Karen Marguth - Until

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2021
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:59
Size: 122,6 MB
Art: Front

(4:13) 1. Comes love
(5:07) 2. Until
(5:23) 3. Black crow
(5:02) 4. What color is love
(3:42) 5. La ronda
(6:20) 6. Hearts and bones
(4:24) 7. Maureen
(4:08) 8. Close your eyes
(4:58) 9. Twistable turnable man
(5:35) 10. Old friends - Bookends
(4:03) 11. Days of wine and roses

Bay area vocalist and educator Karen Marguth hit the jazz recording scene with 2009's self-titled debut and has released a series of excellent albums. On 2015's Just You, Just Me is Marguth and bassist Kevin Hill build from the promise of previous efforts like her excellent Carrol Coates songbook A Way With Words by taking somewhat of a left turn. Taking cues from the bass and voice master, Sheila Jordan, she tackles classics like "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" "I Got it Bad," and "Imagination" perfectly capturing their melodic and rhythmic contours, and emotional essence in the sparsest of settings. She makes her greatest impact on her scat-laden rendition of the title track, a surprisingly blues-y and quite humorous rapid fire "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Taught Me," and fresh songs like her loping version of Phoebe Snow's "Harpo's Blues" and the charming Johnny Mercer tune "Love's Got Me in a Lazy Mood." Other inspired choices include takes on Nellie Lutcher and Rickie Lee Jones. Marguth is quite assured in a variety of modes, and she and Hill have faultless chemistry.

Most recent album: On 2021's Until (OA2), Marguth continues her eclectic approach interpreting Paul Simon's "Hearts and Bones" and "Old Friends/Bookends" with great clarity, exploring Latin rhythms on Maria Gomez's "La Ronda" and Sting's "Until," and swinging with aplomb ("Comes Love," "Close Your Eyes"). She also contributes the original tune "Maureen" and take listeners on a unique journey on Andrew Bird and Shel Silverstein's "Twistable Turnable Man.
"https://originarts.com/oa2/reviews/review.php?ReviewID=1091

Personnel: Karen Marguth: Vocal; David Aus: piano; Richard Giddens: bass; Pat Olvera: bass; Dan Feiszli: bass; Brian Hamada: drums; Nathan Guzman: drums; Gilbert Castellanos: trumpet; Mike Taylor: guitar; Eva Scow: mandolin; George Ramirez: percussion; Omar Ledezma, Jr.: percussion and vocals; John R. Burr: piano; Matt Finders: bass; Kelly Zaban Fasman: drums; Erik Jekabson: trumpet.

Until

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Karen Marguth - A Way With Words Disc1 And Disc 2

Born in Minneapolis, raised in the San Francisco East Bay, Karen has been active as a performer throughout her life. Her professional background includes choreographing, directing, and performing in regional theatres and touring shows, singing in rock, blues, and jazz bands, doing voice-overs and studio work, and teaching dance and theatre with children and adults. She enjoys performing a wide variety of styles of music, being drawn primarily by lyrics, she says. “Any song that has unexpected, interesting, or simply profound lyrics draws my attention. It is the storytelling part of singing that I love best.” Karen has also worked as an educator since 1986, working as a classroom teacher in public elementary and middle schools, as an instructor for pre-service teachers at CSU Hayward, as a private consultant in school districts throughout California and for the UC Berkeley Writing Project. Her classroom methods have been the subject of two national research studies, and she received San Joaquin County’s CTA Outstanding New Educator Award in 1990. Currently, she is serving Central Unified Schools as an Instructional Support Coach for the Arts and Writing.

“Music, theatre and education merge quite logically for me,” Karen says. “Teaching and singing are both performance arts, the goal being to convey to the audience what’s important in the lesson or the song.”

In 1999, when she moved to Central California, Karen began to seek out opportunities to meet and work with local musicians. Happily, with jazz stations like KFSR and organizations like Jazz Fresno, she found it easy to find out about local musical events. By 2001, the Blue Street Jazz Band had started using her as a substitute vocalist, and that’s when her work in jazz performance began to blossom. Blue Street performs around the country at Jazz Festivals, and Karen soaked in all she could by listening to and talking with musicians and audience members at the festivals. People would recommend vocalists for her to study, and study she did. Though she still considers herself to be “low on the learning curve” about jazz, she has embraced jazz’s call to free oneself from the goal of creating “perfect” performances. Rather, jazz demands that an artist who is grounded in the structures of music theory let go and play with the music to create something new.

