Showing posts with label Mette Juul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mette Juul. Show all posts

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Mette Juul - Moon on My Shoulder

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 63:38
Size: 146,3 MB
Art: Front

(6:18) 1. Moon on My Shoulder
(6:04) 2. Be Cool
(5:36) 3. In This Life
(4:46) 4. Henya
(5:45) 5. Ask Me Now
(2:34) 6. Hum Drum Blues
(5:17) 7. When We Leave the Riverbank
(5:44) 8. For Jan
(1:56) 9. From This Moment On
(5:29) 10. How Many Hours Must I Travel Alone
(4:40) 11. April in Paris - Bonus Track
(4:51) 12. Once Upon a Summertime - Bonus Track
(4:32) 13. Softly as in a Morning Sunrise - Bonus Track

On her 2012 release, Moon On My Shoulder, jazz vocalist Mette Juul has created a fervent and elegant sound, and turned away from the full orchestration in order to produce a personal vocal jazz album that forms a beautifully calming and homogeneous soundtrack to hectic, modern lives. Mette Juul blasted her way into the hearts of many jazz critics back in 2010 with her debut album, “Coming In From The Dark”, with the legendary rhythm champion Alex Riel and his trio. Distinguished musicians such as trumpeter, Palle Mikkelborg, and guitarist, Poul Halberg, furthermore supported the young singer on her debut. The album was released on Cowbell Music and received a lot of great reviews in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland and Japan.

On this album, Juul has teamed up with the international jazz icon and hot Blue Note trumpeter, Ambrose Akinmusire, (born in 1982) from New York City. Despite Akinmusire’s young age his discography includes collaborations with jazz icons such as Wayne Shorter, Gretchen Parlato and Ron Carter so once again the young singer and winner of the International Jazz Artist Competition for vocalists (2007) has worked with a true jazz hot shot. The rhythm section consists of a strong line-up of bass player and cellist Lars Danielsson and drummer Morten Lund, and the album is additionally blessed with the Danish pianist Nikolaj Hess, who besides playing piano has also co-produced the album along with Mette Juul.

Juul’s dazzling voice, Akinmusire’s soft trumpet laying and Hess’ rich, simple piano touch characterizes “Moon on my shoulder”. The record contains no technical postulated phrasings and long pretentious solos, just simple well-organized jazz music focusing on telling a story. While the 1st album, “Coming In from The Dark”, mainly contained jazz standards and five of Juul’s own compositions the new album, “Moon on my shoulder”, shows how Mette Juul has searched the songbook of jazz for more unknown songs and made them her own. She has chosen six songs in the genre ranging from modern jazz to the singer-songwriter tradition, e.g. Thelonious Monks’ “Ask Me Now”, Joni Mitchell’s “Be Cool” and a radical reinterpretation by Cole Porter’s “From This Moment On.”

She has also composed some songs of her own: “When We Leave The River Bank” and “In This Life” and included her signature song “How Many Hours Must I Travel Alone”, a remake from her first album – this time re-arranged and stripped down to the tunes of Juul’s vocals and Akinmusire’s trumpet without the grandiose Riel Orchestra. Mette Juul has re-arranged the title track by Lyle Lowett, “Moon On My Shoulder”, and made it entirely her own and she is accompanied by Lars Danielson on cello. Akinmusire has moreover contributed with a remake of one of his songs, the almost meditative “Henya”. Altogether the album contains ten wonderful vocal jazz songs focusing on simplicity and an ambition to interpret the songs in an intimate and direct way and give life to the songs at a more metaphysical and universal level as a way to make both lyrics and music relevant and meaningful to the audience. https://www.storyvillerecords.com/products/moon-on-my-shoulder-1014333

Personnel: Vocals, Guitar – Mette Juul; Piano – Nikolaj Hess; Trumpet – Ambrose Akinmusire; Bass, Cello – Lars Danielsson; Drums – Morten Lund

Moon on My Shoulder

Friday, March 13, 2020

Mette Juul - Change

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:49
Size: 112,5 MB
Art: Front

