Search - Various Artists :: Sunnyside Cafe Series: Sunny Voices

For more than a quarter century, Sunnyside has released groundbreaking instrumental jazz recordings. But, as this multilingual and multicultural, eighteen-track collection SunnyVoices demonstrates, the label has also released some of the most compelling, contemporary, and cutting-edge vocal tracks of this generation: from straight-ahead swing, bossa novas, boleros, ballads, electronica, and world music; featuring the music of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Rogers & Hart, Tom Waits, Yip Harburg, Harold Arlen, and Bola de Nieve, selected from albums released from 1981 to 2008.

From Meredith D Ambrosio s waltzy and intimate vocal/piano rendition of Someday My Prince Will Come, to Milton Nascimento and Ana Moura s Brazilian and Portuguese-tinged takes on the Rolling Stones hits, Lady Jane and No Expectations, SunnyVoices chronicles the label s potpourri of singers who represent the wide world of jazz-fluent vocal artistry.

That jazz-fluency is expressed in a myriad of moods and grooves. Brian Cullman s The Promise, Jamie Leonhart s Area, and Rebecca Martin s The Space in a Song to Think, are sensitive, soft-percussion tracks not unlike the best of James Taylor, Janis Ian, and Joni Mitchell. Linda Sharrock s Black diva rendition of Calling You (Theme from Baghdad Café) is matched by Jay Clayton s synth-backed, semi spoken-word track, The Peace of Wild Things, and French actress/chanteuse Juliette Greco s breathy version of Over The Rainbow. The international flavor in this collection is further evidenced by the Spanish singer Martirio s thrilling flamenco-favored, Si Me Pudieras, Lokua Kanza s Congo-coded, Afro-anthemic Nkolo Akosunga, and the soaring and soulfully syncopated Flutes, by Kanza, Gerard Toto from the French Antilles, and Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona.

The bossa nova an African-derived genre born in Brazil is silkenly spoken like Carioca by the Parisian chanteuse Helena on the bossa-electronica number Morrer Nos Seus Bracos, and by American Alyssa Graham on her Star-Spangled version of Izaura. The Sao-Paulo-born Luciana Souza s slightly purple hazed guitar-centric Voce, is in contrast to the moving, hymnal selection Souza and her vocal ensemble Moss deliver on Take It With Me. Fleurine delivers an evocative, English-lyric, water-drummed rendition of the Francis Hime/Chico Buarque classic Love Marks. The spare and swinging piano/voice take on I Could Write a Book by Jeanne Lee and Billie Holiday s pianist Mal Waldron, is the capstone to this compilation: a cosmopolitan and caressing collection that outlines this label s invaluable chronicle of the modern vocal tradition a tradition that is expanding before our very ears.