Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:18
Size: 119.7 MB
Styles: Vocal jazz
Year: 2005
Art: Front
[5:30] 1. In My Own Little Corner
[5:38] 2. I Can't Say No
[4:44] 3. Lush Life
[4:16] 4. Some Cats Know
[2:48] 5. Slow Boat To China
[5:16] 6. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
[4:15] 7. My Head's Ok But Heart's Not Smart
[6:52] 8. Some Other Time
[3:30] 9. Call Me
[3:40] 10. Hit The Road Jack, Why Don't You Do Right
[5:44] 11. Time After, You Make Me Feel So Young
I was born in Long Island, New York on an Air Force base and have been mobile ever since. “Home” was many places growing up: Japan, Germany, Thailand, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and later on my own in California, Minnesota, Texas, Massachusetts, South Carolina and China. My first encounters with the jazz idiom came from my father’s record collection: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Gleason, Louis Armstrong, Sophie Tucker. Highlights of my jazz education include seeing Ellington perform under the stars, seaside, in a bandshell, along with French sophisticates in Marseilles, France; watching Ella perform in San Francisco and Minneapolis; at age 9 sitting front-row to hear Louis Armstrong sing; taking workshops with Sheila Jordan and Kurt Elling; and having the opportunity to perform with great musicians like Tuna Otenel in Turkey, to Bucky Pizzarelli in South Carolina. I started singing at age 7 on in choirs, musical theater, symphony choruses and in jazz settings -- duos, trios, quartets, quintets, and once in a while big bands -- all the while working at various other jobs in life...
My life veered toward China when the opportunity to be a Chinese Mandarin linguist in the army reserves presented itself. After the army sent me to language school (basic training and radio operation school first!) I had the opportunity to study in China from 1981-82 in Shanxi, Taiyuan as a graduate exchange student from the University of South Carolina. Then graduate school at the University of Minnesota brought me an M.A. in East Asian Studies and a summer job as a tour guide in China, and the chance to work at China’s most prestigious art academy in Zhejiang Province in the beautiful city of Hangzhou. It was at this art academy I came to fully appreciate the arts of China, from calligraphy to landscape painting. I took a year at Harvard to study Classical Chinese, then worked for a non-profit study abroad consortium taking students to study Chinese at Beijing University. I later helped SBC, Inc (now AT&T) open an office in Beijing. I lived corporate, non-profit, and student lives in China - all diverse, but interesting experiences in a country now making headlines on a daily basis. Jazz in Beijing was just getting going in the 90s. I sang with a Chinese-Japanese quintet there called Beijing Jazz for six months in the Foreign Correspondents Club overlooking the city of 12 million. We jammed with ambassadors and businessmen from around the world. Sometimes Cui Jian, China’s rock star, would come in to play his horn. He sounded a lot like Miles Davis at times. On my last return from China I decided to take the folksongs I’d collected there and turn them into a jazz project. It’s a unique offering of East-West fusion, easy on the ears, very listenable.
Jazzz...d
