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Jonathan Widran

A LADY WITH A SONG - AMBER WEEKES CELEBRATES NANCY WILSON

Currently reaching rarefied heights in her storied, beautifully multi-faceted career a A Lady With A Song – Amber Weekes Celebrates Nancy Wilson, the acclaimed vocal stylist continues to draw inspiration from a rich personal journey where jazz was part of her DNA from the start. Some of Amber’s fondest early musical memories find her, around age three or four, joining her sister up on the family coffee table singing songs by another prominent songstress whose tunes wafted sweetly through their house, the great Nancy Wilson.


No doubt, when Amber was a toddler she didn’t understand all the deep emotional nuances of the charming nostalgic waltz “Wasn’t It Wonderful” – one of the gems the Weekes sisters sang for their parents – but it makes an ideal through line to the present day, and an emphatic coda to all the interpretive magic on the new album.


The 13-track collection is the brainchild of Mark Cargill, who has been Amber’s producer, arranger, conductor and full creative partner since The Gathering, a 2020 Christmas album collection that hit the top 25 of the Roots Music Christmas albums chart and Top 10 for Christmas jazz albums. The collaboration further blossomed on her 2021 album ‘Round Midnight (Re-Imagined) – a fully remixed, remastered and reorchestrated version of her first album. The release of A Lady with A Song comes a little over five years since Wilson passed away in December 2018.


In choosing material for the album, the key for Amber and Cargill was to showcase the multitude of moods and stylistic range of Wilson’s decades worth of repertoire, from her innate ability to swing (the opener “My Gentleman Friend”) and romp sassily and sensually in the bossa nova groove (“Save Your Love For Me,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Wave”) through her way with bright, orchestrated big band energy (“What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” “The Best Is Yet To Come”) and a tender, pointed  ballad (“Guess Who I Saw Today,” which saves its biting, surprise twist for the last line).


Amber pays homage to Wilson’s brilliant, socially conscious and often comical storytelling with all-star, style-specific assistance from a dream team of all-stars, including guitarists Russell Malone and Paul Jackson, Jr., multiple Grammy nominated urban jazz saxophonist Gerald Albright and flutist Justo Almario. Other top live and session jazz cats on hand include pianist Tony Campodonico, bassists Jeff Littleton and John B. Williams, saxophonists Carol Chaikin, Rickey Woodard and Jacob Scesney and drummer Fritz Wise.

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