Sarah Partridge – Bright Lights and Promises

Nobody familiar with Ian’s oeuvre would argue against saluting her work, but the folk-ish qualities that carry her musical art, whether materializing through a flower power lens or tackling life’s truest cruelties, don’t necessarily call out for jazz rewrites. Fortunately, that didn’t stop Sarah Partridge from pursuing this project. After connecting with Ian, she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. She may have had her doubts about where she could go with the music, but those doubts didn’t deter her one bit. Partridge’s worries ultimately proved unfounded, as she put together a compelling program that touches on different facets and eras of Ian’s career. It’s neither disloyal to the originals nor congruent with them. It exists in its own space, leaning on the everlasting songs of Janis Ian while resting atop Partridge’s firm artistic footing. The playlist includes nuggets from the hippie days of the ’60s, bluesy fare from the ’70s, latter day works penned in the past two decades, and a pair of songs co-written by Partridge and Ian just for the occasion. Ian’s best known work makes the cut, as it should, and it simultaneously fulfills and defies expectations. “Society’s Child,” for example, seems to merge the aesthetics of Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell without losing an ounce of its eye-opening purpose, and “At Seventeen” glides along in seven on an airy cloud while Partridge presents the song’s bitter pill realizations with incredible poise. Both are highlights, but it’s almost wrong to call out any individual songs for special praise. All thirteen tracks work beautifully. What’s not to love with an album that includes a samba-fied “Calling Your Name,” a soulful “Belle Of The Blues,” a hard swinging “Silly Habits,” a blues-drenched “Bright Lights & Promises,” and a newly-penned “A Quarter Past Heartache” with Ian herself joining in? One of Ian’s chief gifts has always...

Mark Winkler – The Company I Keep

The utility of music, at its very core, is entertainment. It is not all about dissonance and consonance, tonal conflict and resolution; heart and intellect, pathos and ethos. Somewhere in everything music has to offer, there must be a smile. It is in music’s smile that vocalist Mark Winkler exists. An elegant West Coast mainstay, vocalist/lyricist/composer Winkler, drove across my radar first with his 2011 recording Sweet Spot (Café Pacific Records). I was struck by how well Winkler could skirt the orbit of con brio cabaret singing, with its fun, entertainment core, and remain completely fixed in his capacity of jazz singer and composer. Winkler followed Sweet Spot with his bold 2013 release, The Laura Nyro Project (Café Pacific Records). An exceptional duet recording with The Manhattan Transfer’s Cheryl Bentyne, West Coast Cool (Summit Records, 2013) came next, followed by the fun and good-natured Jazz and Other Four Letter Words (Café Pacific Records, 2015). Winkler had a period of personal loss in 2016 that would have crushed lesser musical mortals. Rather than dwell in the loss, Winkler circled his wagons, and, by wagons I mean his friends, producing the present recording, The Company I Keep. The recording is tacitly a duets recording, where Winkler shares singing duties with the likes of Jackie Ryan “Walk Between the Raindrops” and Steve Tyrell “But It Still Ain’t So.” Sometimes the duets are with musicians: pianists David Benoit, Josh Nelson and Eric Reed join Winkler regular Jamison Trotter in providing the singer support. Add to this the contributions of reeds player Bob Sheppard and a picture is complete. With friends like that, how can one go wrong. The recording, engineering, and sonics are exceptional, as well as the arrangements (mostly by Trotter). The project is composed of a a dozen pieces, half with lyrics composed by Winkler and half carefully selected by him...

Nicki Parrott – Dear Blossom

Nicki Parrott is special. In addition to being a warm, smart singer, she’s also a bassist. An interesting combination, which means as a singer she can swing in time. And as a bassist, she’s lyrical. I must say that when her new CD, Dear Blossom: A Tribute to Blossom Dearie (Arbors), crossed my desk, I was a little apprehensive. Dearie is a dangerous pianist-singer to take on. Her hip, girlish vocal style developed during a lengthy stay in Paris in the 1950s remains delicately distinct. What’s more, Dearie had a way of phrasing that was deceptively difficult. She was singing, yet it came across as conversational. And then there was the matter of her extraordinary taste in songs, which always fit her like a Dior. When I put on Parrott’s CD, I was blown away. Parrott not only sensitively understands all of this, she even has Dearie’s understated dry vocal style, with its petite vibrato and splash of wistful vulnerability. It’s remarkable, really. Then again, this was a natural progression after Parrott’s album Sakura Sakura [Cherry Blossoms] (2012), on which she recorded They Say It’s Spring with Dearie’s feel. Take I Walk a Little Faster on her new album. Dearie recorded the song in 1957 on Give Him the Ooh-la-la for Verve. Parrott’s version is exceptional, delivered with enormous tenderness and purpose. Or Rhode Island Is Famous for You, which Dearie recorded on Soubrette Sings Broadway Hit Songs (Verve) in 1960. And Parrott’s French isn’t half bad on Tout Doucement, which Dearie recorded in 1956 on Blossom Dearie (Verve). What I love most about this album is that Parrott doesn’t over-sing the material or over-dramatize the lyric. She just sings with Dearie in her heart, and the album works beautifully. Parrott has great support here. She’s backed by Chris Grasso on piano, Chuck Redd on bass and Lenny Robinson...

