After Midnight review in Stereophile Magazine

“Rebecca Martin is a singer/songwriter with a small but devoted following. After Midnight is a unique project for her, a collaboration with a well-established orchestra from Portugal. Martin’s husband, bassist Larry Grenadier, is a featured soloist.

Martin is a rarity among jazz singers: a true composer. But her songs are performed infrequently by others, perhaps because they are so specific to her. They are real-time dispatches from the front lines of life in the 21st century. They document the circumstances of her soul. They deal with common subjects like love, with uncommon insights into love’s ongoing paradoxes (“In the Nick of Time”). Often she writes about the fragile dynamics of the creative process itself (“Don’t Mean a Thing at All,” “All Day Long She Wrote”). Her language never concedes the obvious.

The orchestra is a continuous source of beauty on this album. It surrounds Martin with an envelope of complementary impressionism. Its lush textures and rich colors deepen the rapt atmosphere that is Martin’s natural habitat. 

Martin’s vocal instrument is very fine, but sometimes what a singer can do with her voice is less important than who she is. Martin sings from the heart with plain-spoken humanity. When she takes on well-worn standards like “Willow Weep for Me,” she gives witness, without self-pity, to heartbreak.  “Lush Life” is perfect for her. It is a song as stream of consciousness.  Martin thinks it aloud, like a diary entry…”

Thomas Conrad, July 2022, Stereophile Magazine

Rebecca Martin with the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos in Portugal and Spain

 

 

Rebecca Martin’s week as the guest artist with the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos in Portugal and Spain was a success with great reviews and the possibility of a recording and additional future concert dates.

 

Casa de Musica’s Video Interview of Rebecca Martin and Pedro Guedes

READ:  “Rebecca Martin: A Singer Who Sounds at Home”

 

 

TILLERY (Rebecca Martin, Gretchen Parlato, Becca Stevens) Available on Bandcamp Exclusively.

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Now you can purchase the Tillery recording, a collaborative project by Rebecca Martin, Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens on Band Camp.

PURCHASE ON BAND CAMP

4 1/2 Stars in Downbeat Magazine (October, 2016)

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“A Jazz Singer Fights Niagara Bottling” in The New Yorker.

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“Our group’s initial objection was that an enormous amount of the city of Kingston’s public water supply—1.75 million gallons per day—was to be sold to a bottling company to bottle and to sell without enough evidence that our water source could maintain that amount over the long haul,” she explained. “We were also disturbed that a multimillion-dollar corporation was allowed to purchase our water at a fraction of what local residents and businesses pay.” Generations of families in the area had invested in the local water infrastructure for a century, but, without warning, a water board could decide what would happen to a public resource without consulting the community. Martin and her fellow-activists began organizing public meetings to make residents aware of what was happening, and they went to meetings of the Kingston Common Council and Kingston Water Board to interrogate members on their decision-making. “That’s what we were managing—from my bedroom,” Martin said, laughing.

READ Full Article in The New Yorker

TWAIN is chosen best of 2013 in Jazz on iTunes.

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TWAIN is selected as one of the 10 best Jazz albums of 2013 by the editors of iTunes!

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TWAIN Catapults to #1 in Jazz in France. Martin Featured on Art of the Song Nationwide on Public Radio. West Coast Performance in August.

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Rebecca Martin’s latest recording TWAIN, a collaboration with longtime partner bassist Larry Grenadier and produced by Pete Rende was catapulted to the #1 spot in Jazz in France on iTunes and Amazon.  Revered music critic MICHEL CONTAT who writes for Telerama France, one of the largest publications in the country, gives the album four stars:

“TWAIN: The miraculous alchemy between a singer and bass player”
Rebecca Martin and Larry Grenadier are a couple who play together and separately, as he is also known for his key role as bassist in the famous Brad Mehldau Trio. We were introduced to them together through their enchanting disc When I Was Long Ago” (2010 Sunnyside), where the famous singer totally reinterpreted standards with a spell singing verses rarely included in the reference versions. This time, the deputy is a pianist and a drummer, and the very discreet duo assert a familiar song (“Sophisticated Lady”) with others that are all original that sound old and with a unique intimate beauty. We cannot overstate the importance of sincerity, as with Rebecca Martin, it is built entirely in art. Her voice is that of the love and confidence of maternal comfort. How the bass lines support is love itself. Such a disk is something miraculous in the avalanche of vocal jazz. – Michel Contat

Earlier this year, NATE CHINEN of the New York Times featured Martin in a full page Arts & Leisure piece titled “A Voice That Leaps Between Genres” proclaiming her work as an inspiration to a generation of jazz singers.

