(Vocal Jazz) Mercedes Nicole - Beautiful Alignment - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

Mercedes Nicole is an “Intimately Explosive Artist!” “She has an articulation that I don't notice many current singers these days utilizing.” Grace Holden, Jazz Pioneer. This past Spring (2010) Mercedes Headlined at Jazz Alley with the Mercedes Nicole Quintet, special guest Thomas Marriott. With This February, 2009, She was the featured artist at the Panache Jazz Festival on Vashon Island, and sang to a sold out crowd. Last year, 2008, Mercedes headlined for Seattle First Baptist’s Jazz Vespers with the Overton Berry Trio!” She also headlined in the Origin’s 2005 Jazz Festival’s “Jackson Street Jazz Poetry Session”, and in 2004 was a featured artist for The City of Seattle Jazz Vocals, The City of Bellevue Jazz Vocals, and People of Color Against Aids Network for Kwanza. She has performed at The New Orleans, The Triple Door, The Seattle Art Museum, The Tacoma Art Museum, Egan’s Ballard Jam House, The Wellington and many more venues. Mercedes Nicole may best be known for her performance in Strange Fruit, a tribute show paying homage to Nina Simone. Mercedes studied under Gretta Matassa, Becca Doran, and Overton Berry. Mercedes grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Seattle in 1996. She released her most recent Jazz CD “My Favorite Work of Art in 2007,” “ Intimate Conversations in” 2004 and a spoken word CD, A Touch Worth Remembering, in 2003. Without a doubt, this is an Artist whose interpretation of mood, voice and music as a whole is, unforgettable.

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone all make appearances in the biography of Seattle-based singer Mercedes Nicole. She has been a creative face in jazz since the turn of the century, writing, producing and performing tributes to Simone, Etta James, and Dinah Washington. With Beautiful Alignment, Nicole debuts on disc with a collection of songs reflecting her preferences and influences as well as her own original view of jazz vocals.
Leading a trumpet-fronted quartet, Nicole nods at Holiday with "God Bless The Child" and "Good Morning Heartache," while winking at Simone with "Afro Blue," plus a handful of original compositions that sit well beside the canon. Nicole's approach is a simple one: make simple, uncomplicated music with a distilled band playing refined arrangements. Her mantra might be "doing more with less to produce the infinite." Nicole is fond of altering the meter of her delivery as well as the beat pacing. She is comfortable singing about a half beat behind the band.
This approach completely recasts Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies." With an arrangement of descending rhythmic figures alternating with frantic 4/4 pacing, the song is updated in a clever and inventive way. The approach is the scripture on which her own compositions rest. Nicole's bright alto curls within the singer's "Hiding" and "Timeless." Pianist Marc Seales' accompaniment is spare, as are his solos. He endeavors to play only those notes necessary and this pays off. Bassist Evan Flory-Barnes and West Coast-fixture brass specialist Thomas Marriott are always tasteful, never crowding the vocalist while she practices her trade rather well.

Mercedes Nicole: vocals; Marc Seales: piano; D’Vonne Lewis: drums; Thomas Marriott: trumpet and flugelhorn; Evan Flory-Barnes: bass; Jeff Busch: percussion; Cheryl Wilder, Teresa Wornstaff: background vocals.