(3:21)  1. Beautiful Love
(3:09)  2. At Home (There Is A Song)
(3:24)  3. Get Out Of Town
(3:27)  4. It Might Be Time To Say Goodbye
(4:49)  5. Double Rainbow
(2:48)  6. Just Friends
(2:35)  7. I'm Moving On
(3:03)  8. Dindi
(3:30)  9. Young Song
(4:18) 10. Without A Song
(3:27) 11. Northern Woods
(5:18) 12. The Peacocks (A Timeless Place)
(5:35) 13. Evening Song

Change is an inevitable part of life and music. The very essence of being a jazz musician involves catching a musical moment that never comes back again, but occasionally, a record shows up that is both a document of change and the sum of a lifetime. With Change, Danish jazz singer, guitarist and songwriter, Mette Juul, has released such an album. Since her debut, Coming in from the Dark (Cowbell Music, 2010), Juul has played with the very best musicians on the Danish jazz scene, including drummers Alex Riel and Morten Lund and pianists Nikolaj Hess and Heine Hansen, but she has also collaborated closely with trendsetting trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and the distinguished Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson. Danielsson also shows up on Change in the role of bassist and co-producer, but instrumentally, the bass plays a minor, if important part, as does the autumnal touch of pianist Heine Hansen. Instead, the album centres around the intimate sound of nylon and steel string guitar with Juul getting first class assistance from Ulf Wakenius, Per Møllehøj and Gilad Hekselman. Hekselman already showed his symbiotic understanding of the sparse pairing between vocal and acoustic guitar on Lilly's album Tenderly (Gateway Music, 2017) and once again his playing shimmers on Juul's own "Northern Woods" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Dindi." There is also another song on the album by Jobim, "Double Rainbow." The wonder is how Juul makes the familiar music fresh and fleshes out all the colors of the musical rainbow, bringing out the breathing poetry of Jobim's diction and the striking lyrical images of Gene Lees' lyrics.

Juul is not only a lucid interpreter of songs, she also knows how to put them together. Coming in from the Dark included one of Frank Sinatra's signature songs, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," and like Sinatra, she masters the art of the concept album. Every song on the album reflects processes of change from day to night, loving to leaving and youth to adulthood. However, while the songs reflect change inherently, they also represent it in dialog with each other and previous albums. Thus, "Double Rainbow" has previously been covered on Juul's There Is a Song (Universal, 2015) and the title track is renamed "At Home," a song dedicated to Juul's childhood home and her mother where the physical room of the home and emotional space of a song melts together: "I remember the place / where I heard my mother sing and felt at home / this was her favorite place to be free / song to song, smile to smile / my mother's song lives with me." The connection between a place and an emotional state is also highlighted in Juul's "Northern Woods," where the forest provides a natural space of musical reflection that goes beyond the bustle of urban modernity: "Hear how a whisper of trees / sing melodies of a time long gone / music that will never change / voices that won't forget your name." The way Juul naturally moves from trees to melodies in the soft transition of a rhyme subtly underlines the point that words, nature and music can become one, just as a voice can become a horn. Chet Baker could play his trumpet like the whisper of a voice, but on the opening track, "Beautiful Love," Juul sings with a voice like a horn.

Thematically, the songs also enlighten each other. If "Young Song" says that "true love is not for lazy lovers / who seek oblivion and ecstasy," the song "It Might Be Time to Say Goodbye" tells the story of someone who is seduced by the constant romantic craving of sensory oblivion and ecstasy: "There are things I long to try / life I must explore alone." As a consequence, a true love might be lost as the lyric realizes in the end: "This might be the dumbest thing I'll ever do / might never find someone / sweet as you." The song is a highlight among a string of uniformly great songs penned by Juul that don't need to blush in the company of Jobim and Cole Porter, whose many-sided emotional depth is uncovered in "Get Out of Town." In the end, the album suggests that change can come in many ways. Through it all, music remains the prism "Where you can listen to the things your heart is saying," as it says in the cover of Jimmy Rowles and Norma Winstone's "The Peacocks (A Timeless Place)." Indeed, this album is an affair of the heart, but it is also a musical space for contemplation and solace. Everything comes together here, even the art inside the cover by acclaimed Danish painter Michael Kvium underlines the ambiguous beauty of change and captures several shades of the seasons. 

