Gill Manly - With A Song In My Heart

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2009
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:28
Size: 131,6 MB
Art: Front + Back

(3:41)  1. Midnight Sun
(3:08)  2. Robbin's Nest
(6:04)  3. With A Song In My Heart
(3:51)  4. A Night In Tunisia
(4:29)  5. Daydream
(7:24)  6. Taxi Driver - Love For Sale
(3:55)  7. Take Love Easy
(5:57)  8. September Song
(3:00)  9. Sittin And a-Rockin'
(5:02) 10. Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
(3:18) 11. Where Or When
(3:22) 12. Lush Life
(4:10) 13. I Keep Going Back To Joe's

Gill who? Until a decade or so ago, Gill Manly was a familiar face, a versatile singer who - like her friends Barb Jungr and Ian Shaw - could skip between blues, jazz and pop and who had built an impressive reputation as a teacher and all-round ideas machine. Serious illness then interrupted her career, and her devotion to Buddhism carried her off on a different path all together. Now she is back with an album that is easily one of the best vocal efforts of the past 12 months. 'With a Song in my Heart' is a desperately old-hat title, to be honest, and the bland cover photograph of the artist, microphone in hand, is not likely to stop many punters in their tracks. It is only when you delve deeper that you truly sense the level of sophistication. It is, perhaps, the sort of record that can only have been made by someone who has done her share of living. 'Lush Life' is the ultimate test, and Manly passes it in style. Her Soho date was a slightly more easy-going affair, the singer - who now walks with a cane - remaining seated for the most part as her band, directed by that understated pianist Simon Wallace, blew an unpretentious path through songs from the album. Guy Barker stepped up to add peppery trumpet obbligatos. It was not all torch songs. Manly let rip on 'I Ain't Got Nothing But the Blues' and swung gently on 'Sittin' and a Rockin', the drummer Ralph Salmins and bassist Mark Hodgson setting up a nonchalant pulse. If the choice of material was conceived as a homage to Ella Fitzgerald, the finished product bears the stamp of Manly's own personality. Her performance, particularly on 'Midnight Sun' and 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most', had an intensity that made the work of many of her younger rivals seem callow by comparison. ~ The Times

It's been a decade since the last album from singer Gill Manly, and it's good to have her back. She's a wonderful interpreter of top-drawer songs and this new CD oozes class. The programme is designed as a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, so the programme is packed with timeless standards, as well as a few less familiar choices. Manly is superb, her rich voice bringing the best out of the lyrics, and her interpretations are coloured by a sense of improvisation, not least on a duet with the super-hip Mark Murphy on 'I Keep Going Back to Joe's'. ~ Yorkshire Post

Jazz singing is so much more difficult than many of the new jazz singers believe. It's so exposing, for a start - there is no external instrument to hide behind, no place to hide. One note hit not quite in the centre, one shaky rhythmic moment, one verse which doesn't quite convince the listener... it's just so easy to fall. Have you ever heard of Gill Manly? Nope, neither had I. I think we might be excused our ignorance as this is her first recording in over a decade and even before then she was working mostly locally in London. For a while she turned to a spiritual quest, convinced her singing career was behind her. She picked up the mic again two years ago and this is very much the work of an artist given a much valued and strongly embraced second chance. 

It's inspired by Ella and there are moments when an individual sample, subjected to a voice pattern test, might throw up an uncanny similarity in phrasing and timbre. To be able to approach the vocal near-perfection of the great Ms Fitzgerald is an achievement in itself. But this is certainly not to suggest that Gill Manly is an imitator for nothing could be further from the truth. It's truly remarkable and truly inspiring to hear a 'new' singer who is this good. The songs are mostly familiar ones  'September Song', 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most', 'Midnight Sun', 'Lush Life' but the insights Gill gives, both to their melodic and harmonic content, and to their lyrical meaning are fresh and original. She is just as comfortable at quicker, swinging paces as in slow ballads, and her vocal technique is both impeccable and apparently effortlessly delivered. She has a strong trio behind her, led on piano by Simon Wallace, Guy Barker adds some tasty trumpet and Mark Murphy pops in for a duet. I've searched this disc for some failure, some fall from grace, but I have searched in vain. It's as near perfection as we humans can manage. ~ The Jazz Breakfast  (Editorial Reviews)   http://www.amazon.com/With-Song-Heart-Gill-Manly/dp/B001PA7O4O

With A Song In My Heart

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