Vox
09/26/12 By Christopher Loudon
All the Way
Jazzheads Records
Montrealer Susie Arioli cites this, her seventh album, as the one with which she gets serious about jazz singing. Which apparently means getting generally darker and slower. Across the majority of these 13 tracks, Arioli settles into a moody, cocktail-hour...
09/23/12 By Christopher Loudon
Too Much In Love to Care
Linn Records
Claire Martin’s 14th release represents multiple milestones for the British vocalist: her first Stateside recording in 15 years, her first to use exclusively American musicians, her first devoted exclusively to selections from the Great American Songbook...
09/20/12 By Christopher Loudon
Sophisticated Ladies
Linus
The idea of building an album around a spectrum of singers is hardly new, but Peter Appleyard does it with, as the title suggests, smooth sophistication. The 83-year-old vibraphonist also proves a most democratic leader, opting for elegantly understated...
09/17/12 By Christopher Loudon
Lyrical, Volume 1
Skiptone
Two years ago, Chicagoan Milton Suggs’ sophomore album, Things to Come , marked the arrival of an immensely promising jazz-soul vocalist who was also a gifted songwriter. As a follow-up, the first in a proposed series, Suggs leaves the compositional duties...
09/08/12 By Christopher Loudon
Freedom Jazz Dance
Felton Entertainment
Cynthia Felton’s four-octave range and keen jazz instincts could easily sustain a solid recording career. But she is far too intrepid and dexterous a musical explorer to restrict her role to mere vocal brilliance. Felton’s previous albums navigated the Oscar...
08/30/12 By Christopher Loudon
Mississippi Belle: Cole Porter in the Quarter
Audiophile
Four years after her laudable, post-Katrina New O’leans , vocalist-pianist Daryl Sherman returns to the French Quarter’s Audiophile Studios for this wide-ranging salute to Cole Porter. Again Sherman favors local musicians, this time limiting her accompanists...
08/21/12 By Christopher Loudon
Unison
Sunnyside
How do you solve a puzzle like Maria Neckam, whose fecund creativity emerges from a genre-blurring sensibility that spans jazz, pop, rock, opera, musical theater and sacred hymns? Perhaps the answer lay not in the world of music but of art, specifically...
08/15/12 By Christopher Loudon
Heart First
Justin Time Records
One of the most shopworn yet substantive showbiz clichés is the “overnight success” who has, in fact, been honing his or her craft for years. Oregon’s Halie Loren is a prime example. Loren’s Heart First has, since its release in March, generated plenty of...
08/10/12 By Christopher Loudon
Blossom & Bee
Sara Gazarek has long drawn musical nourishment from Blossom Dearie, even though stylistically they are poles apart. Gazarek, who ranks alongside Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot and Kate McGarry among the most impressive postmillennial female jazz vocalists...
08/02/12 By Christopher Loudon
The Duke
Razor & Tie
Only once before has “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” hitmaker Joe Jackson recorded material not his own: back in 1981, when he visited the ’40s on Jumpin’ Jive . The game-changing brilliance of that album notwithstanding, Jackson truly outdoes himself...
