(vocal jazz) Joanna Pascale - When Lights Are Low - 2004, MP3, 320 kbps

“When I happen on a new discovery, I just can’t wait to shout out my secret to the world. From seemingly nowhere comes…Joanna…and I’m absolutely like putty in her able hands.”- In Tune International Magazine
Since emerging onto Philadelphia’s jazz scene, Pascale has established herself as a compelling and skilled vocalist. “Joanna is a highly sophisticated singer,” claims Philadelphia Metro. She has a working repertoire of over four hundred songs and has appeared and recorded with jazz giants such as trumpeter and Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University, Terell Stafford; sax pyrotechnic and critic’s rave, Tim Warfield; legendary drummer, Mickey Roker, piano virtuoso, Cyrus Chestnut and others. She performs three nights a week with her quintet at the Loews Hotel in Philadelphia. In August 2006, she was selected for the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour roster. On top of a busy performing and recording schedule, the Temple alum is also a member of the vocal faculty at Temple University. She teaches private voice and ensemble lessons, as well as conducts performance practices and workshops.
According to All Music Guide, “She not only has solid vocal chops; she has soul.” Her first recording, When Lights are Low, was met with much critical acclaim.
This and other accolades helped nudge Pascale back to the studio for her 2008 release of Through My Eyes. Selecting relatively obscure works from the 1920s-1960s, Pascale’s group includes her working band that includes, Tim Warfield, saxophones; Andrew Adair, piano; Madison Rast, bass; and drummer Dan Monaghan.
Pascale began her musical education as a listener.
“I gravitated to Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Jimmy Scott albums,” recalls Pascale. “I memorized these songs as if they were a part of my generation’s popular music.” “When I started going to jam sessions, singers would always perform the same couple of songs,” stated Pascale.“It would amaze me that gems like Serenade in Blue or Once In a While, for example, would fall through the cracks.
I made it my mission to learn these under performed standards, and to search for other songs that I felt should be remembered.” What really sets Pascale apart from other vocalists, though, is not just her repertoire, but also her musicianship. She has gained the admiration of some prominent musicians.
“Joanna Pascale is one of the new ‘rising stars’ of her generation. With her vast knowledge of the Great American Songbook, she exudes a musical elegance very reminiscent of many past legends in the jazz vocal tradition, embracing an idea not exemplified by many of her contemporaries. Quite clearly she is not just another chick singer but rather a jazz vocalist whose level of musicality acutely defines who she is stylistically.” – Tim Warfield

The quintessential instrument of jazz, perhaps all of music, is the female voice. While jazz has many personae and "voices" (I think of John Coltrane's "preacher" inflections, Miles Davis' contemplative, moody, and earthy "speaking through the horn," Bill Evans' dreamy, complex, ethereal "muse," etc.), the female voice most fully embodies the dialectic of blues and ecstasy, the resiliency, and the inner spiritual core of the jazz idiom and syntax. Jazz is the "speech" of the African American "Mother" exemplified in the drama, "Raisin in the Sun," and the female lover, both of whom contain the victory and defeat, the hope and the pain of those to whom they give life and love, i.e. all of us. That is why no one represents the soul of jazz more than the woman who, I think literally, gave her life to this art form: Billie Holiday.
Joanna Pascale's debut CD, When Lights are Low, is a searching exploration of the female voice, its many facets and subtleties, within the context of rendering ballad standards in a "classic," timeless way. There are no "frills," cliches, or "tricks of the trade" in this album, nothing clever or stylish about it. It is simply an attempt to manifest the "pure clear word" of these songs as transparently as possible. The accompaniment follows suit. Terell Stafford's solo on "Easy Living" states the case. It is a lyrical improvisation that makes no attempt to be "modern" and flashy- rather, it echoes the evolution of jazz trumpet playing from Armstrong through Beiderbecke to Baker as a unified whole rather than a series of signature styles. This CD is entirely a statement about classic jazz as having one core, one essence. And Pascale is up to that challenge.
Joanna achieves this timeless element by making the most of its opposite: the moment. If you listen carefully- and this album deserves a thoughtful hearing- you will hear the way in which each note, each inflection, each bar gets careful, special, and immediate attention from the singer, as she shifts effortlessly from lyricism to staccato punctuation to impassioned vibrato to lingering on a note, to whatever it is in the voice that gives the musical moment and the words a meaning. You end up experiencing many of the marvelous things that the female voice can do, not so much the extremes of dynamics and high and low notes that you get with Sarah Vaughan and Diane Schuur, but the subtlty, simplicity, emotional nuances, and resilience of phrasing that you find in Holiday, Cleo Lane, and - on another level - Irene Kral and Chris Connor.
The instrumental accompaniment of this album artfully strives for the same kind of balance that Joanna achieves vocally. She gives each musician ample time to solo, and Farid Barron's piano is especially graceful, while the rest also perform professionally and artfully as they provide a suitable backdrop to the singing. Byron Landham's drumming, as always, posesses his gentle, well-modulated, yet strong, swinging "feel" that is the "deus ex machina" ("god in the machine") behind the whole ensemble effect.
All in all, this debut album shows that Joanna Pascale is a new, young talent to be reckoned with. It will be intriguing to see and hear what her future holds in store.

Joanna Pascale (vocals), Terell Stafford (trumpet), Farid Baron & Gary Moran (piano), Madison Rast (bass), Byron Landham (drums), and Craig Ebner (guitar)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lxSAJZ-CGGo
Оф.сайт:http://www.joannapascale.com/