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Chris Madsen
Julia Danielle: Julia Danielle
by Richard J Salvucci
Julia Danielle is a young Chicago-based singer whose debut album shows considerable promise. Aside from a limpid contralto voice, good time, and a dead-on resemblance in profile to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (it cannot hurt), she is the epitome of effortlessness and good taste in her approach to the Great American Songbook. One ultimately suspects she will find her métier singing in the intimate setting of a small room backed precisely by the sympathetic support of the small band she ...
Continue ReadingJulia Danielle: Julia Danielle
by Katchie Cartwright
Julia Danielle has been working hard on her craft. She grew up in the Chicago area, singing in the Campanella Children's Choir, winning the International Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition in 2022 and earning an undergraduate degree from DePaul University in 2023. She is on track to graduate with a master's in jazz studies from Juilliard in 2026. On Julia Danielle, her self-titled debut, she reveals her skills as a budding singer and arranger in a set of familiar standards, ...
Continue ReadingPaul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet
by Pierre Giroux
Singer Paul Marinaro issued his acclaimed debut album Without A Song (122 Myrtle Records) in 2013. Seven years after the release of his follow-up, “One Night In Chicago" (122 Myrtle Records), and with almost a decade of performing from coast to coast at top-end clubs, including New York's Birdland, he has released Not Quite Yet, which is devoted to exploring timeless themes, such as life, love and the search for lasting connections. Accompanying Marinaro are longtime band members guitarist Mike ...
Continue ReadingPaul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet
by Richard J Salvucci
The cover of the album is vaguely noir, with the urban greenish cast of tungsten film. A sole figure leans slightly against a building, downcast, staring into his soul, and waiting out a lit cigarette when it was still hip to smoke. The guy is Frank Sinatra and the album was In The Wee Small Hours. The year is 1955. It is difficult to believe that Chicago-based vocalist Paul Marinaro has even been born, but clearly, Sinatra will make an ...
Continue ReadingLeah Crane: Lucky to Be Me
by Jane Kozhevnikova
Hailing from Indianapolis and based in Chicago, versatile singer Leah Crane released Lucky to Be Me in 2022 after working on it since 2019. Joining her on the album is Paul Langford, a Chicago-based singer, arranger, keyboardist, producer and conductor. The album also features Rob Dixon on saxophone, Daniel Duarte on guitar, Shawn Sommer on bass and Tom Hipskind on drums. Lucky To Be Me has a variety of instrumentation ranging from a duet to an ...
Continue ReadingChris Madsen: Bonfire
by Peter J. Hoetjes
The winds of change have been blowing over the record business for over two decades, altering the ways in which consumers listen to music. With the rise of internet-based services such as Spotify and YouTube, the prospect of an expensive trip to the recording studio has soured for many jazz musicians. Despite the fact that the days when their predecessors put out a new album each year have long gone the way of the dodo bird, there is still something ...
Continue ReadingChris Madsen: Pop Art
by Thomas Carroll
Freedom of musical form is one of the many beauties of jazz. Jazz musicians express themselves through improvisation over musical structures that they can alter at any moment, shifting through different meters, timbres and harmonic landscapes. However, musicians run the risk of becoming too self-invested when they engage in long-form improvisation. In those unfortunate instances when improvisers begin to neglect the audience or their fellow band mates, the freedom that makes jazz such a potent musical product becomes a nuisance, ...
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Night and Day
From: Julia DanielleBy Chris Madsen
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