PRESS RELEASE – for immediate release
– no champagne and music executives at this surprising CD launch.
On the 24th May, the eagerly awaited CD, ‘This is for you’ by the soulful, jazz-blues singer-song writer Andy Mayo will be released. Should we be shocked that this will not be a flashy red carpet affair?
The first concert of the “This is for you” tour is planned in an East UK prison – details are shrouded in secrecy due to security issues. After living for a decade in the war-battered Balkans, London–born Andy has seen the ‘rawer side’. Yet inspiring his music – Andy would say, even his life – is a belief that there is more to living than the passing realities that many take to be ‘the whole story’. This belief in ‘something greater’ echoes throughout the thirteen tracks on this beautifully crafted CD.
‘This is for you’ follows the success of the highly acclaimed previous album “Dreams of a Homecoming” and features ten musicians – each a show-stopper in their own right. From the melodic jazz sax soloist Nick Beston to the funk infused Stan Majerski; from the Gospel singer Natasha McDonald on backing vocals to the chamber musician Catherine Brooker on cello, these contrasting schools resonate together to form a harmonic whole in this stunning production.
“This is for You” is eclectic and yet wonderfully coherent: the sound hard to pigeon hole and yet intuitively making perfect musical sense… Andy gives a clarion call throughout this soul-stirring recording to a life of freedom and beauty – a life of fullness in personal relationship with a God He believes intimately cares for ordinary people – even to the point of dying for them in the person of Jesus Christ…
There will be an opportunity for those of us not living ‘at her majesty’s pleasure’ to experience, “This is for you” live. The first concert ‘on the outside’ will be at Oak Hall in Kent on the 1st June…
But as he prepares for the ‘Prison Premiere’, with no hint of irony, Andy explains, “Jesus’ message of life and salvation is for anyone who knows they cannot make their own way to freedom… “If you’re coming to such a point of realisation, ‘This is for you’”