Rebecca Martin - When I Was Long Ago - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2013 , the sixth album from the Jazz singer/songwriter. This warmly intimate set offers a uniquely expressive showcase for Martin's artistry, with a dozen resonant new original compositions and one classic interpretation, all performed in understated acoustic arrangements based around the artist's indelible voice and supple guitar work and the subtly inventive support of her husband and longtime collaborator, noted Jazz bassist Larry Grenadier.

2017 . Sometimes it is just a matter of timing and proximity that makes attractive collaborations possible. For years, singer/songwriter Rebecca Martin knew that she wanted to work with pianist/vocalist/composer Guillermo Klein. Klein's recent relocation to upstate New York, where Martin had made her home, made the opportunity of making music together possible. The beautiful results of their work can be heard on The Upstate Project. Martin is well known for her elegant songwriting and performance, commingling jazz and folk music. Aside from her solo work, she has regularly collaborated with a coterie of celebrated musicians, including Kurt Rosenwinkel, Paul Motian and Tillery, the celebrated vocal trio featuring Becca Stevens and Gretchen Parlato. Always community minded, Martin has become an advocate of sorts for collaboration in her musical and social endeavors, most notably in her adopted home of Kingston, New York. For his part, Klein has become a celebrated songwriter and composer, utilizing elements of jazz, modern classical, rock and Argentinean folkloric music. He had spent more than a decade living outside of the United States, both in Spain and Argentina, before returning and settling in Beacon, New York, a short distance from Martin.

Rebecca had come down to New York from rural Maine and had a band called Once Blue with singer guitarist Jesse Harris. Their album on EMI still sounds playful and timeless, as if Blossom Dearie had recorded with Steely Dan. a series of projects followed an album of standards, MIDDLEHOPE; a lovely album of her own songs, PEOPLE BEHAVE LIKE BALLADS; a collaborations with legendary drummer Paul Motion, that lead to a fine CD, ON BROADWAY 4 or THE PARADOX OF CONTINUITY. THE GROWING SEASON is an album of songs about motherhood, about living in the world and living in your body. There is an effortlessness about it, buoyed by the lighter-than-air rhythms of drummer Brian Blade, the supple rightness of Larry Grenadier's beautiful emphatic bass, the otherworldly chording's of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, all anchored by Rebecca's elegant songs, lovely, picked guitar and smoky, generous voice. It's a voice that seems to leave nothing out S*x and death and breakfast and wind in the trees and tax forms and laughter and night. All at once.