NEW RELEASE:

by Devorah Day

title: Light of Day

(featuring Marion Brown)

Devorah Day: Vocals

Marion Brown: Alto saxophone

Jorge Sylvester: Alto & tenor saxophone

Booker T: Alto & tenor saxophone

David Colding: Bass

Kid Lucky: Vocal instrumentalist

Abaton Book Company is pleased to announce the release of Light of Day, the debut CD by avant jazz vocalist Devorah Day.

Although Ms. Day is little known in the current jazz scene, her stature is undeniable to those who have seen her perform or heard the underground tapes in circulation. Her fans understand that this release should be seen as the most important jazz vocal album of the decade because Day is heir apparent to the fortunes set aside by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Jeanne Lee.

With her highly unorthodox line up of voice, triple saxophone and bass, Devorah Day has constructed a multi-layered yet minimalistic statement, a subtly hued tone poem. Her phrasing has few limitations as she chases her own tale by leaps and bounds through gray skies, toward greener pastures.

Light of Day Light of Day has much in common with classic titles produced by ESP-Disk', the adventurous 1960s avant-garde label that released two records by Day's accompanist, Marion Brown. Here Brown, the legendary saxophonist who played on John Coltrane's Ascension, gives his most transcendental performance in many a year.

This CD will be of interest to admirers of female vocalists and an aware jazz audience in general.

Purchase Light Of Day with any credit card via paypal.



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Light of Day
Devorah Day | Abaton Book Company
 
In an odd metaphysical sense, the avant garde always sounds the same. Abstract, startling, disconcerting, slightly opaque, sometimes impenetrable, razor-sharp, and to the right kind of ears, irresistible.

All of this characterizes jazz vocalist and songwriter Devorah Day’s debut release, Light of Day. As with anything of this nature, it remains to be seen whether Day has arrived at her present position by traveling jazz singings current developmental trajectory at an accelerated pace, or in fact condensed out of jazz history, and the phantasm of her own creativity, an isolated sonic phenomena.

The first notable feature of Light of Day is its unusual instrumentation, consisting of voice (Day), three saxophones (Marion Brown: alto, Jorge Sylvester and Booker T: alto & tenor), bass (David Colding), and Kid Lucky as guest vocal instrumentalist. The absence of both piano and drums liberates Day from the temporally segmented nature of percussive sound, as well as the standard jazz atmosphere evoked by such aural cues as snare and ride, chord progressions, and the fact that piano, bass, and drums are the most typical backing for jazz vocalists.

Led by Marion Brown’s delicate, highly freeform, and expressive voice, the collective sound established by the three saxophones is at once minimalist and tremendously effective in framing Day’s highly idiosyncratic approach to the album’s six tracks. Instead of dictating a rhythmic or melodic path for Day to navigate, the sax section, with the aid of Colding’s inventive bowing and fragmentary pizzicato interjections, encases Day in a tonally fluid, textural space. From within this, Day sends forth a collection of clustered sounds, rising and falling melodic lines, moans, subtly phrased lyrics, keens, and glissandi, all threaded together by the emotional clarity of her readings.

By presenting a balance of three standards and three original compositions, Day reveals a flexible, innovative, and personal approach. Her own compositions tend towards the extremes of free improvisation, descending into obscure realms of minimalism, replete with a blend of self-conscious wit and honest emotive displays. In turn, Day’s deconstruction and eventual reformation of the standards distills their most attenuated emotional aspects. Day transforms “Lover Man” into an abstract dirge, her voice emanating from within the piece’s ethereal instrumentation like a frozen plea from another plane. Day finds hidden coves of meaning in Lilia and Jobim’s Dindi, her experimentation nourished by the depth of the original compositions.

Taken as a whole, this album is a highly complex and astute creation. Just as all alto sax players are eventually compared to Bird, Day will soon be compared to the holy trinity: Holiday, Fitzgerald, and Vaughan. In fact, the album’s liner notes allude to as much. Day style, however, has little relationship to things past. In a case like this, such comparisons denote little more than the inescapability of the historical context, and they remain as significant as defining Dali as the heir of Van Gogh, Monet, and Matisse. Reliance on lineage to gauge the modern, though usually employed to grant legitimacy, in fact operates as a conservative mechanism precisely opposed to the expressive expansion the avant garde continually seeks – and that Day has achieved.

~ Franz A. Matzner
www.allaboutjazz.com

Wire Review

Top five vocal release Best of 2003 in All About Jazz


A nice review from The Broken Face


Marion Brown Discography

Marion Brown at ALL MUSIC GUIDE




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