Recordings
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
33JAZZ172
Louise Gibbs (vocals)
Kirk Lightsey (piano)
For more on Kirk Lightsey: www.sunnysiderecords.com and www.answers.com/topic/kirk-lightsey
Get the Flash Player to hear this.
Her fourth release on 33 Jazz sees the well-known vocalist Louise Gibbs teaming up with the great US (now Paris-based) pianist Kirk Lightsey. Recorded over two days and consisting entirely of first takes, the 11-track collection scores highly for its immediacy and freshness. Apart from a trio of songs from the Great American Songbook – classy interpretations of ‘Spring is Here’, ‘Never Let Me Go’ and ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most’ – this meeting of musical minds focuses on classic jazz instrumentals including Kenny Wheeler’s title track (lyrics: Norma Winstone) and McCoy Tyner’s ‘You Taught My Heart To Sing’ (lyrics: Dianne Reeves). Sharing an “irresistibly melodic angularity”, as Gibbs puts it, each song presents its own technical challenge. She meets it them all with creativity and charisma.
Lightsey is a supportive, inventive and always creative accompanist, able to conjure up a near orchestral range of sonorities from his grand piano. For playing of great expressive warmth, listen to the impressionistic wash of sound he creates for ‘A Timeless Place’. Peter Quinn, Jazzwise Magazine, June 2008
For this album, its name adapted from the celebrated Kenny Wheeler composition, singer Louise Gibbs and pianist Kirk Lightsey have taken their material from modern jazz classics (Wayne Shorter's 'Footprints', Charles Mingus's 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat', Thelonious Monk's 'Ruby My Dear' etc.) and the odd standard (three, coincidentally, spring-themed: Michel Legrand's 'You Must Believe in Spring', the Wolf/Landesman evergreen 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most', Rodgers and Hart's 'Spring is Here'), but unlike many such projects, this is a genuine duo album rather than one featuring singer-plus-accompanist. Partly, this is due to Gibbs's predilection for scatting, which results in the album's wordless musical content being unusually high, but it is also attributable to Lightsey's sheer skill and imaginative inventiveness, which has meant that his elegant trademark mix of power and grace is everywhere apparent. Gibbs's voice is an unaffected, natural one, her confession of emotion straightforwardly candid, her trust in the power of her judiciously selected material apparent in the ease of her delivery. In tone and timbre, her closest vocal equivalent is probably Norma Winstone, whose lyrics to Jimmy Rowles's 'Peacocks' and to the (near) title-track Gibbs delivers with a touching unfussiness that recalls their writer; other highlights include a visit to Dianne Reeves's lyric for McCoy Tyner's 'You Taught My Heart to Sing' and a subtly affecting version of the aforementioned Legrand classic. Overall, an album infused with Gibbs's infectious respect for both the songs and – amusingly documented in the false start to 'Spring is Here' – the playing of Lightsey. Chris Parker, Vortex Club Website
33JAZZ139
Louise Gibbs (vocals)
Jonathan Gee (piano)
Jeremy Brown (bass)
Winston Clifford (drums)
and Renato D'Aiello (tenor saxophone)
"But the most impressive thing of all was that Louise Gibbs, Jonathan Gee, Winston Clifford and bassist Steve Rose were to be found just over an hour after the Jazz Factor had finished, launching the evening's programme in style with a polished and seriously musical set which showed no sign of flagging energy or invention." Ron Simpson - The Jazz Rag
A celebration of the music of Duke Ellington
33JAZZ048
Louise Gibbs (vocals)
with Brian Priestley (piano)
and Tony Coe (saxophones, clarinet)
Total playing time:56:04
"Louise Gibbs deserves to be much more widely heard" - Dave Gelly, Sunday Observer
"...whether singing songs of yearning and regret or irony and hope, Ms Gibbs (is) a singer of much discernment..." - Musician Magazine
“…Louise Gibbs has complete command of her range and her intonation is enviable. In addition she has a timbre, a worldliness of expression, which is ideally suited to the programme." - Alun Morgan, Blue Light, UK Duke Ellington Soc
33JAZZ040Louise Gibbs (vocals)
with Lynne Arriale (piano)
Ron McClure (bass)
Steve Davis (drums)
Total playing time:58:02
".. singer Louise Gibbs has a strong, clear voice and excellent diction, used to striking effect on the intelligent mix of originals and modern standards. ... it is the assurance with which they are approached that contributes most to the recording. ... the whole is a characteristically classy 33 product." - Chris Parker, Jazzwise Magazine
All recordings produced and distributed by
33 Records
All CDs can be ordered through Amazon.co.uk
