Yes, there are women, and there are men. These are women. Thank you…
Vocalist Katriona Taylor mixes her own material with clever remakes of standards with her supporting team of Vasilis Xenopoulos/sax-fl, Robin Banerjee/g, Dominic Ashworth/g, John Crawford/p, Peter Hammond/key, Dave Jones/b and Chris Nickills/dr. She’s piercingly blue on her own “Things Have Changed” , deeply dark with Jones’ bass on “In The Name Of Love” and wears nylons well with guitarist Ashworh on “Sunny Days”, penetrating deep with Xenopoulos’ flute on “In This Place”. She gallops over Nickolls’ drums on the exuberant read of “It Don’t Mean A Thing” and slowly undulates with soprano sax moods on a sensuous “Light My Fire”, getting haunting on “A Song For You” and kinetic on a cleverly Latinized read of Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster”. Creative coos.
Sally Terrell adds the composing pen to her own vocals along with bringing in some arranged standards by pianist and musical director John di Martino, a horn team of Aaron Meick/Tim Ouimette, guitarist Wesley Amorim, bassist Lonnie Plaxico/ drummer Vince Cherico, percussionist Samuel Torres and guest vocalists. She oozes soul with Heick’s alto sax on her “Beautiful” and “Choose” while tensile and artsy during “Lights and Sirens”. She and Di Martino are late night intimate on “You Don’t Know Me” while Amorin provides glorious guitar on the pretty “Almost Like Being In Love”. Personal and personable.
Clever and unique interpretations of standards by Cole Porter is presented by vocalist Kristina Koller and her team of Fima Chupakhin/p, James Robbins/b and Juan Chiavassa/dr. If you’re familiar with these tunes, you’ll get quite a jolt with the much slower than usual read of “It’s All Right With Me” with Chupakhin’s keyboards, slowly undulating the lyrics, while Robbins’ thick intro to “Just One Of Those Things” is also in slow-mo, more regretful in agony than just writing the night off. Koller goes Broadway to the chiming ivories on “In The Still Of The Night” and evokes Norah Jones on an R&Bish “What Is This Thing Called Love?”. Most creative is a banjo’d and upbeat “Every Time We Say Goodbye” as a closer, making you wonder what she could do with Gershwin!