Laurin Talese – Museum of Living Stories

Biography

Led by vocalist Laurin Talese, jazz and soul ensemble Laurin Talese & co have shared their brand of cinematic jazz for the better part of a decade. After graduating from the University of the Arts in 2004, Talese’s talents have allowed her to travel around the globe to Japan, Brazil, France, Copenhagen, Austria, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, Denmark, and Russian, Ukraine, Montenegro, and Poland. Laurin has performed at internationally renowned venues, including the Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln CenterShanghai, The Academy of Music, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her debut album, Gorgeous Chaos, features a stellar lineup of musicians (including Robert Glasper and Christian McBride) and was met with wide acclaim. “Gorgeous Chaos was listed as a top 10 jazz album by the Chicago Tribune and debuted on the
Billboard jazz charts. The literary and visual arts immensely inspire Laurin. In fact, these art forms combined with music and storytelling are the foundation for her newest project, Museum of Living Stories, scheduled for release in 2022. Ms. Talese’s hobbies include hiking, makeup artistry, fashion styling, and amateur genealogy. During the pandemic, she has endeavored to learn French and Portuguese and is excited about immersive opportunities to study these languages and the music of the countries represented in her DNA makeup, including Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal, and Mali. Laurin is passionate about eradicating the antiquated practice of Female GenitalMutilation (FGM) and exposing women and young girls all over the world to the radically transformative powers of literacy.

In addition to playing with Laurin Talese, bassist C. Tyrone Allen II has taken the New York music scene by storm! He has played with the late Ralph Peterson in the Ralph Peterson Fo-tet, Terri-Lynne Carrington, George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, Sullivan Fortner, David Kikoski, and Wayne Escoffrey since graduating from Berklee. Most recently, Tyrone has performed around the globe with Jazzmeia Horn, Laurin Talese. Mr. Allen is interested in issues of human rights – in particular, how various marginalized groups are systemically oppressed. These issues are commonly and dramatically manifested in low-income communities, LGBTQ people of color, and political prisoners, to name a few.