Korg M1 has been totally reprogrammed for her personal preferences) and producing come together to fashion songs with impact and statement. Now, that both of their albums are out, Ghent and Roady have had to don the hat of the huckster. After jumping all over the task, Ghent is slowing down, saying, “I’ve been re-evaluating the way my life was restructured” by trying to be a player, producer, engineer and promoter. Her recent stint as an engineer at KISS-FM in New York has allowed her to see the inside of the corporate radio world; on upcoming efforts she will probably be better equipped as a result of this experience. Roady, on the other hand, works not only as a promoter for the album, but also for the Zendrum, the remarkable instrument that he used to realize virtually all the tracks on One Tribe. After being introduced to the instrument in 1994 by Walfredo Reyes, Jr., he acquired one and is even an investor in the company manufacturing the instruments. (You can learn more about the Zendrum at www.zendrum.com/index.htm.) “On the CD I was able to play more melodic things, “ Roady says. “You get the sensitivity and velocity. People are just beginning to understand what I wanted to do with it.” Through her father, Emmanuel Ghent, who worked at Bell Labs with such electronic music pioneers as Max Mathews, Valerie learned about music programming and instruments which, like the Zendrum, emerged outside the mainstream. She’s even sampled some of the old gizmos, she told me, but they sound so peculiar she hasn’t figured out a piece for them yet. To give the Zendrum more visibility, Roady uses the instrument whenever he can: “I just played a demonstration at Waldenbooks with guitar-harp player Tom Shinness. The instrument is on the new Wynonna...Whenever people see it they’re amazed. But what I really need is to have it show up on an MTV video.” Name: Valerie Ghent Style: Rockin’ soul Influences: P-Funk, David Bowie, The Meters, Elton John, jazz Main Instruments; Korg M1, EX-8000, MS-20 and Polysix, E-mu Proteus, Roland U-220 and R-8, Alesis HR-16, Akai 2800, MOTU Performer w/Mac+ Contact: West Street Records, P.O.Box 20086 West Village Station, New York, NY 10014 email: vghent@weststreetrecords.com Web: http://valghent.com