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Articles | Popular | Future
Paul Bley, Yazz Ahmed, Gianluigi Trovesi, Matthieu Michel and tons of great new releases
Accordion players, saxophonists, clarinet and trombone players as well as compelling singers are at the heart of this week's focus on new releases. Give a listen and then make sure to support the musicians and the labels that put out this amazing music so that the prolific jazz phase we live in can go on, and possibly keep getting better... Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Massimiliano Milesi “Redshift" Oofth (Auand) ...
read morePatricia Barber: Higher
Patricia Barber is more than the sum of her talents. As a composer, she peels back the craft of song to expose its barest textures, cultivating each like a tree that, while holding its own shape above ground, makes apparent the roots below it. As a singer, she understands not only that we perform our voices but also that our voices perform us. Whether crooning through the Great American Songbook, as on Nightclub (Blue Note, 2000), or rowing through intensely ...
read moreA Conversation with Pianist and Singer Patricia Barber
Patricia Barber's new album, Higher, is a storybook of songs complete with captivating—and sometimes outré—lyrics and a masterful story teller. Join Patricia and me, as she talks about art songs, European audience vs American audience, Shirley Horn, and other subtly related subjects. Higher features Patricia Barber on piano and voice, Patrick Mulcahy on bass, Jon Deitemyer on drums, Neal Alger on acoustic guitar, Jim Gailloreto on tenor saxophone, and Katherine Werbiansky on voice. Playlist ...
read morePatricia Barber: Smash
Vocalist/pianist Patricia Barber's 25-year career has been brilliantly marked by a complete unwillingness to compromise her approach to music. She exists in that uncharted creative realm where she successfully defies classification as a purveyor of any particular musical movement or genre. These characteristics spotlight Barber's role as an innovator and catalyst for musical evolution, a musician performing from the front edge rather than the middle of the creative muse. Barber readily shows her chops with standard and original material on ...
read morePatricia Barber: The Cole Porter Mix
The mix here is a Cole Porter cocktail, a dry martini but with a touch of jalapeno instead of olive. And while there are strains of melancholy, as Barber says in the notes: “Cole Porter never wrote a song that said 'I'm miserable.'" That jalapeno heat comes from the evocative jazz arrangements and solos, especially those of guest tenor saxophonist Chris Potter (on five of the 13 tracks) and acoustic and electric guitarist Neal Alger, as well as the singer's ...
read morePatricia Barber: The Cole Porter Mix
Patricia Barber is absolutely one of a kind. There are any number of jazz vocalists who have good voices, pitch, time, and piano chops; there are others who also sing as if they were looking straight into your eyes. But there is no one who is so consistently iconoclastic, and so deliberately intellectual. Ever since her first CD in 1989, abstract headiness has defined Barber's compositions and delivery; it was the core of her Mythologies release (Blue Note, 2003), a ...
read morePatricia Barber: Mythologies
Poetry and music are two peas in a pod. For the past two millennia the Roman poet Ovid has inspired artists of all kinds, from poets and playwrights to filmmakers and musicians. Most recently, his timeless tales served as an inspiration to Patricia Barber, who is an accomplished musician and a poet in her own right.
Listeners who are familiar with Barber's work tend to expect thought-provoking lyrics, complex composition, innovative improvisation and sensual vocals, and this CD is no ...
read morePatricia Barber: Mythologies
In much the same way that a visual artist paints memorable themes on canvas, Patricia Barber puts her ideas into music by establishing an open avenue of communication with her audience. Her voice is always a pleasure. Her piano work is comfortable in the context of her role as storyteller. Her compositions are deep enough that we'll revisit them again and again.
Barber puts the blues into each of her adventurous musical portraits. Her quartet partners, guitarist Neal ...
read morePatricia Barber: Live: A Fortnight in France
The mere mention of a woman speaking French is enough to set many men's imaginations to wandering. If she's singing it, and has a pleasant voice to boot, the listener--male or female--can't help but smile. Although Patricia Barber only offers Français on one track of her latest album, Live: A Fortnight in France , it is one of the many high points. Recorded early in 2004 at clubs in three French cities (L'Arsenal in Metz, La Coursive in ...
read morePatricia Barber: A Fortnight in France
Patricia Barber has always been edgy, iconoclastic, and daring, and she has committed the cardinal sin of insisting on creative control of her product. After seven albums on her own label (Premonition) or in cooperation with Blue Note, this is the first to be released exclusively by the latter.
Not coincidentally, her music is unique and instantly identifiable: powerful and passionate, but also whimsical and tongue-in-cheek. Barber is a skilled pianist and supple singer who can be sensitive ...
read morePatricia Barber: A Fortnight In France
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 ...
read morePatricia Barber: Complete; Not Complacent
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 ...
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