Teotima is a 16-piece jazz / afro-latin / soul ensemble from London. Guitarist-composer Greg Sanders started Teotima; taking powerful, elegant but deceptively complex grooves of West Africa, Cuba and Brazil and adding the sensibility of classic American soul and funk he brought together a loose collective of musicians in 2011 to workshop ideas.Teotima’s LP ‘Counting The Ways’, is out now on First Word Records.
As an intrinsically live project, all the individual band members are key to the project and their improvisation is a central part of the music.
Recorded as-live at London’s Fishmarket Studios under the watchful eye of engineer Ben ‘Nostalgia 77’ Lamdin, the record achieves a synchronicity that only this kind of old-fashioned approach can produce.One of the most striking things about the music is the huge scope that it encompasses – the arrangements of Gil Evans and David Axelrod, grooves reminiscent of Arthur Verocai and the Fania All Stars and the textures of more modern groups such as The Floating Points Ensemble and Snarky Puppy. The band also feature the voice of Ellie Rose Rusbridge, known to some as the voice of The Beguilers.