There's a lot to be said for simplicity. You'd be surprised how hard it is to take a great song and sing it simply and meaningfully. But when it's done well, it's the most rewarding thing there is. Likewise, simplicity is an essential ingredient i [+]There's a lot to be said for simplicity. You'd be surprised how hard it is to take a great song and sing it simply and meaningfully. But when it's done well, it's the most rewarding thing there is. Likewise, simplicity is an essential ingredient in romance. The singer Simone Kopmajer [pronounced "Cope- myer"] clearly realizes that job one is to let emotion drive the whole works. The idea to begin with and keep that old horse before the cart, then romance can't help but emerge naturally from the great love songs.
Simone''s singing also testifies to the validity of an idea I've heard expressed independently by two male singers, one very experienced, Tony Bennett, and the other comparatively young, Allan Harris. Namely, that women are able to express their emotions in a more direct and honest way at a much earlier age than men, and that a 23-year-old female singer can open herself up in a way that a male performer with more experience can't.
Daughter of a family of Austrian musicians, Simone began singing with her father's band and studying piano and voice at age twelve. Over the last ten years, she rose up through the various systems of support for jazz in Europe - talent competitions, officially-subsized orchestras and festivals that are pretty much unknown in the land of the music's birth. She studied formally in Graz, Austria, where two of the foremost jazz vocal educators, Mark Murphy and Sheila Jordan, have long-term teaching residencies, made her US debut in 2000, and has worked all over the world.
So too have her New York-based accompanists, starting with another European, the Czech-born bassist George Mraz, the prolific and prodigious drummer Tim Horner, and John DiMartino, who is fast emerging in my estimation as one of the major pianist-musical directors to watch around town. Eric Alexander is a still very young tenorist who has already developed a big imposing sound, and he has already ranked in Down Beat's December 2004 Annual Readers' Poll as one of the top 10 tenor saxophonists in the world. Todd Barkan, who always gets consistently outstanding results from from both new and legendary jazz singers, sat in the producer's chair.
In keeping with the European backgrounds of Simone and Mraz, it seems fitting to begin with the work
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