Lizz Wright
"Music lives in that place where anything can be picked up. It can become a different statement in someone else's hands than in my hands. The fact that it can be passed from hand to hand is something beautiful, almost spiritual. It means different things in different places, and I approached this record as if there is no history. I was just a voice, and I loved it."
Lizz Wright
With her latest album, Dreaming Wide Awake, Lizz has simultaneously delivered a record with "no history" and yet one that embraces the history of jazz, gospel, rhythm- and-blues and the singer-songwriter tradition. It is a record where Lizz Wright's voice and vision seamlessly marry songs once performed by Neil Young, Fats Waller, The Beatles, Madonna and Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass to self-penned originals and her collaborations with some of today's most gifted songwriters to create one of the most strikingly original albums of the year.
For the new album, Lizz chose to work with Craig Street, a producer famous for his work with a broad palette of singers (Cassandra Wilson, k.d. lang, Me'Shell NdegéOcello) to shape an incredibly personal album that Lizz feels best reflects who she is right now: "When I first met Craig, he asked me what I liked to listen to and I said I really like stuff like Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice and Sarah McLachlan. I love songs that create moments. At the same time I had this dilemma where I've been trained to sing gospel, choral music and a little bit of opera and was very used to being technical. But I wanted to make the move away from those styles."
The twelve songs that create moments on Dreaming Wide Awake range from Lizz's self-penned title track to The Youngbloods' Summer of Love anthem "Get Together," from her co-writes "Hit the Ground" and "Trouble" to the 1960's pop smash "A Taste of Honey" and from originals by Marc Anthony Thompson (a.k.a. "Chocolate Genius") to Neil Young's classic "Old Man."
The middle child of a minister from rural Georgia, Lizz took the music world by storm in 2003 with breakout performances at Billie Holiday tributes in Chicago and Los Angeles and with her debut album Salt (Verve), where her rich gospel-trained contralto soared amidst a soulful R&B-meets-jazz setting. The New York Times' Stephen Holden was moved to call her "a young singer and songwriter of astonishing maturity and poise" and write that "in her debut album and on the stage, Ms. Wright delivers spun gold . stir(ring) jazz, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues into a reflective, flowing style that elongates songs into prayerful meditations that never wander into vagueness. Pitch-perfect, with a smoky, full- bodied texture . impressive in its steadiness, control and rhythmic subtlety."
Read moreTags
Album Review
- Salt by Michael Fortuna
- Dreaming Wide Awake by Stephen Latessa
- Dreaming Wide Awake by Chris M. Slawecki
Live Review
Working Out to Jazz
Album Review
- Freedom & Surrender by James Nadal
- Grace by James Nadal
Live Review
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Bringing It All Back Home | Lizz Wright | News