Curtis Stigers – One More For the Road

Jazz-rooted former pop singer Curtis Stigers has made a fine homage to Frank Sinatra’s 1966 Sinatra at the Sands album with Count Basie’s orchestra, recorded live as the original was. Stigers is much more gruff and rugged than a smoothie like Michael Bublé, as hip in his timing as Kurt Elling, if not as unpredictable – and he could hardly be in more cracking company than the Danish Radio Big Band, which catches the punchy Basie sound and the twists of Quincy Jones’s arrangements with immense aplomb. Seesawing trombone figures and ecstatically rising saxes power Come Fly With Me, Stigers slyly mimics the trumpets’ swaggering endnote shake on You Make Me Feel So Young, glides with a flute on Fly Me to the Moon and is more assertive than resigned in a bluesy, Basiesque piano company on One for My Baby. The tracks are short and the jazz breaks are few, but if this is principally a classy cover job, it’s nonetheless a sympathetic swing tribute to both Sinatra and Count Basie. ByJohn Fordham from ” The...

Audrey Silver – Very Early

There’s immediate comfort in encountering Audrey Silver’s music for the first time. Her voice is an open invitation, an instrument of confession and creation that immediately transports you to someplace else. That’s evident from her first utterances through her last words on Very Early. In putting together this program, Silver thought long and hard about song selection. It shows, both in the eclectic playlist she created and through the unique arrangements born of her thoughts and Steven Santoro’s clever pen. Everything from overdone Broadway favorites to original material to jazz standards sounds fresh in these interpretations. Irish singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke’s “Galileo” provides a gentle entryway into Very Early, with pianist Bruce Barth‘s woolgathering serving as a dreamy introduction. Silver then settles in to tell the tale of a wrestling match between emotion and intellect in the titular figure, never underselling the lyrics or overplaying the heart, and it proves to be one for the books. Then there’s a spin through “Surrey With The Fringe On Top” in five, a riveting original collaboration between Silver and Dominique Gagné dubbed “The Cold Wind’s Embrace,” and a shadowy take on “Getting To Know You” that’s more a tale of lurking and voyeurism than a sign of positive personal discoveries. Smart writing, twists in intention, and big-picture talent play as one in these first selections and the music that follows. While originals often play as substandard filler that sits between the welcome and familiar fare on vocal jazz albums, that couldn’t be further from the truth here. “Goodbye New York,” with lyrics from poet Deborah Garrison, is a memorable paean to The Big Apple that rests at a balance point between adult-oriented pop and jazz, “When The World Was New” speaks with a contemplative beauty that’s heightened by Tom Beckham‘s vibraphone and Gary Versace‘s accordion, and the aforementioned “The Cold Wind’s Embrace” is...

VSOJAZ 08/27/16 (The Brazilian Side)

VSOJAZ 08/27/16 (The Brazilian Side) Name Time Album Artist 1 Song Of The Jet 3:21 So Many Stars Jackie Cain 2 Rosa Morena 3:28 Bossa Amazônica Dina Blade 3 Garota de Ipanema 6:33 Lado B Brazilian Project Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruiz 4 Carinhoso 5:19 Concerto para Pixinguinha Vânia Bastos & Marcos Paiva 5 Céu Distante 2:59 Bebel Gilberto Bebel Gilberto 6 Friday Song (mix) 3:26 Astrolábio Alexia Bomtempo 7 High Falls 4:47 That Summer Till Brönner 8 Daily Rose (feat. Stefanie Schlesinger) 4:29 Samba Gostoso Wolfgang Lackerschmid & The Brazilian Trio 9 Sands Of Memories 4:14 Arriving Os Clavelitos 10 Copacabana 3:29 Raiz Joyce Moreno 11 Summer (Estate) 5:25 Make This City Ours Claire Martin 12 Double Rainbow (English Version) 5:05 Double Rainbow Nanny...