Barbara Hendricks & Monty Alexander Trio - Tribute to Duke Ellington

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz 
Year: 1995
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 76:13
Size: 175,3 MB
Art: Front

(5:50)  1. Duke's Place
(3:21)  2. I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart
(2:54)  3. Don't Get Around Much Anymore
(3:46)  4. Prelude to a Kiss
(2:31)  5. Love You Madly
(5:34)  6. I Got It Bad
(5:04)  7. Brown-Skin Gal (In the Calico Gown)
(4:11)  8. Mood Indigo
(4:14)  9. What Am I Here For?
(3:42) 10. In a Sentimental Mood
(5:58) 11. Squeeze Me
(4:05) 12. Sophisticated Lady
(3:36) 13. Take the "A" Train
(3:36) 14. Solitude
(4:06) 15. Come Sunday
(4:18) 16. Caravan
(4:23) 17. Creole Love Call
(4:52) 18. It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)

Barbara Hendricks is widely regarded as one of the finest American lyric sopranos of her generation, both for her work on the operatic stage and in the concert hall. She possesses a vast repertory in the realm of German lieder and is known for her recitals of American, French and Scandinavian works. She has also sung in performances of Mozart's Mass in C minor, Brahms' Requiem, Mahler's Second Symphony, Del Tredici's Final Alice, and has frequently appeared in jazz concerts as well. In the realm of opera Hendricks has sung a variety of roles, including Pamina from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Gilda (Verdi's Rigoletto), Micaela (Bizet's Carmen), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Mimi and Liu (Puccini's La bohème and Turandot, respectively), and many more. Hendricks has appeared at most of the major operatic venues, including the Met, Paris Opera, La Scala, and Covent Garden. She has made many recordings, from best-selling Christmas CDs and Gershwin song albums to popular Schubert lieder and Verdi opera recordings. She has appeared on nearly 80 recordings spread over a variety of major labels, including DG, Decca, EMI, Sony, Philips, RCA, and Arte Verum. Barbara Hendricks was born in Stephens, AK, on November 20, 1948. After obtaining a degree at the University of Nebraska in chemistry and mathematics, Hendricks studied voice at Juilliard under Jennie Tourel. Hendricks' major debut was in 1974 at the San Francisco Opera in Cavalli's Ormindo as Erisbe, and that same year she made her recital debut at New York's Town Hall. In 1975 she appeared on her first recording (Decca), singing Clara in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Hendricks soon became an international star, receiving a flood of invitations to the major operatic venues, concert halls, and music festivals. Her appearances with Herbert von Karajan (1977) and Leonard Bernstein (1985) were only two of many internationally acclaimed concert tours. From 1987 Hendricks has worked on behalf of refugees, mainly through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Since her 1994 debut at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Hendricks has regularly appeared at leading jazz festivals throughout the world. In 2006 Hendricks did not renew her contract with EMI, but formed her own label, Arte Verum. Via this new enterprise she appeared on five recordings in 2008, including an acclaimed disc of Poulenc works. A citizen and resident of Sweden, Hendricks married her manager Martin Engström in 1978, and the couple have three children.~ Robert Cummings https://www.allmusic.com/artist/barbara-hendricks-mn0000215176/biography
     
Jamaican-born pianist Monty Alexander is a sophisticated, prolific performer with an urbane, swinging style informed by the bop tradition, as well as the reggae and Caribbean folk he grew up with. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1944, Alexander first started playing piano around age four and took classical lessons from age six. By his teens, however, he had discovered jazz and was already performing in nightclubs. Although his early career found him covering pop and rock hits of the day, it was his love of jazz-oriented artists like Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole that brought him the most inspiration.

~ Matt Collar..More...  https://www.allmusic.com/artist/monty-alexander-mn0000589256/biography

Tribute to Duke Ellington

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Barbara Hendricks, Magnus Lindgren Quartet - Barbara Sings The Blues

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:44
Size: 127.6 MB
Styles: Vocal
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[5:23] 1. Lady Sings The Blues
[4:42] 2. Tell Me More And More (And Then Some)
[4:16] 3. Trouble In Mind
[4:16] 4. Don’t Explain
[4:01] 5. My Man
[3:26] 6. You’ve Been A Good Old Wagon
[5:48] 7. God Bless The Child
[4:29] 8. What A Little Moonlight Can Do
[4:48] 9. Billie's Blues-I Love My Man
[4:33] 10. Mood Indigo
[4:46] 11. Downhearted Blues
[2:44] 12. Allhelgonablues
[2:25] 13. Strange Fruit

African-American-Swedish soprano Barbara Hendricks formed her own label, Arte Verum, in the mid-2000s and has since been pursuing an impressive variety of adventurous projects. The spirit she has shown is exactly the ticket for classical music as it faces challenging times: the solution to its problems lies not in making the music more, or less, user-friendly, but in promoting musical enterprises that are personal, committed, and challenging to the artist involved in terms of pushing her or him into contact with new audiences. The last of these sounds like "crossover," but Hendricks insists that this is not a crossover release and has unkind things to say about the genre in the handsomely produced booklet (in English and French). It is instead, she says, a jazz release. That is somewhat contradicted elsewhere; although Hendricks' early training was in the African-American religious tradition, she sang little jazz during her early years and turned to it only in the 1990s. She says she approaches jazz as a "curious student...still learning so much." The bottom line is that this is a jazz album very much in the crossover vein attempted by other classical singers and it is an excellent example of the genre. The title Barbara Sings the Blues indicates not a special orientation toward blues material (indeed most of the pieces are not blues), but a program conceived as a tribute to Billie Holiday, from whose repertoire most of the music is taken. Hendricks is not Billie Holiday, but she does an extremely artful job of suggesting some of Holiday's vocal trademarks in a subtle way, and, as saxophonist Magnus Lindgren points out, she has a range greater than what most jazz vocalists can manage. The results range from intriguing to spectacular. Hendricks doesn't have the rhythmic control of a top-rank jazz singer, but her voice has entered a particularly rainbow-like phase in her middle age, and Lindgren's quartet adopts a particularly self-effacing stance in order to highlight it. And Hendricks adds something of her own to a few of the high points of Holiday's repertoire. The best comes last, and you could sample it or save it for hearing in its proper place: "Strange Fruit," with which Holiday ended her own shows, has a tragic operatic intensity here. It would be worth the purchase price even if nothing else on the album was, which is far from the case. ~James Manheim

Barbara Sings The Blues

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