Com Voce
SSC1241 2010-05-11
Track List
E Preciso Dizer Adeus / All That's Left Is To Say Goodbye - 3:23
Peach Trees - 5:51
Saudosismo - 6:43
Call Me - 4:05
Wicked Game - 6:18
By On Byl Tu (Farmer's Trust) - 3:54
A Trem Azul - 5:40
Into Shade - 6:23
Half The Way (If I Could) - 5:08
Musicians
Margret Grebowicz - vocals
Ben Monder - guitar - electric
Matvei Sigalov - guitar - acoustic, violin
Tim Collins - vibes
Scott Colley - acoustic bass
Antonio Sanchez - drums
Lusito Quintero - percussion
Stan Killian - saxophone
Vivian Arnoux - accordion
"Pure", "wistful", "inviting"... This is how All About Jazz New York describes the sound of self-taught vocalist Margret. She names her group Com Você same as the title of her album. The name means “with you” and, as Cadence magazine writes, “Com Você is with us from start to finish as they pursue dreamy landscapes and fill each one with rhythms that sashay eloquently… Bossa nova and samba have been around for quite some time; yet, this ensemble delivers each piece with a freshness that proves memorable.” The repertoire is heavy with Brazilian music, classic and contemporary, but also ventures into lush wordless standards, Polish poetic song, and sweet, lyrical perspectives on contemporary songwriting.
Peter Westbrook writes in jazz review.com: “Overall it is remarkable how these seemingly diverse elements fit together…. It all works, as the singer bends each piece to her unique styling, hands it off to the various soloists, and then reclaims it for a final rendering…. For lovers of both jazz and Brazilian music, this is something fresh that deserves a hearing.”
Originally based in Texas, Margret performed extensively in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, including the state’s major jazz festivals. They debuted in San Francisco and Los Angeles as the opening band for acclaimed Brazilian singer/songwriter Zé Renato on his first US tour.
Today Margret is based in New York City and performs on the last Sunday of every month at the legendary 55 Bar in Manhattan. The repertoire includes music by Lô Borges, Arto Lindsay, Caetano Veloso, Pat Metheny, Rufus Wainwright, and other contemporary composers, in addition to standards. The new Com Você CD features Ben Monder, Scott Colley, and Antonio Sanchez.
Reviews
The blushing, demure voice of Margret Grebowicz is a thing of rare and extraordinary beauty. Everything about her is so perfect that she seems to exist in singular splendor. She is pitch-perfect, no matter how nuanced the note she sings is. Usually she can make this up with a tone so freshly subtle and unusual that she seems to have been created it on her own. She can make notes undulate at her command. Her intonation is soft and sung with utter nakedness, bereft of ceremony and circumstance so much so that the sheer emotion of each word she sings is enough to take the breath away. In this respect she is much like the Brazilian performer Rosa Passos or the magnificent Colombian singer Lucia Pulido. But then again, she has no precedence. Margret (who primarily goes by only her first name) exists in a soft nasal world almost alone where the very air abounds with the softness of music.On Com Voc� her voice shimmers through nine songs, expertly negotiated on the wave of a band that also reads her vocals with expert facility. But with miraculous empathy from guitarist Ben Monder and the ghostly percussive shadow of Luisito Quintero on some tracks, the musical world of this album revolves around Margret. Her voice glides, skips and dallies endlessly like air on glass. She infuses the lyric of each song with life, breathing into each word with sometimes short, shallow gasps and at other times with deep, interminably expanding lungs full of air that expel emotions like a myriad dandelions rising and falling on undulating thermals. Margret also picks the most precise note for the lyric, expanding, bending or clipping it short when the most nuanced part of the emotion demands it. As a result, she lands on its soft spot, extracting the most unusual feelings in response, from musicians and audience.
Com Voc� may be short on overall time, but it is a wonderful vehicle for Margret, with songs arranged by Gil Goldstein� such as Rufus Wainwright's "Peach Trees"� and Matt Pierson, who extracts an enviable chemistry between Ben Monder and the singer on Chris Issak's "Wicked Game." But perhaps the most memorable songs on the album could be Caetano Veloso's "Saudosismo," "O Trem Azul," from the pen of L� Borges, and "By on Bye Tu (Farmer's Trust)" and "Half the Way (If I Could)," two tracks from Pat Metheny. There is really no chart here that falls short of wonderful. However, Margret's reading of the Brazilian music deserves special mention as she is not Brazilian and yet infuses the songs with emotion that only Brazilian singers with duende and a deeper sense of saudade can.
This could easily be a definitive vocal album from a singer who is blessed with just that magic that the word duende describes. Much more is sure to come from this truly gifted singer. How her fans, old and new alike, will be entranced will be a fabled experience.
- Raul d'Gama Rose - AllAboutJazz.com
Nice review in the Nov. 2010 issue of DownBeat.
Jennifer Odell, - November 2010 read the full article
Speak French? Check out the review in the Oct. 2010 issue of Jazz Magazine.
Alfred Sordoillet, Jazz Magazine - October 2010 read the full article