Jazz Articles about Raya Yarbrough

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Raya Yarbrough: Raya Yarbrough

by AAJ Italy Staff
October 28, 2008

L'esordio della giovane cantante (e pianista e chitarrista) Raya Yarbrough è di una certa qualità e fa subito venire in mente Norah Jones e le sue canzoni a metà fra pop, world, jazz, se non fosse che qui abbiamo a che fare con una che si scrive la maggior parte dei testi e delle musiche da sola dimostrando un bel mestiere come compositrice. Se nel brano d'apertura viene celebrato con eleganza il blues più terrestre, altrove si procede per altre ...

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Raya Yarbrough: Raya Yarbrough

by Woodrow Wilkins
March 2, 2008

In an age when even some of the most firmly established veteran artists are releasing albums of cover songs--whether the tried and true selection of standards from the Great American Songbook, or updates of more recent popular tunes--it is quite refreshing to hear a debut artist sing mostly original songs. Raya Yarbrough, a West Coast product of a mixed-race relationship and mixed musical influences, penned eight of the 12 songs on her self-titled release.Yarbrough was seven when her ...

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Raya Yarbrough: Raya Yarbrough

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
February 27, 2008

It's always a pleasure to welcome another genre-busting talent, and Raya Yarbrough, the LA-based singer/songwriter whose music is an artful mix of jazz, blues and pop, is just that.

Yarbrough acquired her B.A. from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, where she won the Quincy Jones Award and the Herb Alpert Scholarship; later, she was selected for a Betty Carter Jazz Ahead composition residency at the Kennedy Center. One of her ...

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Raya Yarbrough: Raya Yarbrough

by C. Michael Bailey
February 26, 2008

Raya Yarbrough's eponymous disc cover shows a young, fresh, precocious face. The voice revealed in the disc's 12 selections, exhibits one that is older and more experienced than the cover's appearance betrays. While this disc will certainly be filed under jazz, it is much, much more. About the only way to introduce Raya Yarbrough is to say that she has arrived.

The best way to describe Yarbrough is that she takes up where Cassandra Wilson left off in ...