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Soliloguy
Brooks
Label: SBM
Released: 2025
Views: 116
Tracks
1. Soul Eyes- Mal Waldren 4:56 2. Talks A Good Game - Sylvia Brooks, Christian Jacob, TONE Scott 3:17 3. Fragile- Sting 3:49 4. A Letter to Sophie- Sylvia Brooks, Christian Jacob 3:55 5. Lizzie's Dance- Sylvia Brooks, Christian Jacob, TONE Scott 5:37 6. Instinct of Love- Sylvia Brooks, Christian Jacob 5:51 7. Temptation- Tom Waits 3:25 8. I Was Telling Him About You- Moose Charlap, Don George 3:51
Personnel
Brooks
vocals
Christian Jacob
piano
Kevin Axt
bass
Kevin Winard
percussionFarzin Farhadi
saxophone
Grant Geissman
guitarAdditional Personnel / Information
Michelle Jensen- Choral Director for Choir- "Fragile" Choir- Brian Sidders, Rebecca Tomasko, Eliya Franz, Makenna Malkin, Sophia Kaloustian, Benjamin Hall, Joshua McGowen, Coen Sosa
Album Description
It’s rare that an eloquent jazz vocalist embarks on a lyrical odyssey that encompasses the wonders of life, the challenges, the disappointments, the heartbreaks, with such vivid descriptions and characterizations that the ordinary is seen in a new light. On her impassioned sixth recording, Soliloquy, jazz stylist and songwriter Sylvia Brooks creates a work of Lyric Jazz, comprised of four standards and four originals (co-written with her pianist/arranger Christian Jacob), informed by tales of obstacles, romance, triumphs, compassion, and beauty. Soliloquy was released on SBM Records on June 5.
“At their core, though the circumstances may differ, these are songs that move me, or I was moved to write. I have lived through similar situations and empathize with the people that I have observed," Brooks says. A classically trained mezzo soprano with a three-octave range, her voice has diffused into an expressive and agile, multi-faceted instrument which instantly draws the listener in.
Brooks is joined by her longtime songwriting collaborator, arranger and co-producer Christian Jacob. The superb pianist's compositions and arrangements create an ambience of soulful elegance, perfect for Brooks' voice. The band includes saxophonist Farzin Farhadi, guitarist Grant Geissman, bassist Kevin Axt and drummer Kevin Winard. The album was recorded live at Malibu’s Dragonfly Creek Recording Studios with engineer/mixer Charley Pollard at the board.
The depth of Brooks’ stimulating journey through the eight tunes creates a storytelling tapestry revealing a range of settings and emotions. In her liner notes, Brooks writes, “In my choice of songs, I wanted to bring to light the difficulties we face every day—the courage it takes to be true to ourselves, the mistakes that we make, and the pain that we feel. We all choose to deal with our humanity in different ways”.
The album opens with a beauty, Mal Waldron’s ballad “Soul Eyes,” about the vagaries of allowing someone into your life at such deep levels. Brooks sings with soulful knowing.
On the second tune, the tempo swings into a playful bounce on the Brooks-Jacob-Scott original, “Talks a Good Game.” “This song is about a broken man,” she says. “He is manipulative and lives in a narcissistic bubble; he doesn’t realize the damage he does to himself and others, and what living on that superficial plane leaches from his life."
The third song and first single from Soliloquy is Brooks’s haunting delivery of Sting’s “Fragile" from his 1987 sophomore album Nothing Like the Sun. “The chord structures and jazz harmonies express the fragility of our human condition,” she says. Suggesting to Jacob that they use a choir instead of strings for color, the song opens with eight voices, directed by Michelle Jensen, with Jacob keeping the same melody but adding more sophisticated harmonies.
The next original, the movingly expressed "A Letter to Sophie,” was inspired by an exhibit of the French Observation artist Sophie Calle. Brooks was transfixed by a letter- that goodbye letter- from her lover with whom she was looking forward to an intimate encounter. " For many months they’ve met here, in the shadows of the day, she lays in anticipation, his touch carries her away”, her lyrics say.
The most powerful song of beauty and joy comes with “Lizzie’s Dance,” (co-written by Jacob and Scott). It is a celebratory story of how Brooks came to encounter young Down Syndrome girl who she saw dancing with a group of eight-year-olds at a recital. She was out of sync, out of the group’s rhythm, but in a rhythm all her own. I was so moved by her courage,” she says, “that I knew I had to write a song about her.”
The fourth original is the dramatic, romantic and sax-swelled “Instinct of Love”. Alexandra, a British socialite, meets Spencer a big-game hunter in Africa. They fall in love and she follows him, leaving everything behind. In the 1920s –that was an unheard-of act for a woman. “I wanted to share her fearlessness”, Brooks says.
Temptation, the second released single- written by Tom Waits, is about “making a deal with the devil ...When you cross that bridge and can’t get that piece of yourself back”.
The end song of the album, “I Was Telling Him About You,” was written by Morris Charlap and Don George in 1956 and made popular by Nancy Wilson in 1973. Brooks notes about the song: "Again, it’s about the battle within ourselves, the tightrope we walk between right and wrong, between what we want to do but know that we shouldn’t do.”
“Soliloquy to me is about the struggles we all face, the two sides of the coin—the darkness and the light. And the courage it takes to just be human.”
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