JazzTimes is honored to present the premiere of Aubrey Logan’s new video for “Understand,” the first single from her upcoming album Where the Sunshine Is Expensive, to be released Mar. 22 on Resonance Records.
This is the singer and trombonist’s second album as a leader, in addition to the work she’s done over the last several years with Dave Koz and Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, among others. Logan first came to the public’s attention in 2009, when she made it to the finals of American Idol as a vocalist. Judge Simon Cowell famously rejected her for being “too jazzy,” but jazz enthusiasts had no problem with this—that same year, Logan won the Shure Jazz Voice Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival. At the time, she was still a student at Berklee College of Music; she graduated in 2010. Her solo debut, 2017’s Impossible, reached No. 13 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart and hit the top 10 on the iTunes and Amazon jazz charts.
In addition to Logan on lead vocals and trombone, “Understand” features Nick Petrillo on keyboards, Will Yanez on guitar, Tabari Lake on bass, Dave Johnstone on drums, and Katie Hampton, Rebecca Jade, and Jordan Michael on background vocals.
“Musically, ‘Understand’ is the ultimate 1970s slow-jam made in 2019,” Logan says. “The band recorded it live, all together at EastWest Studios [in Hollywood, Calif.]. The background singers are in the room with us too. I didn’t track vocals. I didn’t play the trombone lines on a separate day. What you hear is what it was in real time. And for a poppy, hooky song, to me this is the magic that brings my jazz roots into it. We had the musical spontaneity of improvisation with the structure of a singable pop song all at once. This was my dream for this song and the whole album.”
Go here to pre-order Where the Sunshine Is Expensive.
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