Modern Cool

Modern Cool

Editorial Reviews
<"b00000k3be7499"> Amazon.com
Chicago pianist and vocalist Patricia Barber is making lots of ears burn. Her torch song touch speaks volumes to jazz vocal fanatics, but she has an adventuresome side that speaks likewise to fans of woollier jazz. Barber's vocal delivery is swaggering and burnished, always angling against oddball time signatures and often dropping weird lyrical science. From e.e. cummings poems, Barber moves into prescient observations on our society: "For company in the 21st century," she sings, "I go to the club, talk through the show / I'm so hip there's nothing about jazz / That I don't know." Trumpeter Dave Douglas and guitarist John McLean add a sharp edge, and the Choral Thunder Vocal Choir give Modern Cool soul-drenched dynamics that push the CD into the realm of instant classics. --Andrew Bartlett

<"b00000k3be5515"> Jazz Times
[Barber's] compositions are intelligent observations of modern urban life, beginning with "Touch of Trash," a portrait of a perfectly made up woman who's "just a culture short of class". Barber's voice is sultry and appealing, a perfect mesh with her subject matter.