Vocalist and arranger Kayle’ Brecher makes music like a stroll through a modern art museum. This collection of eleven tunes, some standards, some originals are like a kaleidoscope of sounds and moods, each uniquely created, fitting into the whole of the album like a colored tile in a mosaic.
She mixes and matches musicians like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery, creating a sort of female Tom Waits mood on the funky “Wild Child” or frisky “So It Goes” with bass trombone, sousaphone and trumpet on the latter, or edgy keyboards by David Dzubinski during a harrowing “Cool”. She shows she can also bop with the best, creating a vocalese line with Chico Huff on a Gil-Scott Heronish “Spy Music” while violinist Benjamin Sutin builds up to a dramatic climax on a wild ride of a fusiony take of Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay”. This white knuckler of an album will have you going back over and over on some of the tunes, with you asking yourself “How did she come up with that?”. Can she pull this off in concert? I’d love to find out!