Jazz Articles about Lauren Hooker

Lauren Hooker: Life Of The Music

by Bruce Lindsay
December 7, 2010

Singer and pianist Lauren Hooker takes chances on Life Of The Music, her second album. She sets her own compositions up against classics of American music, re-works old favourites and uses some vocal shifts and inflections that other singers might think twice about. And thank goodness she does, because in doing so Hooker has assembled a refreshingly original set that both challenges and brings out the best in the singer and the top-flight band that accompanies her. ...

Lauren Hooker: Life Of The Music

by Dan Bilawsky
October 28, 2010

In 2007, vocalist Lauren Hooker turned out an impressive debut, Right Where I Belong (Musical Legends, Inc., 2007), which highlighted her solid, yet flexible, voice, and an ability to graft her own lyrics onto familiar instrumental jazz standards. Three years later, Hooker returns with a program that largely focuses on her own lyrics and music, demonstrating interests in the blues, straight-ahead jazz, funk, pop and Brazilian music. The opening track--a collaboration between Hooker and poet Jeanette Curtis ...

Lauren Hooker: Right Where I Belong

by Marcia Hillman
January 10, 2008

Lauren Hooker shows off her multi-faceted talent in this, her debut CD. Teaming up with Allen Farnham (piano), Rufus Reid (bass) and Tim Horner (drums and percussion), Hooker runs through a selection of jazz standards and originals. Her originals break down into two types: original lyrics for instrumental standards and new pieces. The former included here are by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Mal Waldron, Wayne Shorter and Fats Waller. Her lyrical take on Monk's “Well You Needn't ...

Lauren Hooker: Right Where I Belong

by Michael P. Gladstone
May 23, 2007

It turns out that not only does jazz singer Lauren Hooker have some impressive credentials, her debut album is also filled with surprises. Born into a musical family, (her father recorded with Bill Evans during their college days in New Jersey), Hooker assumed a career as an entertainer during the early 1980s as well as being a musical educator at The Bank Street School for Children in Manhattan.

Her first big break came in 1989, when she recorded ...