The Official Louise Gibbs Web Site
LOUISE GIBBS is a singer, jazz improviser and composer. It has been said of her bebop-inspired style: "She can turn a hackneyed jazz standard into a newly-imagined composition...and takes musical risks...as expressive as any horn player whether the tune's by Kenny Wheeler or Rodgers & Hart"
The latest CD - Everybody's Song But Our Own - Louise Gibbs & Kirk Lightsey - is just released! Check it out, and buy it on www.33jazz.com and www.amazon.co.uk
Read this review in Jazzwise Magazine
Louise Gibbs/Kirk Lightsey Trio - The Venue, Leeds - 25 March 2009
When you've followed the career of an artist for a couple of decades, it's an especial pleasure to witness the performer's increased maturation process. Here, singer Louise Gibbs was celebrating her duo album with American pianist Kirk Lightsey, on the occasion of his first return to this country since their joint album was recorded. And it was the opening duo section of the concert that underlined just how much she has continued to improve, in terms of adventurous invention and emotional interpretation. From being predominantly a musician's musician, she has now made the transition to emphasising the message of a song and involving the audience in its emotions. Oddly enough, Gibbs actually achieves this at the same time as being even more musicianly. She appears to have been greatly aided by working with Lightsey who, for all his experience as an excellent support player, doesn't hold back in these duets. Naturally, most pianists working behind a singer are prepared (and are often well advised) to play it safe, for fear of throwing an insecure vocalist off-track. But the mutual confidence in each other's ear has led, on both the album and the concert, to a high-wire act that takes more chances than anything I've heard outside the strictly avante-garde. This concert, on the other hand, had nearly all standard material, with the exception of two items from the second half, when Lightsey had been joined by his touring trio. One of these was a beautiful Lightsey melody sung wordlessly by Gibbs, while the other was her only original here, setting a busy and complicated tune to 'You Have To Try' by poet Wendy Cope. But the standards, whether done as a duo or a quartet, were very special too.
Brian Priestley - June 2009 (Issue 131)
Hear snippets of that performance - Links to You Tube in the NEWS... section
Read the latest reviews on the RECORDINGS page...
IF YOU WANT YOUR LOCAL JAZZ VENUES TO CONTINUE, DON'T JUST THINK ABOUT GOING OUT TO LISTEN TO LIVE MUSIC - DO IT!
