The Book of Longing (Sunnyside)
Luciana Souza
Released August 24, 2018
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2018
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mSPP7u8_MawsznSbVYOy4bhrAkKnUYWfU
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4EWu3ADIwO7RK6BGl2p0JG?si=XbPhZsUlRA-QDkv0TOTE3A
About:
Stunning, provocative, impassioned, esoteric, beautiful and soulful – just a few of the many adjectives that can be used to describe Luciana Souza’s remarkable new album, The Book Of Longing, set for release via Sunnyside Records on August 24th, 2018. Produced by veteran music executive Larry Klein and recorded at Village Recording Studios in Los Angeles, The Book Of Longing is a tour-de-force for the Grammy-nominated vocalist whose career continues to cross musical boundaries with unabashed curiosity and unbridled sheer delight. The release of The Book Of Longing will be accompanied by select tour dates across the globe.
To put it simply, The Book Of Longing is a song cycle – a passionate melding of poetry by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and Luciana herself – set to beautiful string accompaniment – for which all of the music was written and arranged by Souza. But this album is anything but simple – and its treasure trove of tracks comb the depths of human emotion from start to finish.
When describing the creative process behind the making of The Book Of Longing, Luciana was very concise as to how she approached the recording. “It became clear to me that I wanted this recording to be about words and how they make me feel. How a set of ideas can take me places, reveal things I didn’t know or even knew that I needed to know. As I started setting these poems I wanted the words to be heard, but not necessarily defined. To me, the string instruments offer the best canvas for these songs. Like the voice, the sound of plucked strings decay and brings on silence and more possibility for listening. Also, the idea of counterpoint between the voice and strings was essential to me. The music would have to be simple and unadorned. Thus began the process of editing and shedding layers of more complex harmony and melody in favor of the most basic and expressive of landscapes – it’s about the words, I reminded myself – simple triads moving directly, tonal melodies, no fuss or unnecessary activity or ornaments.”
Accompanying Luciana on the recording are Scott Colley on bass and Chico Pinheiro on guitar, and the album was recorded as a live project with percussion overdub. Added Souza, “Making music with Chico and Scott is a thing of wonder. They have bountiful hearts, incredibly able hands, and abundant musical intelligence. Larry’s generous and curious guidance fostered our creativity and kept things transparent and honest. To all of them, I am eternally grateful.”
Track Listing:
1. These Things (Luciana Souza) 05:15
2. Daybreak (Luciana Souza) 03:28
3. Alms (Edna St. Vincent Millay) 04:35
4. Night Song (Leonard Cohen) 04:58
5. Paris (Leonard Cohen) 03:13
6. The Book (Leonard Cohen) 04:01
7. Tonight (Luciana Souza) 04:48
8. We Grow Accustomed to the Dark (Emily Dickinson) 04:20
9. A Life (Leonard Cohen) 03:15
10. Remember (Christina Rossetti) 02:56
Personnel:
Luciana
Souza: voice & percussion
Chico Pinheiro: guitar
Scott Colley: bass
Produced by Larry Klein
Engineered by Ed Cherney
Mixed by Tim Palmer
Mastered by Bernie Grundman
Photography by Anna Webber
Graphic Design: Christopher Drukker
Review:
Since releasing her Sunnyside debut, The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop and Other Songs in 2000, Brazilian vocalist and composer Luciana Souza has woven poetry into the fabric of her work. Subsequent recordings such as Neruda, Tide, and Speaking in Tongues have all employed this approach as the prime vehicle of creative expression for her as a singer and composer, and she shapes the poems as complementary means in generating human connection and meaning.
The Book of Longing is titled after Leonard Cohen’s collection of poems, lyrics, and drawings of the same name. Here she strips down her charts to offer a new direction in ten relatively brief songs. Souza chose guitarist Chico Pinheiro and bassist Scott Colley as her accompanists (she provides organic percussion selectively), as well as her husband and longtime producer Larry Klein to helm these sessions. The program includes four works by Cohen, and one each by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson, alongside a trio of her own songs. Her own “These Things” offers gently syncopated rhythms and minimal textures provided by strings and whispering percussion, Souza’s vocals inhabit words and the spaces between them with disciplined phrasing and concision as her musicians provide a color palette that adds depth and dimension. One cannot help but hear the trace influence of Joni Mitchell on this tune. “Daybreak” hearkens back musically to her Brazilian influences, such as Tom Jobim and Dory Caymmi, as slippery bossa is kissed by chamber jazz. Cohen’s “The Book” is a vehicle for Souza’s canny ability to find the stillpoint inside a lyric. As Colley’s bass highlights the changes, Pinheiro’s chord voicings and single-string fills add an airy backdrop to her vocal, enveloping it effortlessly. Souza travels through each syllable in the tune’s lyric, imparting tenderness and tolerance amid the melancholy weight of meaning it contains. On “Night Song” (also by Cohen), her wordless vocalese introduction engages in taut yet breezy interplay with her sidemen. Their intuitive soloing is fleet and creates a net for Souza, who bridges the feelings of separation and loneliness in the lyric to the unconditional love it celebrates. Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” is introduced by a rugged bassline. Along with Pinheiro’s guitar, they deliver riffs suggestive of blues and rock. But when Souza begins to sing, she wraps both instrumentation and words in a jazz embrace to quietly dynamic effect. Rossetti’s “Remember” is a languid elegy, and Souza allows the words to penetrate her to the marrow. Her painfully intimate delivery equates the oncoming pain of death’s impossible-to-bear separation with a present in which two souls are joined in the union of heartbreak and longing. Her desire and acceptance drip like honey from her lips, arresting the moment in time. On Book of Longing, Souza displays yet again, her stark and remarkable originality in works of deceptive simplicity and elegance. The empathy and equanimity she displays with her sidemen is actually the sound of musical and emotional generosity.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