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“Ms. Martin is a vocalist with an earnest and unaffected style and a songwriter of unforced insight…the new album also highlights a shift toward original material and folky ambience by a generation of singers, some of whom see Ms. Martin as a touchstone.”  – Nate Chinen

Her sensitivity through singing, songs and a long standing commitment to community organizing landed her a spot as featured artist on Art of the Song, the public radio program heard nationwide over 150 stations. This hour long program celebrates the creativity of musicians who they believe are a ‘profound agent for community and for change.’  Listen here.

Fans on the West Coast in August will have the opportunity to hear Martin and Grenadier who will both be teaching in SAN FRANCISCO, CA at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and performing in LOS ANGELES, CA at THE BLUE WHALE located at 123 Astronaut E S Onizuka Street  Suite 301 LA, CA on Saturday, August 10th. Doors at 8:00pm with a showtime at 9:00pm. Tickets are $15. Visit www.bluewhalemusic.com for more information.

 For further information or to request an interview or music, please contact Patrice Fehlen at September Gurl Music, 718.768.3859 or patrice@septembergurl.com.

Rebecca Martin and TWAIN Featured in New York Times. Martin a ‘touchstone’ to a generation of jazz singers for singing and songwriting.

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KINGSTON, N.Y. —  A New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure piece written by Nate Chinen was published this weekend on Rebecca Martin and her upcoming release TWAIN on Sunnyside Records (available nationwide on Tuesday, March 26th).  “Ms. Martin is a vocalist with an earnest and unaffected style and a songwriter of unforced insight; Mr. Grenadier, her husband, is in the top tier of jazz bassists. Together they made Ms. Martin’s new album, “Twain,” due out on Sunnyside on Tuesday, in cloistered intimacy, recording a dozen of her songs with no initial accompaniment other than upright bass (his) and fingerpicked acoustic guitar (hers).”

“… the new album also highlights a shift toward original material and folky ambiance by a generation of jazz singers, some of whom see Ms. Martin as a touchstone. Among them are Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens, with whom Ms. Martin formed a collective called Tillery two years ago, after they struck an instant chemistry late one evening around her dinner table. “She’s been a great guide and mentor and sister in my songwriting,” said Ms. Parlato, who won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition in 2004 but hadn’t written her own songs before befriending Ms. Martin.”

“…And, perhaps most of all, Ms. Martin’s songs, which have long dwelled in implication, creating a vivid emotional climate without divulging many details. One reason younger songwriters admire Ms. Martin may be that she writes from a place of genuine interiority; another is that her melodies and her lyrics feel so naturally enmeshed.”

 READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

 

Click on image to purchase on Amazon.

Click on image to purchase on Amazon.

Click on image to purchase on iTunes.

Click on image to purchase on iTunes.

 

NPR: 15 Jazz Albums To Look Out For in 2013

 

“Rebecca Martin, Twain: The vocalist Rebecca Martin‘s last album was a collection of standards, recorded only with a saxophonist (Bill McHenry) and a bass player, Larry Grenadier. Think of Twain as a sequel of sorts: It’s a program of mostly originals, backed only by Grenadier, who is also her husband. As a singer, she has a sense of nuance that fits a spare setting well; as a songwriter, she’s already put out several albums of her own tunes. Out March 26.”

SEE the list on NPR. By Patrick Jarenwattananon.

Rebecca Martin and Larry Grenadier Continue Residency at the Jazz Gallery with a performance on Friday, September 7th.

Rebecca Martin and Larry Grenadier at the Jazz Gallery in New York City in August. Photo credit: John Rogers

Singer Rebecca Martin and bassist Larry Grenadier continue their monthly residency at New York City’s Jazz Gallery through November 2012. The duo, whose recently recorded album Twain will be released in January 2013 on Sunnyside, will perform at the Gallery on September 7,  October 16, and November 6. They will perform two sets of original compositions and standards on each of the remaining three nights of the residency, at 9:00 pm and 10:30 pm. Tickets are $20.00. The Jazz Gallery is located at 290 Hudson Street (at Spring Street). Tickets can be purchased online at http://jazzgallery.org. For more information, call (212)243-1063.

On Martin and Grenadier’s performance last month at the Jazz Gallery, THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD reports: “One of the most distinctively original voices in music today, Rebecca Martin transcends the boundaries between jazz vocalist and singer/songwriter in her performances…(Martin) marked herself as a modern-day troubadour, a musical storyteller possessed of a daring willingness to bare her soul in the telling of tales fraught with both personal and universal meaning. Alternately exuding bold confidence and delicate fragility in tone…”

For more information about Rebecca Martin, contact Regina Joskow regina@missingpiecegroup.com at the Missing Piece Group, 862-234-0801.