Jo Harrop & Jamie McCredie - Weathering the Storm

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
Size: 105,4 MB
Time: 46:04
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2020
Art: Front

1. My Foolish Heart (4:51)
2. I Fall in Love Too Easily (3:46)
3. Tenderly (3:00)
4. Take It with Me (4:34)
5. Guilty (5:08)
6. More Than You Know (4:48)
7. You Must Believe in Spring (5:22)
8. Charade (3:16)
9. Early Autumn (4:19)
10. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (4:34)
11. If (2:24)

This is a little gem of an album: simple, modest and, as far as I can tell, perfect. Jo Harrop sings, Jamie McCredie plays guitar, and the songs date from between the late 1920s and the early 2000s, from Billy Rose to Tom Waits. Nothing unusual there, you might think. However, what sets Weathering the Storm apart from similar offerings is that the duo get everything right, and that’s quite rare.

Harrop has a soft contralto voice which, particularly on lower notes, is wonderfully warm and intimate. Mostly, she trusts the song to tell its own story, occasionally altering or adding a phrase. The guitar accompaniment is light, almost skeletal at times, but always cannily fitting. There’s always space around the music, and this holds the listener’s attention well, mine anyway.

All 11 songs are slow, or slowish, ballads and the calm mood settles them happily together. It’s an enterprising choice too: the rarely heard Early Autumn, Randy Newman’s Guilty, Legrand’s You Must Believe In Spring, etc. People remember albums like this, with their own unique atmosphere that you enter as you listen. Just what we need at this trying time.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/30/jo-harrop-jamie-mccredie-weathering-the-storm-review-they-get-everything-right-gem

Weathering the Storm

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ThreeStyle Feat. Magdalena Chovancova, Robert Fertl - Perfect Combination

Styles: Smooth Jazz
Size: 111,5 MB
Time: 48:00
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2021
Art: Front

1. Steppinup (4:06)
2. Keep It Simple (4:23)
3. Giant (4:37)
4. Lovin on Next to Nothin (4:10)
5. Beat (4:17)
6. Prime Time (4:47)
7. No One Else Would Ever Do (3:56)
8. Smoothies (4:23)
9. Come 2 Me (4:36)
10. Perfect Combination (4:29)
11. Vision (4:11)

Munich based formation Threestyle is one of the admirable formations that have improved from one album to the next, ultimately reaching world level. Perfect Combination is the absolutely fitting title for their latest work, which will be released at the end of April 2021.

Saxophonist Magdalena Chovancova, guitarist Robert Fertl and drummer Gabriela Chovancova are Threestyle and invite brilliant singer Damon Dae, the amazing singer Latonya Black, the wonderful vocal trio DW3 and the great singer Tim Owens, who we already had the pleasure to present in connection to many albums of guitarist U-Nam.

The album opens with Steppin' Up with which our protagonists Magdalena and Robert rise to true greatness. A song always lives from the timbre of its performer. On Keep It Simple vocalist Damon Dae showcases his impressive voice in a beautiful setting.

Giant is Threestyle's very own presentation with hipness in a sonic journey. Lovin on Next to Nothin is the product of a fruitful collaboration with singer and composer Latonya Black. Latonya is a power-house vocalist with a musical theatre background and also an author of non-fiction books. The horn-infected Beat offers a Tower-of-Power-infused perfect storm.

With Prime Time Threestyle has built a memorable melody which could nestle in the front of the hit parade. No One Else Would Ever Do features the famous vocal trio DW3. The song sounds so professionally that I assumed it could be the cover of a megahit.

Smoothies is the aptly title of a sweet melody carried by sax and guitar in the sense of a sonic spirit. Come 2 Me is a group effort between Threestyle and Tim Owens, who also perfectly performs the song in a breathtaking way. One cannot find a better amalgamation of sax and vocals.

On the title track the group plays with sounds especially in the style of a scat song. The album concludes with the song Vision. Robert cites with his guitar the styles of George Benson, Carlos Santana and Dire Straits. Simply irresistible.

Threestyle's Perfect Combination has all ingredients to become the pick of the litter of new releases in 2021. What an amazing evolution.
http://www.smooth-jazz.de/firstview/Threestyle/PerfectCombination.htm

Perfect Combination

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Erroll Garner - Concert By The Sea

Styles: Piano Jazz
Size: 60,0 MB
Time: 43:41
File: MP3 @ 192K/s
Released: 1955
Art: Front

1. I'll Remember April (4:18)
2. Teach Me Tonight (3:44)
3. Mambo Carmel (3:48)
4. Autumn Leaves (6:33)
5. It's All Right with Me (3:28)
6. Red Top (3:21)
7. April in Paris (4:56)
8. They Can't Take That Away from Me (4:15)
9. How Could You Do a Thing Like That to Me (4:09)
10. Where or When (3:15)
11. Erroll's Theme (1:47)

Concert by the Sea is certainly one of the biggest albums in jazz history, selling over 225,000 copies in the first year after its 1956 release and turning into such a steady seller over the next few years, it reportedly brought Columbia Records a million dollars by 1958 a nice sum at any time but astronomical in the late '50s. It should've turned Erroll Garner into a full-fledged superstar and, in a way, it did, because it was a reliable catalog item and earned him plenty of fans, including Johnny Carson, who frequently invited the pianist onto The Tonight Show.

