2024 Jazz Vocalists

Here are five notable vocal jazz releases that have come out in the first half of 2024.

Jacqui Naylor
Treasures of the Heart
Ruby Star Records
2024

Jacqui Naylor is a veteran singer with a distinctive husky voice. Her 12th album is a warm combination of original songs and familiar pop covers done in an eclectic mix of styles. Her treatments of familiar tunes like Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" and Cindi Lauper's "True Colors" are soulful and mature. Among the songs Naylor wrote with her husband, pianist Art Khu , "Happy Adventure" is breezy and romantic, "Picture Book of You" has a sprightly Caribbean playfulness, and "Love's Around" is deep percussive funk. All are put over well by the sense of experience and confidence in Naylor's singing.

Nancy Erickson Lamont
Through the Passages
Self-Produced
2024

Seattle's Nancy Erickson Lamont co-wrote all the songs on her album which cover a wide range of styles and moods. On "Miles Between" her expressive voice floats over strings and piano in a romantic swoon while "Ghost" is a more sinister tune about bad love affairs, filled out with an ominous reeds-and-strings arrangement. The impish "G'n'K" shows Lamont's prowess at singing over twisty jazz rhythms, while "The Lighthouse" is a formal art song with Johnaye Kendrick's violin wrapping around Lamont's gliding voice and Shawn Schlogel's piano. "Rainy Season Love Affair" is a classy bossa nova highlighted by the warmth in the singer's voice and the background horn arrangement.

Alyssa Allgood
From Here
Next Records
2024

This album, by Chicago vocalist Alyssa Allgood, is more of a true jazz session than the first two discussed. There is plenty of room given for the four musicians behind Allgood to stretch out and engage her powerful singing. "Burn," dedicated to Betty Carter, has all five musicians mixing it up furiously with pianist Geoffrey Keezer and saxophonist Greg Ward standing out. Allgood's singing dives into gospel-tinged swing on "Brave Little Flower" and fits beautifully over the simmering rhythms Keezer, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Kendrick Scott lay down on "Other Side." By contrast, she approaches Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" with a disarming lightness that fits well next to Ward's soft blowing.

Roxana Amed
Becoming Human
Sony Music Latin
2024

Roxana Amed's Becoming Human has an autobiographical concept. It revisits crucial moments in her life, dating all the way back to her birth. The music often has a drifting, dreamlike quality. Amed's voice hovers wordlessly over a fog of synths, piano and horns when she is not singing actual lyrics. Individual highlights include the melancholy "Our Days of Summer" with ghostly clarinet and trombone behind Amed's haunted vocal, the tense, electronic stomping of "Wild" where Martin Bejerano's keyboards and Mark Small's reeds shriek next to Amed's voice, and the forceful "Then We Built A Home" with hard-edged tenor sax and melodic traces of "Maiden Voyage."

John Minnock
A Different Riff: Minnock Sings Shire
Dot Time
2024

This is the only album in this review where the singer did not write any of the songs. Instead, John Minnock, who passed away in February 2024, devoted this set to the work of composer David Shire. Minnock's singing had a sense of theatricality and drama well suited to both grand ballads like "What About Today?" and crafty jazz wailers like "A Different Riff." Pianist Sean Mason accompanies him with a wide range of styles from solemn romance to up-tempo bop and stomping honky tonk. Dave Liebman also adds his usual excellent soprano sax work in several places but the main attraction here is John Minnock. He can be heart-rending playing the tender lover on beautiful tunes like "Autumn" and "With You I'm Born Again," and enjoyable being a hip jazz singer on "Only Jazz," but his show-stopping performance comes on the slow-walking strut of "Only When I Laugh," a bittersweet goodbye song he shouts to the rafters. This track alone conveys that Minnock was a special singer.

Tracks and Personnel

Treasures of the Heart

Tracks: I Didn't Know What Time It Was; Treasures Of The Heart; All That We Could Be; Happy Adventure; Walk Out In The Sun; Love's Around; True Colors; You're The One For Me; Love In Springtime; Lovely Day; Picture Book Of You; This Guy's In Love With You; Hold On; We'll Shine Through.

Personnel: Jacqui Naylor: vocals; Art Khu: piano, organ, rhodes, celeste, guitars; Richie Goods; basses; Ele Howell: drums, percussion; Erik Jekabson: trumpet, flugelhorn.

Through the Passages

Tracks: Tick Tock; Miles Between; Passages; Ghost; Leo; Rainy Season Love Affair; G 'n' K; Did It Did or Did It Didn't; The Lighthouse; Haiku New Love; Home; Auf Weidersehen, Goodnight.

Personnel: Nancy Erickson Lamont: vocals; Josh Nelson: piano, keyboard, organ; Shawn Schlogel, piano (1,2,4,79); Chris Symer: bass (1,2,4,7,9); Michael Glynn: bass (3,5,6,8,10,11); Stefan Schatz: drums; Johnaye Kendrick: violin, viola, harmonium; background vocals; Sean Jones: trumpet; Brent Jensen: alto saxophone; Jerome Smith: trombone; Derek Smith: bass clarinet: Jean Chaumont: guitar.

From Here

Tracks: Burn (For Betty); Your Wings; Both Sides Now; Brave Little Flower; No Good; Other Side; Dream; On A Clear Day; Still Searching; Above All Else; Time Told; Turn To Gold.

Personnel: Alyssa Allgood: vocals; Geoffrey Keezer: piano; John Patitucci: bass; Kendrick Scott: drums; Greg Ward: saxophone.

Becoming Human

Tracks: A Prayer; Pequena Voz; Un Destello; Our Days Of Summer; Those Horses Running In The Mist; Climbing Up My Spine; Wild; Then We Built A Home; In This Lonely Room; Una Plegaria; Epilogo.

Personnel: Roxana Amed: voice, composition; Martin Bejerano: piano, synths; Mark Small, tenor sax, soprano sax, flute clarinet, bass clarinet; Kendall Moore: trombone; Edward Perez: bass; Ludwig Afonso: drums.

A Different Riff: Minnock Sings Shire

Tracks: What About Today?; I Don't Remember Christmas; Autumn; A Different Riff; With You I'm Born Again; Back on Base; Only When I Laugh; After All These Years; Only Jazz; Starting Here, Starting Now; With You I'm Born Again (Bonus Instrumental).

Personnel: John MInnock: vocals; Dave Liebman: soprano sax; Sean Mason: piano; Mark Lewandowski: bass; Pablo Eluchans: drums.

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