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Jonathan Widran

STEPHANIE AUSTIN LETSON, Telling Stories

Listening intently to and feeling gratefully seduced by Stephanie Austin Letson’s exquisite and dreamy, all at once spry and swinging vocals and overall comfortability with the intimate, sparse jazzy arrangements on her long-awaited debut album Telling Stories, a few salient issues come to mind. Like, why it took until she had earned her master’s and was well into her successful educational career to switch from her first musical life as a concert pianist and accompanist to focusing on vocals.


And then, after years of performing as a soloist and teaching and producing award-winning student jazz vocal groups and albums, it took the pandemic downtime to, as she says in her liner notes, “give myself permission to not just teach other people music but focus on creating music myself as an artist.” Manifesting just that, she pulls off emotionally immersive, alternately sparsely intimate and spirited jazzy miracles with friend and Grammy winning producer Bill Hare – the world’s most awarded individual a capella producer – straight through from the from the jaunty, slightly exotic swing adventure of “A Sunday Kind of Love” through a sly, soulful and yes, truly spiritual whirl through Seal’s “Love’s Divine.”


It would literally take hundreds of words to fully explain the 40 year professional history Stephanie – a decorated professor of music since 1990 - brings to this opportunity for Telling Stories so beautifully, from her national and international performances as soloist and director (Carnegie Hall, Jazz Club de Grenoble) to her jazz vocal groups being feted by prominent jazz publications and competitions and being a founding member of the vocal quartets InFusion and LesQuatre. So while listeners interested in all that jazz can dig deeper into her bio, we can focus here on what makes her ten track collection a creative revelation and a significant addition to contemporary vocal jazz.


Her choice of material is particularly fascinating, if only because the easiest thing a versatile consummate pro like her could create a powerful work just by putting her spin on Great American Songbook stuff we’ve heard millions of times. Two of the sweetest rarities she shares are Peter Eldredge’s reflective “An Interesting Person,” which showcases the hypnotic lyricism of her vocals, and the graceful, thoughtful practicality of Sting’s “Practical Arrangement.”



Reflecting a more playful side of her artistry, Stephanie brings a whimsical charm to a lightly swinging take on “Moonlight,” a John Williams/Alan & Marilyn Bergman gem from the 90s version of Sabrina, sung on the soundtrack by Sting. The wide expanse of her irresistible repertoire/playlist finds her gamely exploring the majestic seafaring poetry of a song from Joni Mitchell’s 1968 debut album (“The Dawntreader”), putting crafty infectious lyrics to Keith Jarrett’s fast bustling “Spiral Dance” and wafting breezily through Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.”


Yet amidst all the legend powered compositions, one of the even more impressive standouts on the album is bassist Fred Randolph’s balmy, bossa-lite hypnotic ballad “Melodia Sem Fim,” a romance tenderly fueled by Mason Rasavi’s lighthearted and plucky acoustic guitar lines. Telling Stories is an essential, thoughtful and magnificently arranged and produced project that introduces the full-throttle artistry of a grand singer who’s waited far too long to regale us with a solo album.


Hopefully, Stephanie, Hare and her incredibly intuitive ensemble – which also features drummer John O’Reilly Jr., percussionist Dylan Damonte and French jazz musicians Manu Domergue (mellophone) and Christian Roy (sax, clarinet) – will be telling us many more transcendent jazz stories in the years to come.  

   

 

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