Yilian Cañizares
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About
Yilian Cañizares is a unique artist – not only for her talent and aesthetics, but also for her authentic and strong presence on stage. Part of the diaspora of talented Cuban artists who share their music, social awareness and spiritual sensitivity with the world, her Afro-Cuban style blends her classical virtuosity and jazz sensibility with her Havana experience.
As a violinist, singer and composer, Yilian toured for several years with Cuban jazz legends Chucho Valdés and Omar Sosa and regularly collaborates with renowned artists such as Michael League, Ibrahim Maalouf, Youn Sun Nah and Richard Bona.
In 2021, she received the Swiss Music Prize and was invited as the “voice of the ocean” by the United Nations to produce and image a new composition for World Oceans Day. Her last album Erzulie has been acclaimed by the critics. She won Best Album/Best Artist at the 2021 Songlines Music Awards. As a soloist, she takes a feminine perspective of Afro-Cuban music, embracing the strength, the rhythms and the nurturing warmth of Mother Earth.
An international artist with a strong social and environmental conscience, Yilian defines her music in these words: “My sound reflects the richness and mixture of cultures that I carry with me today. It reflects what I am: a woman, Cuban, musician and citizen of the world”.
To celebrate her ten-year career on stage, the unmissable violinist and singer now surprises us with a secret and totally unexpected project, recently recorded in Brazil: Habana-Bahia.
After almost ten years of career, the perpetual desire to learn and reinvent herself pushed her to discover a region of the world she has always dreamed of: Bahia. Greeted during several weeks in the middle of the working-class district of Candeal, in Salvador de Bahia, Yilian decided to leave a trace through this new album, a true musical, spiritual and cultural marriage between Brazil and Cuba, her native land.
Salvador de Bahia, birthplace of the Afro-Brazilian culture, represents the singularity of Brazil. It is in this mixed, colored, mysterious and tasty environment that Yilian instinctively chose to give birth to her new music. Because beyond the strong intercultural relationship between Cuba and Brazil, these two countries are individually, and for decades, incredibly fertile and effervescent poles of musical diversity in the world, which makes this meeting even more powerful.
Gone alone with her violin and two musicians, Yilian worked for several weeks in Carlinhos Brown’s studio with artists who embody this African heritage and for whom art is the only mean of resistance. Singers, poets, percussion masters, urban artists and guardians of the Bahia tradition joined Yilian to make this project an exceptional journey: Ebomi Cici, Marcelo Galter, Dona Maria, Gabi Guedes, Udi Santos, Robertinho Barreto, Yayá Muxima, etc.
Yilian Cañizares will tour in 2023 and 2024 as a quintet: Two of her faithful musicians, Childo Tomás on bass and Inor Sotolongo on percussion, will be joined by the talented Fred Dupont on keyboards and the incredible Brazilian percussionist and beatmaker Japa System.
Together, they create a unique and authentic sound: anchored in the heritage of Africa, with the percussive power of Cuba and Brazil, yet introducing a modern, open-minded and multicultural vision of the world. Percussive and electronic sounds met with the sensuality of the voice and the creativity of Yilian’s violin playing – to create 8 original compositions of Yilian and 2 iconic standards revisited from Habana and Bahia.
Press
“[…] She has a uniquely emotive vocal style that is breathy but never merely ‘sensuous,’ that is feminine yet also feminist, and that performs quite breathtaking changes of pitch, pace and texture.”
– Songlines, UK
“Yilian is an immeasurable force. She sings, plays, dances, leads, decides everything, is not afraid of anything, neither of pandemics nor of doubts. She is a feminist model and a little girl in pursuit of her childhood. Her music reconciles the oceans. A lesson of life.”
– Swiss Music Prize