Thursday, October 10, 2013

Susie Meissner - I'm Confessin'

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 69:01
Size: 158.0 MB
Styles: Vocal jazz
Year: 2011
Art: Front

[3:31] 1. Close Your Eyes
[5:27] 2. I'm Confessin'
[3:12] 3. I Love You
[4:56] 4. Just Squeeze Me
[4:07] 5. I'm Just A Lucky So And So
[4:03] 6. Tangerine
[6:25] 7. The Nearness Of You
[4:43] 8. How About You
[5:39] 9. Skylark
[3:36] 10. On A Slow Boat To China
[4:50] 11. Embraceable You
[8:12] 12. Detour Ahead
[4:25] 13. Day By Day
[5:50] 14. A Time For Love

Susie sings and swings with a lush tone and playful rhythm. Growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., Susie surrounded herself in music through piano and vocal lessons, choirs, glee clubs, school musicals, and performances with local professional singing groups. Her grandmother played stride piano and her sheet music from the 20’s and 30’s inspired Susie to look back into the Great American songbook. In her youth, Susie began to explore the world of jazz through the recordings of Ella Fitzgerald, and after witnessing the performances by jazz greats such as Earl “Fatha” Hines, Kenny Burrell and Nancy Wilson, her interest was piqued and she started down the jazz discovery road.

Susie began her early professional career in dinner theatre (earning $7 a night!) where she became smitten with the words and music of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hart. Susie’s warm and effortless articulation puts an intimate spin on her jazz repertoire.

Meissner’s 2009 debut CD release, “I’ll Remember April,” with trumpet sensation Brian Lynch, features her fresh and intimate vocals in a collection of much-loved jazz and Brazilian standards. Her passion and exuberance for this music is unmistakable, and her CD was chosen by W.R. Stokes of the Jazz Journalist’s Association as “one of the top 20 Jazz Vocal CDs of the year.” Susie’s new release “I’m Confessin’” includes Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, one of the true greats on the jazz scene today. Her natural swing, ability to caress a ballad, and impressive versatility really shine on this recording. Of her appearance at the IRIDIUM in New York City, Joe Lang of Jersey Jazz Journal wrote “she’s as impressive in live performance as she is on her recording.” Susie is scheduled to appear at other top venues in the coming year.

To date, Susie has recorded or performed with Jazz greats including Wycliffe Gordon, Brian Lynch, Joe Magnarelli, John Swana, Freddie Hendrix, Martin Wind, Dean Johnson, Tim Horner, Lee Smith, Byron Landham and Matt Wilson.

Susie Meissner - vocals; Wycliffe Gordon - trombone; John Shaddy - piano; Dean Johnson - bass; Tim Horner - drums; Greg Riley - tenor and soprano sax; Freddie Hendrix - trumpet and flugelhorn; Paul Meyers - guitar.

I'm Confessin' (see comments)

Ed Reed - I'm A Shy Guy

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:47
Size: 116,5 MB
Art: Front

(2:40)  1. I Just Can't See for Lookin'
(3:05)  2. Baby Baby All The Time
(3:42)  3. Unforgettable
(2:50)  4. Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby
(3:32)  5. I'm A Shy Guy
(4:47)  6. That's The Beginning Of The End
(3:48)  7. Meet Me At No Special Place (And I'll Be There At No Particular Time)
(4:07)  8. I'm Lost
(3:28)  9. 'tis Autumn
(3:16) 10. It's Only A Paper Moon
(4:50) 11. That Ain't Right
(2:57) 12. I Realize Now
(3:43) 13. This Will Make You Laugh
(2:56) 14. Straighten Up And Fly Right

San Francisco vocalist Ed Reed is a bona fide contemporary of West Coast jazz luminaries: Art Pepper, Frank Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Hampton Hawes. Unlike that august group, Reed remains to tell his story, and by proxy, theirs' in the bargain. Like this same group, drugs (and in the case of Gray, murder) suspended Reed's musical career. Unlike Pepper and Morgan, who staged much heralded late-career comebacks, Reed did not first record until 2007 at age 78. Neither "late bloomer" nor "rising star" adequately describe Reed any more than "senior" or "elderly" do. These terms might apply to mere mortals, but Reed is something else. When he entered the studio to record his debut Ed Reed Sings Love Stories (Blue Shorts Records) he was fully-formed as a singer and performing from a lifetime of anticipating that very moment.