Instead, Concert by the Sea turned into a pinnacle, with Garner and manager Martha Glaser sliding into contractual battles with Columbia that hampered his long-term growth. Glaser is the one who had the idea to turn the tapes of Garner's September 19, 1955 concert at the Sunset School in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California into a full-fledged album, taking tapes that may have otherwise wound up as a bootleg and turning them over to Columbia. The label whittled the 19-song concert into an 11-track single LP Columbia/Legacy's 2015 The Complete Concert by the Sea restores the entirety of the concert over the course of two CDs, adding the original LP as a third and, by doing so, they wound up distilling Garner's joyous appeal.

Supported by bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best, Garner seems at home skipping and swinging through a collection of bop and big-band standards, tunes that offer showcases for his sly skill of remaining melodic even when departing from the melody. Garner's playing is so robust and easy to enjoy that his flashier flourishes, such as the cloistered chords that call up "Caravan," almost seem camouflaged, but there are also subtler signatures, like how he slyly emphasizes staccato left-hand rhythms as much as the melody on "They Can't Take That Away from Me."

These are distinctions that appear on close listening but the wonderful thing about Concert by the Sea is how it's so infectious and open-hearted, it almost defies inspection: it's the kind of warm, inviting music that seems born from joy and can't help but engender bliss in the listener. [The 2015 expansion offers simply more of a good thing: the rest of the concert is every bit as good as the selections that made the official LP.] By Stephen Thomas Erlewine
https://www.allmusic.com/album/concert-by-the-sea-mw0000188078#review

Personnel: Erroll Garner – piano; Eddie Calhoun – bass; Denzil Best – drums

Concert By The Sea

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Fay Victor & Herbie Nichols Sung Quintet - Life Is Funny That Way

Styles: Vocal
Size: 166,7 MB
Time: 72:29
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2024
Art: Front

1. Life Is Funny That Way ( 6:32)
2. The Bassist ( 6:48)
3. Bright Butterfly ( 2:49)
4. Sinners, All of Us! ( 5:58)
5. The Culprit Is You (10:00)
6. Shuffle Montgomery ( 5:32)
7. Tonight ( 9:30)
8. Lady Sings The Blues ( 6:15)
9. Twelve Bars ( 2:51)
10. Descent Into Madness ( 9:59)
11. Non-Faternization Clause ( 6:11)

The jazz world overlooked pianist and composer Herbie Nichols in his lifetime, but musicians such as Roswell Rudd, Misha Mengelberg, and Ted Nash have tried to keep his music in circulation over the years in various projects. Vocalist Fay Victor has been entranced by his music for a long time, and in 2013, she put together a group, Herbie Nichols SUNG, to perform his tunes. This is that group's first recording together and it is excellent.

In most cases here, Victor has written her own lyrics for Nichols' tunes and given them new titles. Some of the arrangements come off loosely swinging with the musicians jangling over the bumpy surfaces of Nichols' melodies in a way that reflects the influence of dance in his music. An adventurous dance company could work out some pretty energetic routines for these treatments. The band, Michael Attias on saxophone, Anthony Coleman on piano, Ratzo Harris on bass and Tom Rainey on drums, moves in quirky ways that complement the broad, elastic sound of Victor's voice as she goes from loud, broad moans to high-pitched jabbering and back, sounding like a cross between Betty Carter and Ellen Christi.

When the music hits a groove, it really comes alive. The leader's full voice rides the twisting rhythm of "Life Is Funny That Way" into the stratosphere as she scats over Coleman's brittle Thelonious Monk-like chords and Attias' squawking alto sax. Alto and voice have a furious race on "The Bassist" after an extended Tom Rainey solo and "Tonight" is a swaggering dance shuffle with Attias jubilantly serenading on baritone sax. "Shuffle Montgomery" is a clanking soft-shoe feature for voice and baritone with Anthony Coleman playing the kind of eccentric piano groove associated with Nichols fan Misha Mengelberg. The wildest track is "Non-Fraternization Clause" where the entire band jumps, sparks, and swoops before Victor leans into her vocal, going up and down with Attias' alto in dizzying fashion, and Coleman lightly creeps through some angular blues moves.

Some of the pieces here have much darker tones. On "Sinners! All of Us!" Victor's stream-of-consciousness blues scat pulls the band along to a slow march cadence while "The Culprit Is You" is a dramatic, minor key piano-voice duet after the fashion of Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake. "Descent Into Madness" is a sinister weave of piano, voice, and alto that conjures up visions of despair and eerieness. The one tune Victor did not write lyrics for is "Lady Sings The Blues." That is performed with the original lyrics written by the woman who first sang the song, Billie Holiday. The track is treated as an art song with Coleman's piano carefully brooding as Victor's voice opens into a powerful siren wail over bowed bass and tense percussion.

There are several fine Herbie Nichols tributes around, but this one has a unique soul and earthiness created by Fay Victor's otherworldly singing and the adventurous spirit of her band. This is a superb album, one of the most delightful releases of the year so far.By Jerome Wilson
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/life-is-funny-that-way-fay-victor-herbie-nichols-sung-tao-forms

Personnel: Fay Victor - (voice, lyrics, arrangements, bandleader); Michae¨l Attias - (alto & baritone saxophones); Anthony Coleman - (piano); Ratzo Harris - (bass); Tom Rainey - (drums)

Life Is Funny That Way

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