Thoughtful, Sparkling Poetically-Inspired Chamber Jazz From Amanda Tosoff

by delarue

Pianist Amanda Tosoff plays an eclectic, poetically-inspired blend of jazz and chamber pop, Her new album Earth Voices is streaming at Bandcamp. She’s collected a similarly diverse crew of voices to sing her songs, everybody seemingly chosen specifically for each one. 

Emilie-Claire Barlow sings energetically in A Dream Within a Dream over a a vampy latin-tinged groove that’s about as far from the classically-tinged phantasmagoria of the Alan Parsons Project’s earlier take on Edgar Allan Poe as you can possibly imagine. Kelly Jefferson’s spiraling soprano sax ironically adds a welcome, disquieted edge over the brightness.

Robin Dann moves to the mic for a low-key take of the Pablo Neruda text of Tosoff’s Sonnet 49, her elegant. tersely rippling piano bolstered by Aline Homzy’s violin and Beth Silver’s cello.

Here and Heaven, originaly recorded by Yo-Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Americana project, opens with a stark violin solo over Morgan Childs’ shamanic drums and Jon Maharaj’s terse bass. Michelle Willis and Alex Samaras’ vocal duet recalls the original pairing of Aoife O’Dononvan and Chris Thile; guitarist Alex Goodman adds a spikily joyous postbop intensity.

Samaras takes over vocals for Birdwings, Tosoff’s pensively rippling, lyrical setting of a Rumi poem. Laila Biali joins him to sing Oh, Life, a remake of a Mike Ross number from a theatrical production of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, where a girl emerges from her coffin to serenade the crowd. Tosoff’s baroque-tinged piano circles as the string quartet behind her slowly follows a long upward trajectory to another soulful Goodman solo.

Joni Mitchell’s antiwar anthem The Fiddle and the Drum, sung with stern intensity by Lydia Persaud, gets a sobering, emphatic reinterpretation but also an expansive, optimistic Tosoff solo. Felicity Williams sings To a Stranger, Tosoff’s setting of a Walt Whitman text over a vividly poignant string quartet arrangement. They bring the album full circle with Barlow resolutely singing another Tosoff original, Finis, built around a Marjorie Pickthall poem on a carpe diem theme.