Lauren Kinhan, Circle in a Square

New York Voices' singer Lauren Kinhan has a new album of her own out, Circle in a Square (Dotted i 1001). It gives us the exposed version of her consummate artistry, so to speak, and shows her as a songwriter of genuine talent.

She does this all with an excellent backing band that includes keyboardist Andy Ezrin, Will Lee on bass, plus special guests Randy Brecker, Donny McCaslin and Gary Versace, among others.

The title tune is a real winner but the others are too. It's modern contemporary jazz song smithing of the highest order. And her singing has the marvelous nuance that makes her formidable.

In this particular case that truly does cover what you get. You should hear this one. It's more than a keeper; it's a killer in what it does to/for you!

Lorraine Feather, Attachments

Some bloggers only do certain music, just chamber classical, for example, or just free jazz. Not to toot my own horn but my blogs reflect the scope of what I listen to when left to my own resources, which generally is not EVERYTHING, but there is an interlocking set of musics that all come together for me as "music". Well, duh, what else would it be?

So today I present to you a recording that the free folks may not expect, or the high boppers. Of course that matters little at the moment because I REALLY like this album. Now who could it be? Well you probably already glanced at the headline to this post so you know already. It's singer Lorraine Feather and her latest, Attachments (Jazzed Media 1063). You may recall that last April 18th I covered her with Stephanie Trick and their Nouveau Stride duo, which floored me.

So Lorraine is back in her solo guise. This isn't her first in that zone. I have not heard the others. Attachments needs no "before" however to motivate. It's a collection of songs to which she contributed the lyrics, some in collaboration with contemporary musicsmiths, others, like Bach, not. Ms. Feather sings very well, very very well, and so let's get that out of the way, though that is the point in many ways. She has dead-on pitch, great phrasing, and a charming individual sound to those pipes. OK?

But there's more here. Her lyrics are especially concerned with relationships and their complex ups and downs, loneliness and togetherness, sometimes combined in the same moment, and they are stunning. Somehow she combines the sensibilities of Annie Ross, Jon Hendricks and Joni Mitchell. Sad, funny, all kinds of poetic expressions come into play here, and they are combined with some beautiful musical song forms.

It's mostly a small combo, good players. Some of it is jazz in the up sense, sometimes its balladry, always there are twists and turns. "159," the title cut "Attachments," most all of it. These are definitive versions of really great songs. There are definite standard possibilities in many of the songs going forward, but they are so Lorraine that you feel you know her inner being after hearing it all.

I don't want to overstate it, but I am mightily impressed with this record. Great songs are very hard to come by today, as any listen to the Top 40 stations or even many Broadway shows will remind you forcibly. Attachments has real song crafting in the way it used to be and still can be. And Lorraine Feather sings them all with a musicality that cannot be ignored.

Wow.

Chris McNulty, The Song That Sings You Here

Singers. Jazz singers. So many out there right now. So many releases. And in the thick of it all it sometimes hits me that to be a really great "jazz singer" is perhaps one of the hardest feats of all. You have the spirits of the titans behind you, never gone because so much a part of the tradition. Billie, Sarah, Ella, Carmen, Betty. Tough acts to follow. Some make it different, try to break the mould and go the way they hear it. Others straddle the tradition and give us mainstream styling that nonetheless is original.

Chris McNulty is in the latter mode. And she is very good. The Song That Sings You Here (Challenge 73341) will give you a good listen. It's Chris and a jazz combo. There are some McNulty originals, good ones. There are some standards not typically done, "How are Things in Glocca Morra," "Jitterbug Waltz," the beautifully bittersweet, regretful "Last Night When We Were Young."

She has subtlety, a nice instrument, phrasing chops. The arrangements have a limber quality yet do not seem "thrown together" with any sort of haste. And there are solid soloists to step in for a little instrumentality between choruses. Mike Ledonne gives us a nifty arrangement of "On the Street Where You Live" and Chris gives us a very nice set of vocalizings overtop.

So here's a good one! It's not rehashed by-the-numbers stuff. It stands out.

Tianna Hall & The Mexico City Jazz Trio, Two for the Road

With "jazz singers", "you'll know when you get there." You'll also know when you don't. In the case of Tianna Hall and her album with the Mexico City Jazz Trio, Two For the Road (Mighty Pretty Records), I knew after only a minute into the CD. Then the rest of the program continued to let me know. Tianna Hall has that creative tension that allows her to take an old standard and bring crackling electricity into its re-presentation.

She has some very nuanced ways that we expect from a singer of the "A" class. Rhythmically, she can and does break it down and rebuild the phrase structures like a horn. Her voice quality is very attractive and she can pinpoint the amount of vibrato, the emphasis on a lyric by accentuation, the limber yet taught phrasing of stanzas. She is something else!

It most certainly doesn't hurt that the Mexico City Jazz Trio is a kicking threesome. That they are.

The song choices are what works for her. So "Till There Was You" comes alive in a Tianese zone, as does "I'm Going to Sit Write Down and Write Myself a Letter". Those who read my columns know how sick I can be of standards these days. But with Tianna Hall, it's new again. She kicks it, all the way through the town and then some. And there are some songs not especially well known in standard town, too, like "Creep", that she positively takes over and owns...completely.

Hear her. There's drama and it is unfeigned. There's musicality and it is real.

Joyce Cobb, Now Here is a SINGER

While we babble about new jazz vocalists and how some of them are best left in some sort of mellow but isolated world where we don't have to hear them (no offense to the good ones) along comes somebody that, from the very first notes she sings, makes you forget about all that. I refer to Ms. Joyce Cobb and her self-titled album (Archer 31934). Now I have to say she totally convinces me.

Start with the accompaniment. It is pretty ideal. Michael Jefry Stevens, his piano and his trio. Mr. Stevens has rapidly become one of those players that defines how one can proceed out of an Evans-Jarrett sophistication of harmony and line and make of it something that is Michael Jefry Stevens music. He swings; he thinks; he executes; he plows new fields without a tractor. He is a joy on this one (and his own albums are well worth hearing too).

Then Joyce Cobb. She exudes jazz. She phrases in a totally Cobbian way. She changes her vocal tone almost bar by bar. She has a terrific sense of time. She recomposes standards in ways that convince. There's none of that "tricky, show-off hijinks, Charlie the Tuna style." She ad libs as she feels it. And she feels it. This is what singing is about.

There's a very nice choice of repertoire: "Moody's Mood," a couple of Monk tunes, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (and Daddy sure doesn't sound like old pops), "In Walked Bud". . . .

She gives each one her own spin. And Michael Jefry Stevens on piano, Jonathan Wires on contrabass, and drummer Renardo Ward sound terrific. They are true col-laborators on this one.

Now I suppose I could make comparisons (Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Carmen McRae) and she would hold up under such scrutiny. Because in her own way she has that powerful, deceptively off-hand way about her.

You like the vocal part of the music? I would recommend you HEAR this one.