Judi Silvano’s Garden Winds is a group that is as unique as the music that they perform on First Flight.
The voice-bassoon-flute trio takes listeners through a set of unpredictable and colorful improvisations filled with surprises.
Throughout her career, Judi Silvano has never been shy to stretch herself and improvise freely. A singer with a wide range and seemingly limitless technical facility, she is quite fearless and full of ideas.
In the 1950’s it was first shown that creative jazz can be performed by any grouping of instruments and personalities. However, even many decades later, Garden Winds stands out and falls into its own category.
Consisting of Judi Silvano’s vocalese approach with flutist Haruna Fukazawa and bassoonist Claire De Brunner, Garden Winds creates ten pieces on their debut album First Flight. The interplay, harmonies, colors, and wide range of sounds created by this trio are unlike any heard elsewhere.
Among the individual highlights are “First Flight” which is calm yet adventurous, the haunting singing and rhythmic ideas of “Gathering,” a spirited “Flock Of Three,” the improvised “language” of “Flower Talk,” “This Morning” gives one the impression of a forest waking up, the episodic “Beaverbrook” and “Stravinsky” which suggests his influence in it’s playfulness. This is a recording that captures you more deeply with every listening.
Judi Silvano was born in Philadelphia and earned degrees in Music and Dance from Temple University. She sang there with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, as a chorister in leading churches and drank ginger ale in the famed Showboat Jazz Club, before age 21, where notably she heard Rahsaan Roland Kirk as well as the Keith Jarrett Trio. She was a scholarship student at Pennsylvania Ballet School, a member of the South Street Dance Company with choreographers Ellen Foreman & Alice Forner and her first tour to Europe was with Group Motion Multi Media Dance Company including shows at the Akademie der Kunste and a Residency in Berlin.
Moving to New York in 1976 Silvano integrated into the landscape of modern dance, jazz and improvised music there. Since then, she has recorded 15 albums as a Leader and contributed her vocal stylings in collaboration with Joe Lovano, Kenny Werner, Gunther Schuller, Manny Albam, Byron Olsen, Mal Waldron and Michael Abene. She has played with Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Paul Motion, Bill Frisell, Vic Juris, Larry Goldings, George Garzone and Bruce Arnold among others, and has recorded on Blue Note, Label Bleu/Evidence, Soul Note/Black Saint, Zoho, Unit and JSL Records. Judi studied vocally with Jay Clayton, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy, Jeanne Lee and took part in many of Barry Harris’ workshops and concerts.
Judi Silvano is also an influential educator, a composer-lyricist, a producer of live music and dance events and a visual artist.
Claire De Brunner started playing bassoon when she was 14, has had extensive classical training, and in the 1980s was a member of the genre-crossing groups 101 Crustaceans and Church of Betty. She studied improvising with Lee Konitz and Connie Crothers and has since worked with many explorative musicians including Crothers, Daniel Carter, Matt Lavelle, Hilliard Greene, and Ken Filiano among many others.
Flutist Haruna Fukazawa, originally from Tokyo, Japan, studied classical music before moving to New York at the encouragement of her mentor, Frank Wess. She has performed in a wide variety of settings including Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra, is a 2026 GRAMMY nominee and multiple-time National Flute Association Jazz Flute Big Band winner.
On First Flight, Judi Silvano’s Garden Winds is an extraordinarily creative trio comprising of voice, flute and bassoon that has a Sound for the Ages!
