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Barb Jungr - Bare Again (ZC
Records)
Released - May 22, 2007
There are just a whole bunch of of talented women working in Britain and
Europe, who deserve to be heard more often in the Colonies. Barb Jungr
is one of them. Okay, maybe not on my local "Smooth
Jazz" station, which plays everything but jazz. But somewhere...hello?
XM Radio? Sirius NPR?
You're missing something good, here.
Sigh.
This is a re-release of Ms. Jungr's 1999 album, "Bare," with three
additional tracks from Ms. Jungr's earlier work. I won't go into Ms. Jungr's biography in detail, except to say it's easily found
here and
here. Ms. Jungr and a piano - the late
Russell Churney - complete the performing credits on this,
and when you've got a voice like hers, that's plenty. It's a perfect
combination - his piano is every bit as expressive as her voice. This
may well be the definitive turn of Leonard Cohen's
"Suzanne." Most of the tracks are covers - you haven't heard the Kinks'
"Waterloo Station" like this before - there are several original tracks,
as well. One of them, "Dancers To The Dawn," is
particularly beautiful.
The official bio makes comparisons to Nina Simone, Peggy Lee and Edith
Piaf (Edith Piaf?) Barb Jungr sounds like a very, very good Barb Jungr
to me. To me - she's one of those artists you compare
others to - as in, "so-and-so may get to sound like Barb Jungr...when
she has lived a little more."
You can pick up some of Ms. Jungr's work on iTunes, but I don't think
it's her best stuff. The best stuff is on Linn Records - Ms. Jungr's UK
label. Linn mostly produces high-end audio products.
They began the record label as a way to produce discs that were good
enough to showcase their audio equipment. Or as they put it (in the way
that only an engineer can), "The beautiful compositions
and artistic performances are perfectly captured by our expert engineers
on recordings of unprecedented truth."
This disc gets a highest recommendation from me. If Ms. Jungr's voice
has this impact on me - through an old Marantz amp, and my ratty Koss
Pro-Fours - I can only imagine what she sounds like on
Linn's big rigs.
Or even better, in person.
She'll be in New York's "Metropolitan Room" for a couple of shows in
early May, with Charlie Giordano on piano.
If you're in town then, you should go see.
It should be a heckuva show.
Four microphones (out of four)
- Doug Boynton
(04/07/07) |