It is a strong argument for getting the physical edition of the album that also includes lyrics in the booklet. It is an important point that music is never finished, and Mette Juul is certainly on the path to new discoveries and stories with an EP of other songs from the sessions already scheduled for release. Right now, Change is nothing short of a major musical accomplishment from Juul that hopefully will expand her circle of listeners. ~ Jakob Baekgaard https://www.allaboutjazz.com/change-mette-juul-universal-music-group-review-by-jakob-baekgaard.php

Personnel: Mette Juul: vocals, guitar; Ulf Wakenius: guitar; Lars Danielsson: bass, cello, cymbals, guitar; Heine Hansen: piano, Rhodes, celeste, harmonica; Gilad Hekselman: guitar; Per Møllehøj: guitar

Change

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Mette Juul - There Is A Song

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2015
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:59
Size: 135,1 MB
Art: Front

(5:07)  1. Baltimore
(4:35)  2. Roll Roll
(3:41)  3. There Is A Song
(4:50)  4. Song For Dannie
(4:31)  5. In The land Of Plenty
(5:28)  6. Double Rainbow
(5:33)  7. Berlin Is Calling
(3:28)  8. Evening Song
(4:22)  9. Aurora Butterfly
(4:56) 10. Cold Heart
(5:27) 11. In A Paris Night
(5:56) 12. Northern Butterfly

After making his debut in 2010 in the role of classical Coming (jazz singer from the Dark, Cowbell Music), the Danish Mette Juul started to prefer the intimate atmosphere of the ballad copyright, on Joni Mitchell model. The change peeked in the second disc (Moon on My Shoulder, Calibrated 2012), yet full of intense jazz versions of songs like "April in Paris," "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" or "Hum Drum Blues." In this third album the choice is clear: Mette Juul presents itself in the role of songwriter who composed the lyrics and music of his songs, mostly ballads that pass slowly, she plays with delicate grace and conversational intimacy. The only exception is "Double Rainbow," where Rodney Green has the opportunity to express most rhythmic dynamism. As in previous works, his companions are first-rate: next to the drummer just mentioned, the guitarist Mike Moreno and the bassist Joe Sanders, we reconfirmed the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and the talented Danish pianist Nikolaj Hess. Equipped with a bright and clear tone exposure, Mette at times recalls Helen Merrill, although the repertoire the ranks of different sizes, the fact of Joni Mitchell, Ricky Lee Jones or Tracy Chapman, who represented his first vocal patterns. The singer is accompanied with acoustic guitar and his folk themes show a clear identity, which is maintained until the Akinmusire trumpet bends climate towards jazz. The combination is effective. The album is melodically elegant, harmonically sophisticated and has everything it takes to please a wide audience. (Translate by google) ~ Angelo Leonardi https://www.allaboutjazz.com/there-is-a-song-mette-juul-universal-international-review-by-angelo-leonardi.php

Personnel: Mette Juul: voce; Ambrose Akinmusire: tromba; Nikolaj Hess: pianoforte; Mike Moreno: chitarra; Joe Sanders: contrabbasso; Rodney Green: batteria.

There Is A Song

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Mette Juul - Coming In From The Dark

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 53:45
Size: 123.1 MB
Styles: Jazz vocals
Year: 2010
Art: Front

[5:19] 1. The Way You Close The Door
[7:13] 2. Coming In From The Dark
[2:39] 3. Old Devil Moon
[4:13] 4. Comes Love
[5:15] 5. Embraceable You
[3:41] 6. Valsen Er Min
[3:15] 7. What Is This Thing Called Love
[5:08] 8. Estate
[5:11] 9. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
[3:53] 10. Little Devil Blue
[4:11] 11. How Many Hours Must I Travel Alone
[3:42] 12. I Wish You Love

Mette Juul (vokal, guitar); Alex Riel (trommer); Heine Hansen (piano); Jesper Lundgaard (bas); Palle Mikkelborg (trompet); Poul Halberg (guitar).

Mette Juul is one of the finest jazz vocalists on the nordic jazz-scene. Her voice is warm and clear, and she interprets both her own songs, as well as songs written by great songwriters like Kenny Wheeler, Joni Mitchell, Monk and Cole Porter with nerve and personality. Mette Juul blasted her way into the hearts of many jazz critics back in 2010 with her debut album, “Coming In From The Dark”, with the legendary rhythm champion Alex Riel and his trio. Distinguished musicians such as trumpeter, Palle Mikkelborg, and guitarist, Poul Halberg, furthermore supported the young singer on her debut.

Coming In From The Dark