Chris Kopper’s Blog and interview about Restless
Chart Bound in Jazz Week
We are chartbound in Jazz Week for the week of August 16th.
Sylvia Brooks in Sensational CD Debut
For Immediate Release
Summer 2010
Sylvia Brooks in Sensational CD Debut
Dangerous Liaisons
Singer Sylvia Brooks lights up early summer with her CD debut, Dangerous Liaisons – a collection of carefully chosen gems from the Great American Songbook – accompanied by a stellar 8-piece band. The album has been rolled out to general release after garnering enthusiastic response to a limited private issue earlier in the year. With masterful charts by Tom Garvin, Jeff Colella and Kim Richmond, Ms.Brooks cooks up sizzling performances of ten timeless standards familiar to the capacity crowds she draws to such L.A. area venues as Catalina’s, Vitello’s Jazz & Supper Club, and the Jazz Bakery. Dangerous Liaisons is available through amazon.com, CD Baby, iTunes, and Napster. Initial tracks chosen for airplay by her promotion team, noted jazz specialists Dick LaPalm and Fred Mancuso, are “Come Rain or Come Shine”, “ The Man That Got Away”, and her rare vocal rendition of the classic “Harlem Nocturne”. Sylvia Brooks may be a fresh new face to the worlds of jazz and cabaret, but she is actually a seasoned professional in the art of telling a story, having spent the earlier years of her career as an actor in both straight drama and musical theater – first at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and then in numerous companies across the country. She is a native of Miami and was first introduced to the standards repertoire by her father, a jazz arranger/composer, and her mother, who combined nightclub singing and opera production in her own multi-faceted career. Ms.Brooks has a devoted following in Los Angeles, where she now resides. About the enormous treasure trove of American standard tunes, Ms.Brooks says “This music speaks to me! Like all great art, it is timeless and evokes the struggles and pleasures we live every day. The best singers of the past didn’t just sing – they infused each song with passion and brought their lives to the music. I feel that I’m a part of this continuum each time I sing one of these incredible songs.”
Performance Reviews: Six Time Best Bet Critics Pick – L.A. Times
“…grace and confidence…commanding charisma…dynamic performance.” -L.A. Jazz Scene
For more information about Sylvia Brooks, call 831-620-1332 and visit
www.kathrynkingmedia.com
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LA Jazz Scene Reviews Sylvia Brooks
Sylvia Brooks
is certainly no stranger to Jazz, a fact extraordinary evident throughout the duration of her encore performance at Catalina Bar and Grill. Brooks returned to Catalina stage on July 16, 2008, where she performed songs from The Great American Songbook masterfully arranged by Tom Garvin.
Sylvia Brooks comes from a solid musical background, growing up with her father a popular jazz pianist and her mother a nightclub performer. “Sitting in the crib and hearing that music, it has to do something to you”, says Brooks. It was inevitable that melodies and harmonies would course rapidly through her veins from a very young age. Through Garvin’s innovative arrangements, this music possesses the ability to convey complex emotions while telling a unique and vivid story through the utilization of refreshing and diverse sounds performed by Brooks and her dynamic sextet. (more…)
Jazz Times Review
08/02/10 • By Christopher Loudon
Sylvia Brooks: Dangerous Liaisons
Christopher Loudon on new album from actress/singer Sylvia Brooks
Sylvia Brooks has the look of a classic Hollywood femme fatale, suggesting an auburn-haired variation on Veronica Lake with a hint of Rita Hayworth. And Brooks sings precisely the way she looks – a dark, smoky sound with impressive firepower that seems tailor-made for the sort of plush, palm-treed nightclubs that dotted L.A. in the 1940s and ’50s. Those intimate boîtes — spots like Ciro’s, The Tally-Ho, The Encore and the richly historied Cocoanut Grove — are gone now, but Brooks is rapidly emerging as an SRO favorite at the chic venues that have replaced them, including Catalina’s, the Jazz Bakery and Vitello’s Jazz and Supper Club. Now, with the release of Brooks’ debut CD, the aptly titled Dangerous Liaisons, the wider world can share Los Angelinos’ discovery of her alluring sultriness. Brooks can swing hot and hard, as illustrated by a blistering “Never Dance” and an equally scorching “Sway.” She can also swing brightly, taking “Come Rain or Come Shine” at mid-tempo to ably capture the depth of the Arlen/Mercer gem’s ardor, and holding her torch high on a sweltering “When the Sun Comes Out.”
But Brooks is perhaps best at examining love’s murkier corners. That she was an accomplished actress before she set her focus on singing is evident in her tackling of four of the most challenging numbers in the entire American songbook — “Sophisticated Lady,” “Lush Life,” “One for My Baby” and “The Man That Got Away” (the latter mistakenly credited to Harold Arlen and George Gershwin, when it was Ira Gershwin who crafted the lyric, 16 years after his brother’s demise). They are the Mount Rushmore of 3 a.m. tunes, and many a capable vocalist has failed at scaling even one of them. That Brooks ably captures the near-maddening disillusionment and bourbon-fueled bitterness that pervade all four is testament to her estimable storytelling skills. But significant credit is also due Brooks’ arrangers. Top of the list is Tom Garvin, whose masterful touch adorns seven of the album’s ten tracks. Kudos, too, to saxophonist/flautist Kim Richmond who teamed with Garvin to shape “The Man That Got Away” and single-handedly put the dizzying swirl in “Sway,” and to pianist Jeff Colella, who painted the film noir backdrop for Brooks’ exquisite, indigo-hued “Harlem Nocturne” and placed “One for My Baby” in an unexpectedly dreamy setting that is stunningly effective.
If you’d like to share your comments about Sylvia Brooks or have suggestions for future installments of Hearing Voices, please direct your email to jtvocaljazz@gmail.com.