Here Come The Girls: Madeleine, Melody and Diana

This year sees the return of three of today’s finest female jazz singers; Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot and Diana Krall. Each returns with a more mature outlook on life, a more sensual approach to the their music and another outstanding chapter in their recorded histories.

For Peyroux her album ‘Bare Bones’ sees her once again collaborate with the amazing musical talents of producer/writers Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and producer Larry Klein, who once again bring an innate level of musicality and sophistication to the album. It also sees her considerable gifts as a songwriter emerge to reveal her strongest and most personal set to date, since her wild days busking on the streets of Paris as a high school drop out before being discovered and going on to worldwide success and critical acclaim. ‘Bare Bones’ consolidates all of her previous promise with Peyroux writing all of the songs in collaboration with the likes of Julian Coryell, Joe Henry, David Batteau and Sean Wayland. One song, “I Must Be Saved,” was written entirely by Peyroux. The result is arguably her best album to date, an artistic breakthrough that finds her sublime voice wrapped around a collection of songs that she helped craft from their inception, marking her evolution as a songwriter.

Peyroux says the album builds from wariness, to loss, to acceptance, and finally to hope. “I’m really happy that I got to write,” says Peyroux, “It feels like a new segment, and it’s great work. I’m surrounded by beautiful sounds, really honest musicians, really honest playing.” It is indeed a fitting follow up to the success of her 2004 Rounder album ‘Careless Love’ that was a major breakthrough, selling over a million copies worldwide the equally triumphant 2006 recording Half the Perfect World which built upon that success and attained her highest ever chart position and sales weeks while drawing further rave reviews.

The second smoky-voiced star to make an equally alluring album this year is Melody Gardot. With her debut album ‘Worrisome Heart’ melting both fans and critics hearts with its heartfelt tales of life and love, her jazz and blues infused style continues to develop on ‘My One And Only Thrill’. With Melody’s gorgeous voice still centre stage the percolating Latin rhythms, swinging blues and slow-burning torch songs, she builds an emotional musical world that reveals a maturity far beyond that of a woman still in her early twenties. Gardot’s swift ascent to the top of tree of today’s jazzy blues singers has catapulted her into the fast lane of the music business, as she explained recently; “We were touring for nine months, though sometimes I’d have a week off if I was lucky. But I never really had time off because I was making the new record in between touring. That was daunting, but it was awesome too, because it gave me the opportunity to work and think, and work and think again, so I could reflect back rather than having to make constant snap decisions. It was interesting to do it that way, for sure.”

It’s a process that also influenced how she worked in the studio, shaping the songs as they took a life of their own;  “We walked into the studio with all the songs written, which was important because you need to have a good idea about how the record’s going to be. You need to have an idea, work it up with the musicians and get the rhythm tracks right. Then you can decide which songs need strings and which ones can live without them. It’s an interesting process of stripping down what you’re doing to make room for something else, like dividing it in half to make room for the orchestra.”

It’s also thanks to rapport she has with her fantastic working band of Charles Staab (drums), Ken Pendergast (bass), Patrick Hughes (trumpet), and Bryan Rogers (sax) that the music feels like it grew organically from their collective experiences. In other words it has its own cohesive sound that helps pack an emotional punch.

Adding some heavyweight musical touches was hugely acclaimed Connecticut-born composer/arranger Vince Mendoza, who has worked with such luminaries as Joni Mitchell and Joe Zawinul among dozens of others, effortlessly adding a luminescent glow of emotion and drama to Melody’s songs. The Mendoza magic has also been liberally sprinkled over the album’s title track. It’s a haunting ballad which seems to hang in space, held aloft by Melody’s delicate piano playing and a shimmering mirage of strings. In mid-song, the orchestra veers off on a dramatic detour, spiralling upwards in a vertiginous swirl of sound reminiscent of one of Bernard Herrmann’s Hitchcock soundtracks. Also awash in rich, moody strings is the heartfelt reverie of “Deep Within The Corners Of My Mind,” while the elegant bluesiness of “Lover Undercover” (a song which she has already been testing on live audiences) has been constructed over long, legato string phrases.

Speaking of sensual songs the return of Diana Krall, with her wonderful bossa nova album ‘Quiet Nights’, finds her in positively rhapsodic mood. Whereas her early album would perhaps suit a candlelit dinner, a walk along a moonlit beach, ‘Quiet Nights’, her twelfth album to date, isn't about that. By using Brazil as a musical point of reference, the award-winning pianist and singer is not suggesting a night out; she means to stay in; "It's not coy. It's not 'peel me a grape,' little girl stuff. I feel this album's very womanly - like you're lying next to your lover in bed whispering this in their ear."

And she’s not kidding as from the start with her refreshing version of ‘Where or When’ to an utterly heart-stopping rendition of ‘You're My Thrill’ the ten songs are disarming in their intimacy. Even those already familiar with the breathy vocals and rhythmic lilt in Krall's music - and now there are millions - will be taken aback by just how far the music pushes, unabashedly, into the realm of sweet surrender. "It's a sensual, downright erotic record and it's intended to be that way."

Krall is the first to credit the musical team she assembled - her loyal quartet, ace producer Tommy LiPuma, engineer Al Schmitt plus legendary arranger Claus Ogerman - for much of the seductive power on the album. But there's a deeper, palpable sense of maturity that she brought to the recording as well; "Most of my singing and playing on the album is really just first or second takes. 'You're My Thrill,' was a second take, ‘Too Marvelous’, first take." It speaks volumes for where she is as a happily married new mother, and a woman of the world.

"She's completely matured," says Tommy LiPuma, who should know, having first worked with Krall in 1994. "Even in the past few years. She approaches her vocal phrasing much more like an instrumentalist than a straight singer. It's in her reading of the lyrics, and the timbre of her voice, much more misty like Peggy Lee in her mature period." ("I didn't want to over sing - I was drawing also from Julie London very strongly on this album," Krall confesses, noting that such influences are not always conscious on her part. "It just came out that way.")

As such, the Brazilian focus of Krall's new album could not have been a more natural next step. "She's been very sympathetic to this music for a long time," notes LiPuma. "When we did The Look of Love, we were very much leaning in the bossa nova direction. Quiet Nights is really a celebration of this music. Diana sings three Brazilian classics, she rhythmically turned four standards into that style, and three ballads. So really there are ten songs on the album of which seven are just straight up bossa novas."

It makes sense that Quiet Nights (also the English name of the bossa nova classic "Corcovado" that is the title track) draws much of its musical spirit from the land that puts the "carnal" into its annual Carnaval celebration. "I was inspired to do this record because of my trip last year to Brazil," says Krall, who returned to Rio de Janeiro to shoot a concert for a new DVD release. "Then I just kept going back and found that everywhere you go you still hear the sounds of Jobim and bossa nova."

For those who may not remember or weren't yet around, Brazil's bossa nova wave (literally "new bump" or "new way" in Portuguese) was the widely popular musical style, based on the country's traditional samba rhythms, that swept up from the sidewalk cafes of Rio in the early '60s and seduced the entire planet with its hypnotic, swaying beats, sultry melodies, and new, exciting harmonies - all with generous room for jazz improvisation. Antonio Carlos Jobim (who composed "Quiet Nights" and "The Girl from Ipanema") and Joao Gilberto ("Este Seu Olhar") are two of the pioneers of the music, revered as national heroes in Brazil to this day.

‘Bare Bones’ by Madeleine Peyroux is released on March 10th, ‘My One And Only Thrill’ by Melody Gardot is released on March 16th  and ‘Quiet Nights’ by Diana Krall is released on March 31st 2009.