Kat Parra
Azucar De Amor
Patois Records
By George W. Harris

Here’s a disc that puts your faith back into the future of jazz singing. Who’d have predicted that a lady who left her computer job in Silicon Valley would put out a disc that vibrantly mixes latin sambas with Sephardic jazz? Vocalist Kat Parra is really on to something with this disc, putting a salsa groove on tunes ranging from Stanley Turrentine’s “Sugar” to Errol Garner’s “Misty”, and making the whole thing work. Her voice, rich, confident and inviting, enthusiastically floats over these toe tapping salsas. The Sephardic twinge is perfectly suited for Gillespie’s “Night In Tunisia” giving it the Saharan lilt that it has always apparently needed. Traditional tunes like “Por La Tu Puerta” have an invigorating mix of Mediterranean charm and Lambert Hendricks and Ross linguistic gymnastics. This one’s got my vote for one of the top albums of the year. Search far and wide for it, and thank God for computer geeks turned singers.