In 2008, Karen suggested to KFSR’s station manager, Joe Moore, that it might be fun to create a show focused on female vocalists. He agreed, and KFSR’s Vocal Hour was born, which airs every Friday at 2pm Pacific Time. In 2010, she released her eponymous album which received critical acclaim from European and American jazz writers, and she began performing more often, including at festivals in France and at southern California venues such as Dizzy's San Diego, Catalina's, and Charlie O's. Her 2013 release, "A Way With Words," is a two-disk set which is a tribute to the songs of Carroll Coates, and features Richie Cole and Gilbert Castellanos. Her goals are to continue to grow as a vocalist, to travel and perform as much as her day-job will allow, and start working on her next recording project. http://jazztimes.com/guides/artists/14504-karen-marguth

"Great big talent, much too small a pond. Her name is Karen Marguth, one of the finest American jazz vocalists you've likely yet to discover." ~ Christopher Loudon, Jazz Times

"Just You, Just Me is Karen's newest and perhaps most courageous work...to go into the world with just an acoustic bass man - the redoubtable Kevin Hill - at her side." ~ John McDonough, NPR

Disc 1

Styles: Jazz, Vocal
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 42:58
Size: 99,2 MB
Art: Front

(2:25)  1. You'll See
(6:02)  2. No One Ever Tells You
(3:39)  3. A Miracle
(5:15)  4. Afterglow
(3:19)  5. A Way With Words
(4:53)  6. Rainy Afternoon
(3:36)  7. Swing Song
(3:21)  8. I Have a Feeling / Hay Sentimientos
(4:12)  9. London By Night
(6:11) 10. Better to Have Loved

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Disc 2

Time: 40:36
Size: 93,8 MB
Art: Front

(4:11)  1. G Is One Sharp Key
(5:16)  2. So I Love You
(4:03)  3. Later for Love
(2:41)  4. Love Comes and Goes
(5:18)  5. It's Time, High Time
(3:55)  6. Hay Sentimientos (Alternate Version)
(3:59)  7. Someone Else's Sweetheart
(4:25)  8. Spring Has Sprung
(4:21)  9. Madness
(2:24) 10. Alone By the Sea

A Way With Words  Disc 1, Disc 2

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Karen Marguth - Just You, Just Me (With Kevin Hill)

Size: 101,8 MB
Time: 36:13
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2015
Styles: Jazz Vocals
Art: Front

01. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To (3:56)
02. Just You, Just Me (2:46)
03. I'm Beginning To See The Light (2:33)
04. Love's Got Me In A Lazy Mood (3:52)
05. Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me (2:18)
06. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) (4:13)
07. Imagination (2:27)
08. Harpo's Blues (4:48)
09. It's All Right With Me (3:15)
10. Baby, What's Your Alibi (2:40)
11. The Moon Is Made Of Gold (3:21)

So, there was this gig where a five-piece band was booked to play for three hours. No big deal, right? Only thing was, the bassist and vocalist were the only two to show up.
The show must go on, and all that, so they forged through and at the end looked at each other and said, "Damn, we should have recorded that."So into the studio they went to try and capture a bit of what had happened, and the result is this album.

Eleven tunes, all duos with just bass + vox, featuring bassist Kevin Hill and vocalist Karen Marguth.

Critic John McDonough, of DownBeat and NPR, writes this about the album: "It will fall to others to allot their own official praise to this, Karen's newest and perhaps most courageous work. I say that only because it takes a rather spunky singer to go into the world with only an acoustic bass man - the redoubtable Kevin Hill - at her side. But unlike Mary Tyler Moore's crusty old editor-boss, Ed Asner, I like spunk. Karen's has the benefits of voice, technique, and taste. They are the kind of refining influences that turn common spunk into high art."

The album covers an impressive range of material, from Cole Porter and Duke Ellington, to Phoebe Snow and Nellie Lutcher.

Take a listen, and discover why Jazz Magazine of France named Karen "one of the essential chanteuses of all time," and Cadence Magazine called her "indeed, a REAL jazz singer, with pinpoint intonation and a supple voice allowing her to phrase and scat with audacity."

Just You, Just Me

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