Here are a couple of vocalists that take material not usually associated with jazz and, as they say, jazz it up!
Celia Bark has a clear and clean tone, a clever vibrato and a delivery like Waterford Crystal. She fronts an orchestra conducted by Alex Rybeck, who also arranges the Broadway sounding material. She has a mature worldvies on pieces like “Manhattan Hometown” and is sphotsticated on “Manhattan Serenate.” With the four piece Nighthawks’ horns, she sounds vaudevillian during “Manhattan Madness” while her teaming with Dave Rogers’ trumpet on “The Romance Of I Lifetime” is a rich production. As you can tell, most of the material is about life downtown, but you don’t have to be at the Battery to appreciate it.
Daria takes on The Beatles’ songbook with Jonathan Alford/key, Sam Bevan/b-key-g, Deszon Claiborne/dr, Michaelle Goerlitz/perc, Colin Douglas/perc, Jean Michel Hure/g and a series of guests. Her voice is husky and assured, slinking well with the horns on “When I’m 64” and going Broadway with Alford’s piano on “Fixing A Hole.” She delivers a hip nightclub swing with Bevan on “Can’t Buy Me Love” and is elliptical was Joseph Cohen strums the sitar on “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Most cle er is a hip Latin sizzle obn “Helter Skelter” as well as a Brazilian bend on “Come Together. “ Good work!