VERONICA SWIFT- This Bitter Earth
Mack Avenue Records MAC 1177
Veronica Swift (vocals), Emmet Cohen (piano, celeste), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), Bryan Carter (drums)
With guests on some tracks including: Aaron Johnson (alto, flute, bs flute), Armand Hirsch (guitar), School Choirs, String Quartet & Background vocals.
Believe it, or believe it not, this remarkable vocalist from Charlottsville, Virginia made her first record at the age of nine, back in 1994 in the company of alto giant Richie Cole entitled "Veronica's House Of Jazz" She went on just two years later to appear on "The Women In Jazz" series at Dizzy's club in The Lincoln Centre, in the same year that her second release "it's Great To Be Alive" hit the U.S. record stores. She went on, still at a very young age, to learn about the jazz life by extensively touring with her father Hod O'Brien's piano trio with her mother Stephanie Nakasian as guest vocalist. Other recordings, on small record labels and appearances with well known artists followed for Veronica, having moved with her family to New York City, she was signed by Mack Avenue Records in 2018, and subsequently released her first well received album "Confessions" for them in 2019.
By the time her second album "This Bitter Earth" came out in March of this year she was enjoying high profile gigs at places such as The Lincoln Centre and Birdland but very much keeping her feet on the ground by continuing her regular pavement gig at The Terremoto Coffee Room in downtown Manhattan. With great support from Emmet Cohen's piano trio and guests, she has produced a diverse and sometimes very personal and varied album of immense depth and purpose where her perfect diction and jazz sensibility combined to form one of the very finest vocal jazz albums of recent times, so much so that it earned her a very rare five star rating in Downbeat Magazine, among many others world wide. The songs range from the Bob Dorough classic, You're The Dangerous Type, through Dave Frishberg's story tale of The Sports Page to everlasting " Song Book" titles such as the Gershwin's 'Man I Love, and rarely in a jazz idiom, Rogers and Hammerstein's Getting To Know You from "The King And I". Overall this is classic vocal jazz for today. Keep a lookout for it in the next Grammy awards.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
Mack Avenue Records MAC 1177
Veronica Swift (vocals), Emmet Cohen (piano, celeste), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), Bryan Carter (drums)
With guests on some tracks including: Aaron Johnson (alto, flute, bs flute), Armand Hirsch (guitar), School Choirs, String Quartet & Background vocals.
Believe it, or believe it not, this remarkable vocalist from Charlottsville, Virginia made her first record at the age of nine, back in 1994 in the company of alto giant Richie Cole entitled "Veronica's House Of Jazz" She went on just two years later to appear on "The Women In Jazz" series at Dizzy's club in The Lincoln Centre, in the same year that her second release "it's Great To Be Alive" hit the U.S. record stores. She went on, still at a very young age, to learn about the jazz life by extensively touring with her father Hod O'Brien's piano trio with her mother Stephanie Nakasian as guest vocalist. Other recordings, on small record labels and appearances with well known artists followed for Veronica, having moved with her family to New York City, she was signed by Mack Avenue Records in 2018, and subsequently released her first well received album "Confessions" for them in 2019.
By the time her second album "This Bitter Earth" came out in March of this year she was enjoying high profile gigs at places such as The Lincoln Centre and Birdland but very much keeping her feet on the ground by continuing her regular pavement gig at The Terremoto Coffee Room in downtown Manhattan. With great support from Emmet Cohen's piano trio and guests, she has produced a diverse and sometimes very personal and varied album of immense depth and purpose where her perfect diction and jazz sensibility combined to form one of the very finest vocal jazz albums of recent times, so much so that it earned her a very rare five star rating in Downbeat Magazine, among many others world wide. The songs range from the Bob Dorough classic, You're The Dangerous Type, through Dave Frishberg's story tale of The Sports Page to everlasting " Song Book" titles such as the Gershwin's 'Man I Love, and rarely in a jazz idiom, Rogers and Hammerstein's Getting To Know You from "The King And I". Overall this is classic vocal jazz for today. Keep a lookout for it in the next Grammy awards.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
