Jazz Articles about Patricia Barber

Patricia Barber: A Fortnight In France

by Jim Santella
September 9, 2004

The modern mainstream has many champions. Patricia Barber is one of them. With her quartet, she worked concert halls for two weeks in Paris, Metz, Nice, and La Rochelle this past March and April to demonstrate for French audiences that we continue to experience surges of growth in the art form--as long as freedom of expression remains unhampered by social restrictions.

Paris, after all, was once considered the art capital of the world. Throughout several centuries, artists from ...

Patricia Barber: Complete; Not Complacent

by R.J. DeLuke
March 1, 2004

It's good to be Patricia Barber these days. The singer/pianist with the deep, winsome voice admittedly in a good place, getting gigs, getting recognition, amassing a following that, while not Diana Krall-ish in number, is strong and growing. And she's about to release a new CD on Blue Note, comprised of virtually all original music (one song is Verlaine prose adapted to her music). Verse , coming out this month, is also produced by Barber, and while ...

Patricia Barber Connects the Arts

by AAJ Staff
January 8, 2004

By Carolyn Graye

The longer I work in and around the arts, the more convinced I am that for many artists, the lives and careers they create for themselves are as interesting as the actual work they produce. I like to think about it in terms of the Zen parable in which the journey, not the destination, becomes the goal.

Singer/pianist/songwriter Patricia Barber is a study in contrasts and is living the parable. Her singing is expressive and intensely personal, ...

Patricia Barber: Verse

by Roger Crane
March 2, 2003

Verse is Patricia Barber's seventh album since her 1989 debut, Split, on the little known and poorly distributed Floyd Records, named after her musician father, Floyd Barber. Her second album, A Distortion of Love , was released on the Verve Antilles label and did not appear until three years later, but it brought the Chicago-based singer to public attention. Since 2000 she has been on the esteemed Blue Note label.

No one sounds like Barber--which, of course, is what you ...

Patricia Barber: Verse

by Jim Santella
September 6, 2002

Eclectic in everything she does, Patricia Barber has come up with a winner in Verse. Sound samples may be found at www.patriciabarber.com . All original material, Barber's songs tell stories and bring each tale's meaning around emphatically through modern mainstream jazz interpretations. Reaching into folk song territory, the vocalist provides timeless spiritual communication: made for jazz and designed to appeal to everyone who likes good vocal art. Dave Douglas, Neal Alger and Joey Baron prove superb partners for Barber's venture. ...

Patricia Barber: Verse

by Paul West
August 8, 2002

Patricia Barber's newest hybrid of cocktail hour blues and lush vocals jazz is on ample display in Verse, and the result is must listening - and on all ten tracks. Barber's ability to play by her own rules is remarkably assured and stylistically controlled, having a freedom many artists are rarely granted, a tribute to Barber's own calling the shots behind the scenes as well. At once hugely intimate and yet quite accessible, and smartly avoiding cliché, Barber's performing would ...

Patricia Barber: A Distortion of Love

by William Grim
July 17, 2002

Singer/pianist Patricia Barber never fails to amaze with her original material and her very unique takes on old standards. She is that rarest of jazz musicians--highly thoughtful, at times even cerebral, but always swinging--the kind of jazz musician Gerry Mulligan used to call a “wailing wig."

A Distortion of Love from 1992 showcases Patricia Barber the consummate jazz pianist as well as the chanteuse with the husky voice which has become her trademark of late. There are some ...