Nica Carrington: Times Like These

Even though she had been singing, more or less, since she was a child, it was not until the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic that New Yorker Nica Carrington came to realize that tomorrows come with no guarantees, and that the time had come to buckle down and get serious about her craft. After moving from one voice coach to another, Carrington happened upon Jazzvoice.com, an online resource founded by singer and educator Alexis Cole that offers private lessons, classes and videos. Even better, it employs the services of Los Angeles-based John Proulx, an esteemed singer, pianist, composer and recording artist. For Carrington, meeting Proulx at Jazzvoice was harmony at first sight. Within a year, she and her mentor were at the Big City Recording Studios in Granada Hills, California, to tape Carrington's debut album, Times Like These.

To help ensure its success, Proulx enlisted two of the West Coast's busiest and most talented jazz musicians, bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Joe La Barbera, to round out the rhythm section. Yes, it is probably not fair to have sidemen of that caliber lending their expertise on one's very first album, but that is the way it went. To say that the rhythm section is in good hands would be an obvious understatement.

As it turns out, the vocals are in capable hands as well. Carrington is a balladeer, a sensuous and perceptive story-teller whose mastery of the genre is exemplary, especially for someone expressing those sentiments for the first time on a recording. The voice is clear as a bell, the phrasing spot-on, the warmth and respect for the music impeccable—rather like her earliest role model, the incomparable Frank Sinatra. Carrington sings only ballads—almost all from the Great American Songbook—but does it so well that one cannot help being charmed and engaged by every number.

Any album that opens with Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer's sublimely enchanting "Skylark" has a leg up from the outset, and Carrington follows that masterwork with such time-honored evergreens as "When Sunny Gets Blue," "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," "We'll Be Together Again," "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Angel Eyes," among others, closing with the lesser-known but no less captivating "Here's to Life." And here's to Nica Carrington whose first-ever recording is a delight to hear and a pleasure to endorse.

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