Laurie Antonioli: Press

The remarkable ingenuity of Laurie Antonioli's voice is owed, not just to the impossible range--some three octaves--but to vocalist's breathtaking ability to find the hidden quarter tones that sound between the so-called right ones. In suggesting that these notes she sings are “wrong,” the idea of a Thelonious Monk-like reality emerges in Antonioli's singing. The elemental difference is one of rhythm: while Monk's was chopped and jagged, sly and askance, Antonioli's is smooth, with burgeoning glissandos that are forthright, yet unexpected; that follow a distinct melodic line, yet make surprising harmonic leaps. And while Antonioli may be a singer whose vocalizing takes magical routes through the diatonic scale, she is capable--and proves time and time again--that she owns the diatonic scale as well. Antonioli enjoys loping across the expanse of the regular Western harmonic scale, but can, on a dime, turn her voice into that of a Hindustani vocalist negotiating a complex Indian raga.

American Dreams is filled with wonderful, chromatically ingenious examples of Antonioli's vocal brilliance, with the singer melting the artificial barriers set up to separate rather than unite music. She is an old soul who, restless at all times, meanders like a medieval apothecary in search of the magic potion--in this case, the song with the most perfect tone and manner, or a tune of such breathtaking lyricism that it stops the very breath itself. In this regard, Antonioli constantly recalls the lyricism of the great Sufi masters, whose singing turned meditative and who became so entranced by the nature of their spiritualism that the art came to reside on a uniquely different plane. There are times when Antonioli gives the impression that she reaches a similar meditative state.

”Samba Nada Brahma” is just one of those songs, where Antonioli makes a Sufi-like leap with the elasticity of her vocals. The fact that she weaves the lyric in and out of a startling melody written by pianist Fritz Pauer--one of four songs they wrote together--is one of the bright spots on this album. The team of Pauer and Antonioli is a remarkable one: both musicians explore melody in great depth, and Antonioli, with masterful use of harmony, surpasses most vocalists in lyricism and depth of character. With a first rate band that includes multireedman Sheldon Brown and a bright young guitarist, Dave McNab, the ensemble provides plenty of room for Antonioli to undertake her extraordinary vocal journeys. “Vienna Blues” appears alongside the standard “Moonlight in Vermont,” and it is impossible to tell that the two have been written with years between them, so breathtakingly beautiful is the classic lyricism of the former. And, in her superb version of “America The Beautiful,” Antonioli undertakes a rite of passage for a vocalist, emerging almost heroic by the end of it all. As a vocalist, Antonioli displays the spark that always flies when Joni Mitchell takes to song.

Calling American Dreams a jazz album is too narrowing a description. This record is actually an odyssey through the American musical landscape. After recording Foreign Affair (Nabel, 2004), with a multi-cultural cast of musicians while living abroad, vocalist Laurie Antonioli's mind drifted back toward thoughts of home. In exploring her vision of America, Antonioli touches on standards, country, folk and patriotic music. These entries are nestled within a collection that also includes a good amount of material resulting from a marriage of her lyrics with the music of pianist Fritz Pauer--the longtime accompanist for trumpeter Art Farmer.

In lesser hands, these disparate musical ideals might have resulted in an album that suffered from multiple personality disorder, but Antonioli and her exquisite band help fuse all of these songs into a unified musical expression. While a song called “Samba Nada Brahma” might seem like an odd way to start off an album that speaks of America, it provides instant excitement as Sheldon Brown's soprano saxophone work bounces around with boundless energy. “Moonlight In Vermont” gives Antonioli a chance to showcase her superb scatting skills and bassist John Shifflett provides excellent support here. “How Long,” one of five pieces credited to Pauer and Antonioli, has an alt-country vibe and--if one looks past the saxophone solo--it sounds like it could have come from the Emmylou Harris songbook. Brown--one of the key ingredients on this record--provides some harmonica work at the top of “Dreary Black Hills” and Antonioli's voice picks up a bit of country twang on this traditional tune. This song transitions into “Get Up And Go”--an earthy, appealing original from Shifflett--and Antonioli's voice takes on a firmer, focused quality here.

In addition to bringing stylistic authenticity into every song on the album, guitarist Dave McNab put together a gorgeous arrangement of “America The Beautiful.” Antonioli slowly lays out the visually rich lyrics over a warm bed of guitar and Brown's bass clarinet work adds volumes to the performance. Freer forms of expression come through on the loose and woozy “Stimulus Plan,” as Jason Lewis' jittery cymbal work scurries around and Antonioli moves in tandem with Brown's bass clarinet. Broadway also makes a brief appearance and “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” is taken at a relaxed pace, with pianist Matt Clark providing the harmonic foundation for Antonioli and Brown--on tenor saxophone here. From start to finish, American Dreams proves to be a happy marriage of cultural appreciation and musical creation.