Since Love Stories, Reed has released The Song Is You (Blue Shorts Records, 2008), Born To Be Blue (Blue Shorts Records, 2011) and the present I'm A Shy Guy: A Tribute to the Cole Trio & Their Music. Reed's performance remains at an amazing, even otherworldly, level. Co-producer and jazz vocalist and educator in her own right, Laurie Antonioli reveals of the Cole sessions:

"On the first day of most recording projects, it takes time to get people settled, get the sound right and hopefully you'll get a few tunes out of the deal. This is not what happened with the "Nat" session. On day one, from the very first song it was all there. The sound, the band, the tempos and interaction. But most importantly Ed was in fine voice and was a real pro like Sinatra or something. I think there are at least five first takes from that first day... My involvement, aside from some minor technical things on the vocal end, was simply to say "Let's keep going." The flow was magical and everyone could feel it... The next day the bulk of the recording was finished."

The danger with such sessions is that it all seems too easy and truly exceptional jazz singing, particularly male jazz singing, is anything but. That said, Reed stepped up and made this recording an effortless affair. Supported by a piano-guitar quintet, Reed spins through better and lesser known Cole book inclusions. Bobby Troupe's "Baby Baby All The Time" and Cole's timeless "Unforgettable" join "It's Only A Paper Moon" and "Straighten Up And Fly Right as the better known pieces. "Can't See For Lookin,'" "That's The Beginning of the End" and "Meet Me At No Special Place" represent the pithier and lesser known Cole classics that comprise this excellent collection where Ed Reed sings Cole like Ed Reed and not someone imitating Cole. It is this touch that makes I'm A Shy Guy: A Tribute to the King Cole Trio & Their Music so exceptional. ~ C.Michael Bailey   http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=45434#.UlV4QRBsidk

Personnel : Ed Reed: vocals; Randy Porter: piano; Anton Schwartz: tenor saxophone; John Wiitala: bass; Akira Tana: drums.

Jacqui Dankworth - Live to Love

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:52
Size: 133,0 MB
Art: Front

(5:01)  1. Live to Love
(5:16)  2. Malala
(4:48)  3. We Do Need Love
(4:51)  4. Palladium
(3:48)  5. All Is Quiet
(2:53)  6. Simple As
(5:57)  7. Sweet Devotion
(3:37)  8. It's Tomorrow's World
(4:33)  9. I Took Your Hand
(3:41) 10. A Certain Kind of Eden
(3:13) 11. Someday We'll All Be Free
(3:46) 12. Be Kind
(4:27) 13. Something's Gotta Give
(1:56) 14. It's Tomorrow's World (Reprise)

After 2011's It Happens Quietly, devoted to her late father John Dankworth's favourites, Live to Love – which vocalist Jacqui Dankworth is touring around the UK until December – is a return to her broader, more pop and gospel-inclusive agenda. Dankworth is just as subtle as on It Happens Quietly, but delivers some determinedly personal lyrics here with a renewed clarity and aplomb. Devoted to the power of love, her originals on love's enemies (like violence and greed, as on the anthemic Malala or the eventually gospelly We Do Need Love) are stronger musically than lyrically. But the reverential All Is Quiet (one of three guest spots for the Brodsky String Quartet) and keyboardist Charlie Wood's swinging Simple As are haunting and hip, respectively, while Donny Hathaway's Someday We'll All Be Free is reflectively soulful and Wayne Shorter's Palladium rhythmically bewitching. However, it is I Took Your Hand, featuring the Brodskys and an alternately soaring and sonorous Dankworth on Lorraine Feather's lyrics to an Enrico Pieranunzi melody, that is the standout.  http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/26/jacqui-dankworth-live-to-love-review

George Braith - Extension

Styles: Soul Jazz
Year: 1964
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 37:32
Size: 86,9 MB
Art: Front

(5:57)  1. Nut City
(7:22)  2. Ethlyn's Love
(6:58)  3. Out Here
(6:39)  4. Extension
(6:03)  5. Sweetville
(4:30)  6. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye

Pushing to the side the double sax that became his trademark, George Braith turned in his strongest record with Extension. Largely freed from the restraints of the dueling horns, Braith is able to explore the outer reaches of his music. He still remains grounded in soul-jazz any guitar-organ combo is bound to have soul-jazz roots  but he pushes the music toward adventurous hard bop, often with rewarding results. His compositions are fully realized, with interesting melodic statements and plenty of opportunities for him and mainstays Grant Green on guitar and Billy Gardner on organ to stretch out. And when Braith does reach back for the double-sax technique, such as on the title track, it works because its otherwordly tone is better suited to this searching, adventurous music, than on the more basic fare that dominated Two Souls in One. The double horns do make Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" sound a little awkward, but even that song is redeemed by excellent solos. Nevertheless, it's the originals, and the way the quartet of Braith, Green, Gardner, and drummer Clarence Johnston executes them, that make Extension the definitive Braith album. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine  http://www.allmusic.com/album/extension-mw0000462312

Extension