Monday, July 16, 2012

Thea Neumann, Lady & the Tramps

Thea Neumann sings with nuance. A good rhythmic sense. Embellishments that fit. Great pitch control. And personality. Her album Lady & the Tramps (Rawlco) gives you a nice assortment of standards and originals. It's Thea and a good piano trio with some guests and occasional horn section punctuations.

It's pretty firmly in the jazz mainstream camp, nicely so. "In Walked Bud" works well with the lyrics. "Vancouver" shows that Thea can write a very engaging ballad. Gillian Welch's "Dear Someone" gets a bell-beautiful rendition. "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" is, well, not made overly cute, which is sometimes a fateful, fatal temptation for singers when they do it, at least in the lounge lizard world. Not here.

Great vocalist, simple but very effective arrangements, good mix of songs. She should be widely appreciated and this CD shows you how that might be.

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