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Faith Gibson Returning to Berlin to Record CD in April

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American jazz vocalist Faith Gibson announced today that she will start production of a new CD in Berlin in April, 2009. The sessions, to be recorded at the award-winning Audio Cue studio, will feature some of the city's most sought-after jazz musicians.



Since the release of her debut CD You Don't Know Me in 2004, Gibson has found a second musical home in Berlin, within the lively jazz scene of Germany's pulsating, “poor but sexy" (as its mayor famously called it) capital city. She played a number of gigs there throughout 2006 and 2007, gaining a solid reputation with the city's top jazz musicians and a loyal fan base.



Back “home" near Cologne, she has appeared regularly not only in local clubs and festivals, but also had a supporting role in a “German-American" musical at the Theater Bonn.



Yet 2008 found her spending a good deal of time at the piano and the computer: writing her own songs and networking online with other gifted jazz songwriters and musicians via MySpace and The Jazz Network, not to mention gaining a number of new fans. One MySpace friendship led to two appearances in Ghent, Belgium last fall.



In February 2008, Gibson began hosting her own Internet radio program Blossom's Vocal Jazz on Live365, where she plays cuts from her huge collection of vocal jazz CDs for a growing audience. The show was chosen an Editor's Pick a few months after its launch and has 1,000 regular listeners around the world.



Although she decided it was high time for a new CD a year ago, it wasn't until she connected with Brooklyn-based songwriter Christopher Morse that the concept for her next album slowly began to take shape. “What drew me were his lyrics. They were the kind I've always admired and hoped to write: wry, witty and poignant in the tradition of the best writers of our American Songbook.



When I asked him to mentor me, much to my surprise he responded that he'd rather collaborate with me. Seems he liked my work, too!" says Gibson.



Corresponding via email and MySpace, the two began working together on a number of songs one of which they were then able to record as a demo when she visited New York while on vacation in October. “Between the Lines" is one of the songs that Gibson will record for her next CD in April in addition to other songs by herself and Morse, two by acclaimed U.K. songwriter Dave Gill, one by French composer Emmanuel Hrault, not to mention some of her favorite but seldom heard standards by Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington.



“Although I'm aware that more and more people (myself included) download single tracks when they purchase music, this will be an album with an underlying theme. I mean, whenever any artist enters the studio, whether consciously or not, they end up recording songs that reflect what they are going through. So my choice of songs is basically straight from my heart from how I feel at this point in my life," the singer explains, “the perilous journey of the heart in and out of love."



Why Berlin? “My last gig there was in July 2007, but it was a dream-come-true to work with [pianist] Wolfgang Koehler then. When I finally asked myself which of the many people I've worked with would I trust to do the best job producing and arranging songs for a CD, he was always the first person who came to mind." Wolfgang Koehler, professor for jazz piano at the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in Berlin since 1999, has toured extensively with German and international groups and big bands he was back on tour throughout Europe last year with the Allan Praskin/Wolfgang Koehler Quartet in addition to gaining acclaim as a composer and arranger, through his work in television and theater and in a number of concerts and recordings with the RIAS Big Band and Jiggs Whigham.



Gibson, Koehler and the hand-picked band including Lars Guehlcke on bass and Felix Astor on drums will record the tracks in early April. The album as yet untitled will be manufactured and released in the U.S.A. As a songwriter, Gibson is affiliated with ASCAP and the majority of her CD sales so far have been in the States. She is looking forward to reaching an even larger audience with a CD of “new" and established standards and organizing an American promotional tour in the near future.

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