Hilary Kole - Haunted Heart

Styles: Vocal Jazz
Year: 2009
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:15
Size: 115,6 MB
Art: Front

(2:07)  1. It's Love
(2:41)  2. There's a Small Hotel
(3:32)  3. 'Deed I Do
(3:39)  4. I Didn't Know About You
(3:01)  5. Better Than Anything
(6:27)  6. Like a Lover
(4:59)  7. Blackberry Winter
(3:36)  8. The Snake
(5:01)  9. Old Boyfriends
(2:55) 10. How Am I to Know
(5:19) 11. What'll I Do
(2:05) 12. You for Me
(4:47) 13. Haunted Heart

This listener can't recall in years so smashing a solo CD debut as this winner. Hilary Kole's lengthy runs in cabaret and club appearances with song revues "Our Sinatra" and "Singing Astaire," singing some of the best of the American Songbook, have served her well. The mix here is flawless, ranging from such evergreens as Rodgers-Hart's "There's A Small Hotel" to worthy but lesser known gems such as '40s swinger "'Deed I Do" and Bob Haymes' "You For Me." What's most impressive is how Kole inhabits each with a thoroughness and emotional authenticity that belies her young years. Her delivery of "Better Than Anything," (heretofore owned by wonderful Irene Kral), is breezily knowing. Tedd Firth (piano) and Mark McLean (drums) make for swinging easy company throughout the set. With Alec Wilder and Loonis McGlohon's "Blackberry Winter," it's the American art song at its no-frills finest, evoking the straight- to-the-heart sound of the late Nancy LaMott.

The range of what she can do with a lilting, warm soprano is evident as Kole tosses off "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in," warbling Oscar Brown, Jr.'s bit of Freudian storytelling, "The Snake." That segues into a dark night take on Tom Waits' toughly nostalgic "Old Boyfriends." Particularly fine on musings from the trenches of love, if Kole's shrewd, swinging take on "How Am I To Know" isn't enough, just wait for her battered but still standing rendition of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do." Kudos to all, including producer John Pizzarelli. This is a memorable first effort.
~Andrew Velez http://www.allaboutjazz.com/haunted-heart-hilary-kole-justin-time-records-review-by-andrew-velez.php
 

Personnel: Hilary Kole: vocals; Tedd Firth: piano; Paul Gill: bass; Mark McLean: drums; John Pizzarelli: guitar.

Haunted Heart

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Michel Sajrawy - Soul Fingers

Styles: Guitar Jazz
Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:09
Size: 111,5 MB
Art: Front

( 4:10) 1. Hozam
( 6:19) 2. Chennai
( 9:03) 3. Hijaz
( 4:24) 4. Ajam
( 3:56) 5. Syncretic Beliefs
( 9:46) 6. Kord
(10:27) 7. In Memory of Om Kalthoum

Sajrawy's musical finesse is to reconcile the jazz of western culture with the „Maqamat“ of the Middle East, he has perfectly developed a whole new sound that mends both, all together his music takes you on a beautiful and divine journey.

Maqamat“ these are „oriental“ modes, rooted in ancient traditions, consisting of very special melodic lines based on quarter note steps an exceptional musical vocabulary. Beyond this, each of these „Maqam“ has its very own ethos attributed to it, associating various and very different moods. For example, in the ninth century Safi el-Din gave every hour of the day its own Maqam.

As a rule, oriental guitarists equip their instruments with additional frets in order to be able to create the quarter note steps necessary for “Maqamat”. Unfortunately, this inevitably leads to a lack of precision in the intonation:

The quarter note steps called for here are NOT exact quarter intervals in ascending succession they are a little bit higher accordingly, in descending succession they have to sound a little bit “darker”…and for this the musician alone is responsible.

Michel Sajrawy tackles this difficulty with his own unconventional solution: Having on the one hand tried out the limited suitability of additional frets, he nonetheless rejects the usual use of “fretless guitars”. They do offer complete freedom of intonation, but according to Sajrawy, can only be a compromise for the sound as well as the character. They just don’t do justice to the sound he really wants!

Sajrawy creates the desired quarter note steps by bending the strings. A very unusual, if not unique technique for interpreting “Maqamat”. It spices the original sound with an almost “bluesy” note, and does not require any additional alterations to the instrument. All that can be heard is the virtuoso result of the ingenious interaction of fingers and ear.

