Styles: Vocal
Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 58:38
Size: 135,4 MB
Art: Front
(4:12) 1. Let's Face the Music and Dance (Live)
(4:27) 2. The Way to You (Live)
(5:23) 3. I Should Care (Live)
(3:50) 4. Jim (Live)
(3:09) 5. I Could Have Danced All Night (Live)
(3:58) 6. Too Late Now (Live)
(5:51) 7. Fragile (Live)
(3:51) 8. Frim Fram Sauce (Live)
(5:23) 9. Every Time We Say Goodbye (Live)
(4:19) 10. I Wish I Knew (Live)
(5:36) 11. Isn't It a Pity? (Live)
(4:27) 12. Touch and Go (Live)
(4:05) 13. I'll Be Seeing You (Live)
Yes I know, it’s my bio; such an original idea for a musician's website. So here it is, straight from the promo package (scroll down for the real deal)...
Singer/composer/lyricist/producer/arranger Susan Tobocman has been making a name for herself among audiences and musicians alike on both the New York city and Detroit jazz scenes for a number of years. Whether leading her own gigs at Zinc Bar (where she was the original artist-in-residence), cornelia street cafe, Flatiron Room, Fine & Rare, Symphony Space, Highline Ballroom, Smalls, The Bitter End, Birdland, Cliff Bell's, The Blue Llama, Steinway Jazz Gallery, Smoke, 55 Bar, or Cleopatra's Needle (among others) or as the guest of such luminaries as Barry Harris, Al Foster, or the late Doc Cheatham Susan is equally comfortable working as a leader and/or sideman. Susan’s extensive repertoire of standards from the familiar to the obscure is distinctly enhanced by her inventive arrangements In addition to her original compositions, some of which are strictly instrumental. Among her influences, the Detroit-born singer cites Shirley Horn, Carmen McRae, Joao Gilberto, Dena DeRose, Johnny Mandel, and Andy Bey. Not only is Tobocman the first-prize recipient of the prestigious National Scholastic Writing Award For Poetry, she has also received the ASCAPLUS composer grant for the past fifteen consecutive years. Susan collaborates as both composer and lyricist with several of New York’s finest jazz musicians, including guitarists elliott randall and Pete McCann, pianists Henry Hey and David Hazeltine, trumpeter Jim Rotondi, and trombonist Steve Davis. her work is signed to renowned jazz publisher/Grammy-winner Don Sickler; susan has also written for and been recorded by Denise Donatelli, norman simmons, Allan Harris, and Rodgers Grant, among others.
Susan’s professional experience includes numerous European tours as featured artist, several Off-Broadway musicals, a varied array of national television and radio jingles, touring as keyboardist and vocalist with Tom Tom Club (Talking Heads sans David Byrne), and appearing on ‘Late Night with David Letterman.’ In addition to session work for the MCA and Atlantic record labels as well as singing background vocals for Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Wailers, Richie Havens, and Garland Jeffries (and more) - Susan is currently featured on four European and three japanese CDs, as well as her own releases entitled Watercolor Dream (first picked up by Mike Longo’s Consolidated Artists label), Live In Detroit With The Cliff Monear Trio, Love From Detroit with the cliff Monear Trio, and her newest recording Touch and Go. Susan was also chosen as a featured artist on the Japanese CD compilation Jazz Bar and is currently a signed recording artist on the eponymous DISK UNION label. A re-release of Watercolor Dream is currently available in Japan on the same label, along with Live In Detroit, plus love from detroit was just released worldwide this past april. Her newest recording project entitled Touch and Go (a unique musical departure from her previous offerings) will be available July 31st, 2020. That was exciting, wasn't it? Now, if we were between sets sitting at the bar, this is more like what I might actually want you to know...
“Words...to sing them is a different thing than it is to speak them. And most especially to write them. At times they can tumble out, yet other times barely seem to come at all. But to feel, conceptualize, write and then sing them is a whole other thing for me. At age four I started writing poetry, a year later my first poem was published, and by 15 I had won a national award. Two years later I found myself enrolled in the graduate poetry department at Columbia University, pretty much on my own with not much more than some old records and a tome of teen-angst journals. But when a professor told me no one (I assumed he was referring to me) should write anything until at least the age of 25, I put the pencil down. A couple of years later I checked out an ad to answer phones at Electric Lady, a well-known recording studio in Greenwich Village, built by Jimi Hendrix. At the time I thought nothing of it, other than a way to make a few bucks. Three months in I had been anointed with the title of Studio Manager. I spent close to a decade running top-flight recording studios all over NYC, but not on the ‘right side of the glass.’ On the surface, my work seemed exciting, if not fulfilling - meeting rock stars, going to concerts, sitting in on recording sessions - but instead I always somehow felt as though I was living someone else’s life. As my 30th birthday approached, I came upon a book about visualizing what one dreams for oneself. Three weeks later I could barely believe it. There I was - exactly where I had imagined / visualized myself to be (on the road with a famous rock band).
Since I had not yet met the musical love of my life (jazz), my first affair was to sing and play keyboards with the pop-rock band Tom Tom Club. Fast-forward one year, and I was back in New York City, broke, and with no prospects. I knew I loved this new life; I just hadn’t found my niche. Knowing virtually nothing about jazz -other than I thought I'd read somewhere it attracted mostly intelligent, progressive and dedicated musicians - this vague idea already had a magnetic pull. I decided to put up an ad at NYU ISO a jazz pianist who would be willing to help a novice like me learn songs but without so much as a dollar (let alone gig) in return. To my surprise, dozens of pianists showed up at my door! As the fates would allow, one of them was a life-long protege of pianist Barry Harris (a fellow Detroiter), and from there it was as though I was gliding home, only this time to a home I’d never been. I quickly met and befriended myriad creative, talented, and generous musicians who spent countless hours helping me to understand music from the inside out, encouraging me to learn everything I could, so that as a singer - even if I was in no way the most accomplished or experienced - I would at least know how to be professional, thus allowing me to acquire the skills I would need if I were to ever be lucky enough to make a living doing what I truly loved. To this day, each and every time someone pays me to sing, I feel truly blessed.
My favorite poet Pablo Neruda once wrote, 'One must achieve a balance between solitude and solidarity, between feeling and action, between the intimacy of one's self, the intimacy of humanity, and the revelation of nature.' This has always meant so very much to me; I even ended up naming my music publishing company Soliterra Music. 'Soliterra' is not a word in the dictionary; in fact it is a word I dreamt after reading Neruda's quote. It reminds me of being alone and writing a song, then hearing it come to life as it's played for the first time. It is truly one of THE most entirely thrilling feelings in my musical lexicon. What’s meaningful to me about being a singer/composer is so multi-faceted that words (prose, anyway) don’t often suffice. I think that’s why I write - to communicate through the universal language of music, to expand and go deeper, and to lean into the unknown. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been and continue to be in the company of so many gifted musicians, to earn a living doing so, and to have learned this much already. But even more importantly, to know that there is more to learn, always more. It is a lifelong endeavor, and for that I feel infinitely grateful.” ~ Susan Tobocman, February 2017 https://www.susantobocman.com/bio.html
Love from Detroit