Track Listing: Samba Nada Brahma; Vienna Blues; Moonlight In Vermont; How Long; Sweet Sound Of Spring; Under Consideration; Stimulus Plan; America The Beautiful; Dreary Black Hills/Get Up And Go; Just A Dream; Oh, What A Beautiful Morning; Long Way From Home.

Personnel: Laurie Antonioli: vocals; Matt Clark: piano; John Shifflet: bass; Jason Lewis: drums; Sheldon Brown: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and harmonica; Dave McNab: acoustic and electric guitars.

Fono Forum
Germany
November 2004
CD of the Month – “FOREIGN AFFAIR”

FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO GRAZ

This debut is actually a comeback – and a most welcome one at that. It began with American singer Laurie Antonioli’s move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Graz, where she recently entered on a professorship in vocal jazz – as successor of no less prominent vocalists than Mark Murphy, Sheila Jordan, Andy Bey and Jay Clayton.

But Laurie Antonioli is no blank page, either. She can count Mark Murphy, Bobby McFerrin and Joe Henderson among her mentors, with the pianists George Cables and Joe Bonner she made her first records almost twenty years ago. Then she withdrew from the music scene for personal reasons and redirected her energies to teaching. Which is what brought her to Graz – a stone’s throw from former Yugoslavia, where her father’s family came from.

Yugoslav-Balkan music and the Serbo-Croat language were part of the soundtrack of her early childhood in California; she came to know and love jazz through her grandma’s Louis Armstrong records. While at high school and college she expanded her musical horizons towards modern jazz, singer/songwriting, folk and world music. In Graz she’s found a chance to bring all these strands together.

It’s there she met the Serb bassist Nenad Vasilic, who already brought out a very fine Balkan Jazz album in 2003 („Joe Jack“, Nabel 4693), and made him the mainstay of her own band. Three pieces on the new album are from his pen, among them the melancholy, tango-like opener “Ballad for Djole”, for which Laurie Antonioli wrote original lyrics. The band is completed by the Albanian guitarist Armend Xhaferi, the New York percussionist John Hollenbeck and the Munich saxophonist Johannes Enders, who has long since established himself as one of the most versatile jazz musicians on the German scene. Here he reveals one more facet of his talent, fitting right into the project and genre on hand.

So, this is an international line-up with a definite Balkan emphasis. The recordings were made in an analog studio in Slovenia; for the mix, Laurie Antonioli succeeded in getting the American engineer Jay Newland, who won a Grammy for his work with Norah Jones. The effort paid off: the album breathes warm, purely acoustic sound and an intimate atmosphere. This setting shows off the dark, sensuous timbre of the leader’s voice to best advantage.

Laurie Antonioli chose the songs to fit a theme of separation by borders, oceans and distances and the longing for such barriers to be dissolved. Musically the singer straddles the boundaries between styles and cultures, folk and jazz traditions, Eastern Europe and America.

She takes from the jazz repertoire of Joe Henderson, providing his “Black Narcissus” with a Serbo-Croat text (“Crni Narcis”) and Keith Jarrett, scatting to the pure groove of his “The Cure”. She combines the folk-song-like „Where Flamingos Fly“ to the Traditional “Black is the Color” to make an American folk-jazz medley. Not many artists can combine all these elements as organically and originally as Antonioli, who in two of the pieces also documents her talent as a composer. Anyone who would like to experience the singer live has the opportunity to do so at the Unterfahrt in Munich on 30 October and in Birdland in Vienna on 7 November.

MUSIC *****
SOUND *****

Jazz Podium
January 2005

Between the tradition of the Great American Songbook and the better class of pop song there's no shortage of women singers – some acclaimed as new divas while others, measured against Ella & co, are found wanting. But only a few women are carving out new paths of a contemporary vocal jazz. Laurie Antonioli is a Californian with Montenegrin ancestors, now a university teacher in Graz, who is able to weave classic jazz singing, modern instrumental-sounding vocalizations and elements of Balkan folk into a valid vocal language of her own. Her influences are not only such diverse singers as Louis Armstrong, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bobby McFerrin und Mark Murphy, but also include instrumentalists like Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett und Joe Henderson. She made her debut on albums of pianists George Cables („Soul Eyes“, 1985) and Joe Bonner („New Beginnings“, 1987), and after that, family and teaching interests took priority. With the dark timbre of her voice she can converge with the bass sound of Nenad Vasilic or equally, in higher registers with the fine, sweetly sculpted lines that Johannes Enders produces on the soprano sax. The whole recording lives in the matured sound of an uncluttered instrumental lineup. Antonioli carefully selected the collaborators for her distinctive project: Johannes Enders, individualist on saxophones, Nenad Vasilic, tersely phrasing Serbian bassist and co-composer, Armend Xhaferi, Albanian guitarist who works with bending techniques from blues and country, and John Hollenbeck, the stylistically adaptable percussionist from New York. Highlights are the tracks where Antonioli enjoys extended scats, oriental-mystical and deftly rhythmic on Vasilic's "Tschusch Chochek", bluesy on Antonioli's own "I know you" and entranced-swinging on Keith Jarrett's "The Cure".