Guitarist and composer Michel Sajrawy is from Nazareth - Israel. At the age of nine he started taking guitar lessons. During the years 1990-93 he studied for and received a diploma in electronic engineering. In 1995 he moved to London, England, where he studied and completed a one-year diploma at the Musicians' Institute G.I.T. He began a three-year degree program in music composition at The London College of Music in 1996 under the instruction and assistance of Adam Gorb.. During the years 1999-2000 Michel furthered himself with the assistance of Adam Gorb and Nigel Clark to complete his masters degree in film and TV scoring.

In 2000 he returned to Nazareth and established his own business Dasam Studio (Dasam is a word in Arabic for ''rich food''). As a band leader, he released his debut album Yathrib (Ozella Music 2006) which marked his entrance into the vanguard of crossover artists who see themselves creating an uncompromising jazz sound between traditional and contemporary. In 2009 he released his second album, Writings On The Wall (Ozella Music) which marked a strong turning towards filigree west-eastern acoustic jazz. Among the jazz releases, the album became on the Top List "Best albums of 2009" of Freies Radio Stuttgart in Germany. In 2012 he released Arabop (Ozella Music / Dasam Studio) which was praised and criticized as a high octane, modern Arabic music that isn't like any world jazz or world fusion you've heard up till now.

Michel can easily join the ranks of seminal jazz guitarists. With his band, he played in different parts of the country, toured in Germany and played the Leipzig Jazz Festival (2006), played in Switzerland-Geneva (2007), Jerusalem Festival (2007) where he met and jammed with Nigel Kennedy. He played in the Netherlands (2008), the same year he played in New York (USA). Played the Jordan Festival (2009) and Tel Aviv Jazz Festival (2009). He played the International Oud Festival in Jerusalem (2012). In 2014 he was appointed as a guitar faculty for Spring Semester at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) in India where he shared the stage with Prasanna Ramaswamy, Tom Brislin (Yes/Meatloaf/Robert Plant/Spiraling), Phil Maturano and Steve Zerlin (Dennis Chambers, Carl Filipiak, Jack DeJohnette). In 2014 he performed with Yaron Herman in Paris (France). In 2015 he participated in Munich at the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2015 (Germany) and in 2016 he played at HevHet Festival in Kosice (Slovakia).

He worked with Abboud Abdel'All, Bashir Abdel'All, Ahmed Mukhtar, Samir Jubran, Manfred Leuchter, Mira Awad and Souad Massi. He composed music for several documentary films, arranged the music for theatre, various mini orchestral projects, produced radio jingles for the major brands in the country and he appears regularly as a musician on national TV shows. He collaborated on more than 20 albums worldwide. He is also a free lance guitarist and instructor.

Michel has been awarded the Wilfred Joseph Prize (1998-99 England), Best Title in Music (2002 Israel), the A. M. Qattan Foundation's Performing Arts Grant for the year (2007 West Bank) and Diploma from "Master-Jam Fest" in recognition of musical skill and devotion to jazz art (2012 Odessa - Ukraine).https://www.michelsajrawy.com/index.php/biography

Soul Fingers

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Amina Figarova - Joy

Styles: Piano Jazz
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 60:34
Size: 139,2 MB
Art: Front

(6:49) 1. Joy
(4:56) 2. October Phantasy (Feat. Sasha Masakowski)
(4:25) 3. Green Blues
(5:48) 4. Morning Dew
(5:15) 5. Ruby At Play
(8:29) 6. Suddenly Stars Are Falling From The Sky
(5:46) 7. Road Ahead
(6:51) 8. Only Peace Liberates
(4:45) 9. Getting There
(7:25) 10. Muse

Pianist Amina Figarova released an album in 2005 that was about as far away from the theme of "joy" as could be. September Suite (Munich Records) explored the deadly events of September 11, 2001 (she was in New York at the time; she experienced it). It is an album that she called: "An Ode to Mourning striving to articulate the various stages of grief in musical terms."

In 2022 Figarova turns 180 degrees to embrace optimism and a hope for a bright future with Joy. Born in Azerbaijan and now based in New York and New Orleans, Figarova once again displays her genius for arranging for a mid-sized ensemble, a three horn and a rhythm section sextet. On 2019's Road To the Sun (AmFi Records), perhaps her masterpiece, she enhanced her septet writing, on about half the tracks, with a string trio. It was enchanting, a top disc of the year list shoo-in.

