Hailing from Venezuela and Jamaica respectively, flautist, reedist, composer and producer Jorge Guzmán and vocalist, songwriter and flautist Stephanie Mair combine their vibrant talents to create the singular poly-ethnic sound of AMEREIDA.

Guzmán, AMEREIDA’s visionary leader, is one of South America’s premier flute players. Aside from performing, however, his musical experiences encompass diverse fields such as composing in a variety of genres, producing records as well as events, and all aspects of sound engineering. Edged on by a mother who was an enthusiastic music lover, he started playing piano at the age of five. “My mom,” Guzmán says, “would take my two sisters and I, after lunch, to listen to one hour of music every day. I loved these musical sessions. My mother’s musical taste went from J.S. Bach, Ludwig Van Beethoven, P.I. Tchaikovsky, to Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, flamenco and bossanova.” Thus, by the time he was 12 years of age his family was residing in Spain whereupon Guzmán was accepted at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid. Percussion studies preceded his embrace of classical guitar and clarinet. A couple of years later, however, captivated by the legendary Ian Anderson, Guzmán found his way of expression through the flute. Upon commencement as a flautist, he joined Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. With this orchestra he toured Europe, Japan and the Americas many times. During this time, he also met important masters such as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Osawa, Claudio Arrau and Leonard Bernstein. The world travels with the orchestra afforded the opportunity to be personally guided by Rampal, Alain Marion, Raymond Gyot and Shigenori Kudo in France, as well as Frances Blaisdell, and Doriot-Anne Dwyer in the USA. Furthermore, as a regular soloist with the orchestra, performing the flute’s classical repertory―from Baroque to Contemporary―he was invited to perform as such with the Harlem Dance Theatre. Guzmán was living a double life, nonetheless, as he used to attend a Caracas jazz club and jam with the local jazz players, as well as the international artists that would perform there. “I used to go two to three times a week to the Juan Sebastián Bar to jam with these guys. They were great. They used to call me ‘Classical Boy’ because I worked with the Symphony Orchestra and classical musicians were not regulars at jazz and salsa clubs. I loved to play straight ahead and fusion jazz but these guys wanted me to play mostly bossanova, which by the way I also loved. One night piano player Juan Carlos Núñez asked me: ‘Hey, why don’t you try a sax? The flute is too mellow.’ I decided then to grab the soprano because I was totally infatuated by Weather Report and Wayne Shorter.” Guzmán met Stephanie Mair during this period and they decided to join their talents in order to create a unique sound based on their respective cultural heritages.

Stephanie Mair, the soulful voice of AMEREIDA is an energetic and captivating performer, singer, as well as a prolific songwriter. Several means of artistic expression braced the fascinating personality of Mair since her childhood. She started dancing at five. Then, inspired by her father who aside from being a businessman was a jazz piano player, she started playing piano, organ and recorder while singing at her school’s choir. When her family moved to Caracas, Venezuela she was already 15 years old and was accepted at the Simón Bolívar Music Institute to study flute. Later, she performed with Venezuela’s Gran Mariscal Symphony Orchestra. After completing high school, she went to the Universidad Central de Venezuela to pursue a career in architecture. In addition, her need for artistic expression led to painting, sculpture and poetry writing. Her musical career as a flute soloist was furthered with different classical orchestras in Caracas, as well as the Electronic Music and Contemporary Music Ensemble while engaged in classical vocal training. “I was in love with flute since I was a kid,” states Mair, “but after discovering Bobby McFerrin and The Bulgarian Voices I knew right away that I had found the means of expression that I needed. I was so deeply touched! Then I took lessons with an opera singer in Caracas and went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts to pursue general and vocal jazz studies. I was in heaven singing and improvising.” Meeting the legendary jazz Ira Sullivan in Miami was a turning point in Stephanie’s musical career. “I was with Jorge at the now defunct club One Night Stand’s and Ira had a weekly gig there where a lot of young players showed up waiting to jam with him at the end of the night. He invited us to sit in with him and I didn’t have my flute with me that night so I just started scatting. At the end of the set we were having a drink together and Ira told me the way I scatted was so unique that I should pursue that.” Mair also had the chance to travel to France to study flute with Gyot and Marion.

"The type of music,” adds Mair, “I heard within me was related to Indian music, as well as Indian and Middle Eastern chants. Wondering where these different influences and passions for such different musical expressions came from, I started to reflect on my heritage. Moreover, I found that being a Jamaican my dad also had Indian, English and African blood and my Mom was German. I understood then why I had these different forceful musical sounds coming from within. Hence, I decided to investigate and study classical Indian music. After evolving as a singer, while in the studio doing sessions, Jorge would ask me to improvise over the songs we created. That’s how my very personal sounds would come forth and I would just let go and make them take a life of their own. These types of experiments, as well as a nonstop performance schedule, lie at the heart of my developing style.”

In 1990, Guzmán and Mair started working on a sound that would reflect their respective ethnicities, as well and their passion for synthesizers and samplers, without hesitating to integrate the primitive with the futuristic. This paved the way to create AMEREIDA, a band with a poly-ethnic sound and a style that could be labeled as avant roots. In 1991 they released America-AMEREIDA―their first album―and they received both immediate and positive responses by the media and the audiences, which led to numerous appearances in radio, and TV shows, as well as many live performances and concerts. “The funny thing about this first album is that my fellow Venezuelan musicians where accustomed to please crowds, so they used to play old time favorites and jazz standards. They, however, weren’t confident enough to release their own original music which would, in many ways, be based on a similar jazz influenced avant roots concept as ours. Perhaps the fear of rejection intervened. AMEREIDA, however, helped to destroy that myth and we are very proud of it.”

Later on in 1993, AMEREIDA was invited to perform at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. AMEREIDA was the first ever-Venezuelan band invited to perform at Montreux. This performance was eventually issued as El Bailaor Negro Live at Montreux. The recording was both popularly and critically acclaimed in Venezuela.

Guzmán and Mair moved to Miami in 1996, where they felt right away at home “The multicultural life in South Florida was an enriching experience. Although the Latin music scene was strong, there was also Irish, Haitian, Middle Eastern, blues, R&B, country, Caribbean, rock, African and of course jazz, as well as the internationally leading Miami Beach DJ scene, of which AMEREIDA is already a willing participant. We met so many people, from so many different countries in the world, that we felt that this was the perfect place to be.”

In Miami Guzmán and Mair set up World Beat Group―a recording studio and production company―embarking in producing ventures with local and Caribbean acts, as well as having an intense performing schedule with AMEREIDA. It was there that they met percussionist Edwin Bonilla and they started working together in many projects including AMEREIDA. Together with Bonilla, who is a first call studio musician and band leader whose name is associated with Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Dave Grusin, Israel López “Cachao,” Frank Sinatra and a host of others, they released two new albums: Umbayé and Mambo Novo. They are currently working in a new album due to be released in 2006 in which Bonilla and veteran percussionist-producer Sammy Figueroa added Yoruba chants, as well as drum playing from different parts of the world.

AMEREIDA’S music is a reflection of current social and artistic tendencies that will stay with us for the foreseen future thus their contemporary symbiosis of both primitive and futuristic sounds. Thus, vital jazz is both link and catalyst between ethnicity and turntabling so to speak. AMEREIDA is a musical gate that opens into the oneness of the human being, as AMEREIDA doesn’t suffer aesthetic fears or prejudices. The world is its larder and therein lies much of AMEREIDA’S cosmopolitan appeal regardless of ethnicity, gender or even age as an average AMEREIDA performance is decked out by people representing enviable demographics.