With Strings (La Reserve)
Caity Gyorgy
Released August 22, 2025
JAZZ.FM91 Best Jazz Albums of 2025
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mVL6Z12mZsQSaN5NSy8vTXeIitVJLVbPs
Spotify:
About:
Caity Gyorgy with Strings: Arranged and Conducted by Mark Limacher is a dream album, to say the least. Over 50 people came together to make this project happen. We are so grateful to everyone involved.
It’s funny to think that creating an album similar to this one was a common practice less than 80 years ago. And, without intending to sound as though I myself come from 80 years ago, these days, they don’t make em’ like they used it! Because, it’s just not possible to “crank ‘em out” at the same rate. Which is a shame, because this was an incredibly rewarding album to make. In a perfect world, Mark and I would do something of this scale every single year.
Mark and I wrote the music for this album over the course of a year. Writing with him is scarily easy, and I think you’ll like the music we came up with, but I think you’ll like his arrangements of the music even more. He is a genius. If you enjoy arrangers like Don Costa, Gordon Jenkins, Henry Mancini, and Nelson Riddle, then you’ll love Mark.
I hope you enjoy listening to what has been a privilege to create.
Track Listing:
1. That Doesn’t Matter 02:49
2. You’ll Learn 03:47
3. Train Wrecked Dining Car 02:45
4. If I’d’ve Known 04:06
5. I’ve Been Kicking Myself 03:14
6. Sight to Behold 03:36
7. Memo 267 02:58
8. Pour for the Hour 02:57
Personnel:
Caity Gyorgy: voice
Mark Limacher: piano
Nathaniel Chiang: drums
Jonathan Wielebnowski: bass
Orchestra:
Violin 1: Gen Micheletti, Edmund Chung, Jeremy Gabbert, Jeongah Choi, Danielle Greene, Isaac Willocks
Violin 2: Theresa Lane, Adriana Lebedovich, Lidia Lee, Diane Lane, Laurent Grillet-Kim, Peter Blake
Viola: Marcin Swoboda, Alisa Klebanov, Jesse Morrison, Jeremy Bauman
Cello: Josué Valdepeñas, Clare Bradford, Kathleen De Caen, Dave Morrissey
Bass: Patrick Staples
Trombone: Carsten Rubeling, Kris Leslie, Nikki McCaslin, Dave Reid
Trumpet: Joel Gray, Samamtha Whelan-Kotkas, Rich Scholz
Woodwinds: Emily Phernambucq, Cedric Blary, Dustyn Richardson, Brett McDonald, Dan Davis, Aidan Dugan
Horn: Jennifer Frank, Doug Umana, Maxwell Stein
Recorded at the National Music Centre in Calgary, AB, Canada on March 27th and April 7th, 2025
Producers: Caity Gyorgy, Mark Limacher, Graham Lessard Recording and mixing engineer: Graham Lessard
Assistant engineer: Eric Cinnamon
Mastering engineer: Reuben Ghose
Orchestra contracted by: Alisa Klebanov and Mark Limacher
Photos taken by June Cavlan
Review:
Back in the heyday of popular singers like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole it was standard practice for record labels to release albums for their artists every year or even multiple times a year. (Fun fact: Doris Day recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.) And these weren’t thrown together bare bones records – they were fully orchestrated and replete with horns, woodwinds and strings. Caity Gyorgy is throwing back to that time with this latest release (her sixth in about as many years) and she references that era in her liner notes, saying how labels used to “crank ‘em out.”
But this sounds like anything but a rushed job, with its beautiful production and full orchestra on each track. All ten songs are original and penned by Gyorgy and Mark Limacher or by Gyorgy alone. Most of the songs clock in around the three-minute mark, and there’s no soloing to speak of, and that all adds to the nostalgic feel of the album and puts it more in the crooner category than jazz. Limacher’s gorgeous arrangements give the record a generally upbeat tone, despite some quite poignant lyrics from Gyorgy, and on several of the tunes the orchestrations really take centre stage.
Standout tracks for me are Gyorgy’s own Next Time and There Goes, and the collaboration That Doesn’t Matter where the melody is the star and the arrangements complement and support it. Overall, this record is quite an accomplishment and Gyorgy and Limacher should be very proud. Bonus: the cocktail recipes included in the liner notes are a lot of fun!
Cathy Riches (The WholeNote)