On Joy she goes again with a (mostly) septet approach. The front line: the flute in the hands of Bart Platteau, which gives the sound a feeling of refinement; Alex Pope Norris' trumpet and flugelhorn, along with Wayne Escoffery's soprano and tenor saxophones. As always with the pianist, her group sounds bigger than a sextet. Credit Figarova's arranging mastery. Terrific soloing is heard all around, blowing organically out of the polish and shine of the well-crafted charts on the exuberant "Morning Dew," the reflective beauty of "Ruby At Play." Sasha Masakowski's dream-like vocals are featured on "October Phantasy," a recitation of her poem (included on the inside fold of the album cover) seeping softly into the arrangement with a slightly blurred, ghostly delivery.

Joy, with all compositions and arrangements coming from Amina Figarova's pen, is a magically uplifting experience. Figarova hails from Azerbaijan, and she was based in Europe for several years. Now the U.S. has her and her band and her Joy, and the country in trying times benefits from her consistently gorgeous contributions.By Dan McClenaghan https://www.allaboutjazz.com/joy-amina-figarova-amfi-records

Personnel: Amina Figarova: piano; Bart Platteau: flute; Alex Norris: trumpet; Wayne Escoffery: saxophone, tenor; Yasushi Nakamura: bass; Rudy Royston: drums; Brian Richburg Jr: drums; Sasha Masakowski: voice / vocals; Hasan Bakr: percussion.

Joy

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Naama Gheber - If I Knew Then

Styles: Vocal
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 21:01
Size: 48,5 MB
Art: Front

(2:43) 1. If I Knew Then
(3:33) 2. I'm A Fool To Want You
(2:10) 3. Old Mother Hubbard
(2:47) 4. Dream Dancing
(3:27) 5. The Very Thought Of You
(2:55) 6. Dream Of You
(3:23) 7. You're Driving Me Crazy

New York City-based vocalist Naama Gheber released her debut recording, Dearly Beloved (Cellar Music) in 2020, just before the global COVID-19 pandemic. With live entertainment brought to a halt, Gheber found herself with time on her hands and no way to promote her considerable talent in live performance. Israeli by birth, Gheber was an enfant terrible who ascended quickly professionally. After being trained at the Center for Jazz Studies in Tel Aviv, Gheber was accepted into the jazz program at New York City's The New School For Performing Arts, where she soon honed her craft and began performing throughout the city, accumulating valuable experience as well as critical attention. Just starting to reach professional escape velocity, Gheber recorded and released Dearly Beloved, and then the bottom fell out.

The debut recording generated positive attention, but that did not replace the singer promoting her wares in a live setting. Drawing from Cellar Group alumni, Gheber teamed up with pianist Ben Paterson, bassist Neal Miner, and drummer Evan Sherman early in 2022 to record seven compositions thoughtfully chosen to show off Gheber's freshly conservative ballad singing. Her choice of the traditional jazz piano trio allowed a sonic environment where she would not be competing with other melody instruments, a circumstance both fortunate and challenging, where Gheber had no other choice but to stand and deliver. And did she ever.

Gheber made another strategic decision to release five of the seven selections as singles monthly throughout the summer and fall with the full EP to be released in November. Reviews of these individually released songs are cited at the end of this article, leaving two songs: the title cut and "Dreaming of You" for consideration here. "If I Knew Then (What I Know Now)" was composed and published by Dick Jurgens and Eddy Howard in 1939, with their version charting briefly the same year. Bing Crosby went on to record the song on February 9, 1940, with John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra, placing the song into the canon of the Great American Songbook. Gheber displays a knack for arranging the piece, directing the trio, and its tone for the recording. Gheber's arranging proves dramatically sophisticated and Paterson manifests as empathetically aligned with the singer in providing refined and understated support and soloing.

"Dreaming of You" fits snuggly into Gheber's survey of ballad styles. Composed in 1934 by Jimmie Lunceford, the song would become a performance staple for Helen Merrill 20 years later. Here, the ballad is presented as a bass-voice duet between Miner and Gheber, one that sets a standard for swing in a confined space. The singer is in melodic command while Miner steers the harmony. Gheber sings with light shades of Anita O'Day coupled with Billie Holiday seasoned with a tincture of the corner bar from "Lush Life."

There is a place for this kind of jazz singing. It is like Brahms to Beethoven, a keeper of the flame necessary to inform new generations of how the music sounded at the beginning: simple, inventive, and stunning. By C. Michael Bailey
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/if-i-knew-then-naama-gheber-sassys-back-in-town

Personnel: Naama Gheber: voice / vocals; Ben Paterson: piano; Neal Miner: bass, acoustic; Evan Sherman: drums.

If I Knew Then

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