LAURIE ANTONIOLI AND RICHIE BEIRACH-
THE DUO SESSION
JAZZZEIT MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2005
5 Stars

You could think of the “well-aged” duo recording of Laurie Antonioli and Richie Beirach an exquisite bottle of wine (vintage 1992) which sets free the essences of standards and originals from Miles Davis, Ivan Lins and Richie Beirach himself (“Nightlake”, “Elm”). Laurie Antonioli is well-known for composing her own lyrics, with which she goes beyond simply the musical level, offering the listeners another association to the music. Her alto voice, connected to Beirach’s lyrical playing, creates timeless music, conjuring up the intimacy of a private conversation in the studio.

The past and the present hand in hand, Antonioli’s lyrics mirror, and introduce new ideas to, Miles Davis’ “Flamenco Sketches” and “Blue in Green”. Beirach follows her thoughts in a melodically structured way, accompanies and allows them to shine like musical diamonds

ALL ABOUT JAZZ
Jim Santella
The Duo Session
Recorded in 1992 in San Francisco, this session of piano/vocal duets features a silky-smooth singer in performance with an expressive pianist. Their warm, endearing approach brings you into their circle with open arms and a heartfelt embrace. Together, the two artists interpret moody standards, hip reflections, and searing originals with candor.
Laurie Antonioli's clear alto voice and extensive vocal range allow her to express ideas and emotions freely and accurately. What she's thinking is what comes out naturally. Partnering with Beirach, she's confident and convincing. Richie Beirach's consonant harmonies and lush undercurrents provide a kind of acoustic depth that fills the room. His shadows cast far and wide. Each piece finds the pianist as musical partner to the vocalist, sharing in the experience with a lot to say.
They give “Green Dolphin Street” a moody texture and “Flamenco Sketches” a dreamy whirl. Miles Davis had passed away the year before this date, and he was surely looking down from above with a smile. The session runs solemn and moody, befitting the legacy that the trumpeter left behind.
Beirach and Antonioli collaborated on several original numbers, pouring the same heartfelt emotion into each one. They prefer slower pieces that allow ample room for patient expression. Their “Memories, Dreams & Reflections” summarizes the performance through its creative infusion and unique duet interaction.
Today, Antonioli is head of the Vocal Jazz Department at KUG University in Graz, Austria and Beirach is head of the Jazz Piano Department at Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in Leipzig, Germany. They're working together again in live performance. It's time they recorded a few more duo albums to let a worldwide audience enjoy the spirit of their work. Surely any followup to this highly recommended album would feature the same wholesome music.

"Laurie is truly one of my favorite singers; she's full of wonderful ideas, has an instinctive musicality, a great sense of humor and is an inspiring improvisor and collaborator."

Bobby McFerrin


"Laurie is the most talented singer I've ever had the pleasure of working with. She is a very important creative voice in jazz music. As a singer of improvised music and jazz, she is a piano players dream."

Richie Beirach

"When a girl of 17 or 18 wakes up in the morning and can start right off with a horn-like bebop solo, I know the bop angel has been at work again…that was Laurie Antonioli and she's still doing it."

Mark Murphy

"Laurie is one of my all time favorite lyricists. Her singing is exquisite - she lives in her beautiful low tones…her sound is completely unique."

Nancy King

"Laurie's distinctive voice, unique artistic perspective, emotional depth and burnin' improvisational skills assure her a place as one of the very best jazz singers alive today. A major talent."

Kitty Margolis


"Laurie is the embodiment of the true spirit of jazz - probing, penetrating, burning with the white-hot intensity of a Plugged Nickel Miles Davis. She blows my mind. Laurie is hard-core."

Ann Dyer

"In a world increasingly populated by singers who are jazz-flavored stylists at best, Laurie Antonioli stands out as the REAL deal. She's a true jazz explorer who's not afraid to take risks as she reaches deep into the improvisational essence of the music."

Bud Spangler, Jazz Radio Host, San Francisco, California