Luciana Souza North And South CD

Live Recording

Personnel: Luciana Souza (vocals); Donny McCaslin (tenor saxophone); Bruce barth, Fred Hersch, Edward Simon (piano); Scott Colley (acostic bass); Clarence Penn (drums).
Recorded at Avatar Studios, New York, New York. Includes liner notes by Luciana Souza.
NORTH AND SOUTH was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
To be an excellent singer of standards, whether jazz or Brazilian or otherwise, an artist must possess a strong yet subtle voice and work with a sympathetic band. To really endear him or herself to fans, though, he or she must also know their repertoire; not only which songs to sing, but how to sing them: which parts to embrace and which to re-imagine (and, of course, the amounts of both). Any of these skills are enough to spark a solid record, but Luciana Souza has all of them, and thus her work is usually brilliant. North and South is the third album of what Souza terms a trilogy -- the first was a tribute to poet Elizabeth Bishop, the second a collection of her arrangements of traditional Brazilian songs (Brazilian Duos). She closes out the series by balancing standards from America and Brazil (thus the title), appropriately recalling her Brazilian forebears Sylvia Telles and Elis Regina, as well as contemporary jazz singers like Cassandra Wilson or Diana Krall. The two side-openers, Jobim's standards "Chega de Saudade" and "Corcovado," are simply enchanting, but the first especially so, one of the best versions of the master heard in many years. On her own arrangement, Souza draws out the lyric even while the rest of the band cuts out for a nimble rewriting of the scales by pianist Edward Simon, resulting in a performance that's simply breathtaking. The American standards "All of Me" and "When Your Lover Has Gone" are the only disappointments here (and only in comparison), Souza giving in to an evocation of the notoriously fragile-voiced Astrud Gilberto. ~ John Bush
On NORTH AND SOUTH, Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza traverses both hemispheres to lend her unique, technically accomplished voice to American and Brazilian standards. Souza's vocal approach is significant in that she marries the thin, studied tonality of classic Brazilian singers like Elis Regina to phrasings and rhythms that reflect contemporary North American vocalists. Alternating between English and Portuguese, Souza manages to sound at once detached, impassioned, casual, harmonically adventurous, rhythmically loose, and technically precise on every cut here.
Perhaps it can be attributed to Souza's ease with the material, but she seems to excel at the Brazilian tunes. It is her treatments of Antonio Carlos Jobim's bossa nova classics "Corcovado" and "Chega de Saudade" that are the real standouts. Souza's self-penned "No Wonder" is also engaging, a free and easy swing through which the singer's phrases knot and unfurl. Excellent support from a small ensemble of musicians makes this showcase of Souza's talents a sure bet.