Jazz singer Jane Monheit has been able to fufill two long held ambitions with her upcoming CD release. She has her new label Emerald City Record and, on April 8th, she will pay tribute to her idol Ella Fitzgerald by releasing Emeralds first project, The Songbook Sessions:Ella Fitzgerald. Monheit manages a record that acknowledges her idol while giving her own stamp to the familiar Fitzgerald material. With the contributions of her producer and arranger and trumpeter Nicolas Payton, a real effort was made to update the material and make it fresh for Jane Monheit.
According to BroadwayWorld, this is what Monheit has to say about her new album, "This record is really different. It's the first time I've made a recording without a label and so I was able to make all the decisions myself. Honestly, when I listened back to the takes, I heard a different singer than I've heard before-a more mature one. It was a little scary because there's a certain raw quality to some of the vocal but we gave no thought to fixing them. These were the vocals of a 38-year-old woman with a lot of life experience. These track really express who I am."
Monheit and producer, Nicolas Payton, met almost five years ago in Brazil and according to News Channel 10, this is what he had to say about helming the project. "My first priority was to make Jane comfortable, so all she had to worry about was showing up and singing. But on the other hand, I wanted to make her a little uncomfortable by pushing her into places she might not push herself. She is so multifaceted. I want to showcase a lot of different things she loves to do on any given night with her band that haven't necessarily been brought forth on her recordings."
