Laila Biali - Your Requests [CD]

Act Music

£13.77

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: ACT9055-2
Barcode: 0614427905529
Release Date: 07 Jul 2023
Genre: Jazz

 ‘Your Requests’, Laila Biali’s third album on ACT, shows a very different side of the craft of the Canadian pianist / vocalist from its predecessors. Both her self-titled debut album, which won the Canadian Juno Award for Best Vocal Jazz album in 2019, and also its successor, ‘Out of Dust’ (nominated for the award in
2021), showcased the range, depth and sheer quality of the pianist / vocalist / bandleader’s songwriting.
 Now, for the first time in 10 years, the Toronto-based artist and her band return to jazz standards with a new twist on songs from the Great American Songbook, including classics by Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart and Jerome Kern.
 For ‘Your Requests’, Laila Biali has assembled a magnificent roster of guests - not just the vocalists Kurt Elling and fellow JUNO winners Emilie-Claire Barlow and Caity Gyorgy, but stunning instrumentalists as well: clarinettist Anat Cohen, harmonica master Grégoire Maret, Brazilian percussionist Maninho Costa and Hammond B3 organist Sam Yahel (who made two classic albums, ‘Yaya3’ and ‘Elastic’, with Joshua
Redman in 2002).
 Biali’s regular collaborators form the core band: drummers Larnell Lewis (Snarky Puppy) and Ben Wittman, along with bassist George Koller and saxophonist Kelly Jefferson.
 “She often expresses more in a single breath than others do in an entire album.” - Dan Bilawsky, Allaboutjazz

Tracklisting
Bye Bye Blackbird (Ray Henderson & Morton Dixon)
Blame It on My Youth (Oscar Levant & Edward Heyman)
But Not for Me (George & Ira Gershwin)
My Funny Valentine (Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart)
My Favorite Things (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II)
Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) (Antônio Carlos Jobim, lyrics by Gene Lees)
Pennies from Heaven (Arthur Johnston & Johnny Burke)
Autumn Leaves (Joseph Kosma & Jacques Prévert, lyrics by Johnny Mercer)
The Nearness of You (Hoagy Carmichael & Ned Washington)
All the Things You Are (Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II)