As a prominent member of the New York jazz scene, Nora McCarthy continues to enjoy the well-deserved acclaim she is receiving for her latest recording CIRCLE COMPLETING. The recording offers listeners 9 duet renditions of your favorite jazz standards and several new songs penned by McCarthy.  Joined by pianist John di Martino, the duo swings on “Come Fly With Me,” gets down right bluesy and gritty on “Little Red Rooster,” and soothes the soul on ballads such as “Too Late Now,” and “The Shadow of Your Smile.” McCarthy’s vocals are rich and subtle and laced with varying degrees of earthy blues and soulful phrasings. This CD will be enjoyed by those who appreciate a set filled with quiet moods and laidback emotions.
                            Read more...
                        

                            
SINGER'S SINGERS - Dan Singer from New York City turns the spotlight on some overlooked singers of the past and some bright newcomers. Amongst Dan's picks this month include Billy Eckstine and Nora McCarthy.

Nora is heard here to great advantage on nine songs.  She does wonders with only the all knowing pianist John di Martino.  I never heard the verse to "Come Fly With Me" (Cahn/Van Heusen).  It creates brand new meanings for this charming Sinatra workhorse.  Nora hits all the proper notes to a tee.  In fact, midway she has a swinging fun filled heck of a scat.  The ballad "Too Late Now" (Lerner/Lane) is a charmer.  Reminding me very much of the late lamented Irene Kral, Nora provocatively sings this melancholy ballad in full throttle.  A real surprising treat is her take on the song "The Hawaiian Wedding Song" (Hoffman/Manning/King).  Nora's version is most unlike the remembered 1958 Cadence Records hit by Andy Williams.  Her Hawaiian language vocal is unexpected making her take more meaningful.  Her "Little Red Rooster" (Dixon) exhibits her knowledge of the blues.  This is a wonderful blues allowing Nora to let it all hang out mid-song in a scat that will have you shouting and screaming right along with her.  Finally she sings an emotionally laden "The Shadow of Your Smile" (Mandel/Webster) from the 1965 film "The Sandpiper".  It's a crowning glory to a wonderful original CD.
                            Read more...
                        

                            
During a recent conversation with a friend, we got into the worth of poetry. He wondered why anybody would bother with a "clever" rendering of something when a more direct description would suffice. I tried to steer him to the fact that most poetry attempts to distill a particular idea to its essence (something lost on most high-schoolers, who are drowned early on in things like rhyme schemes and other poetic minutiae). A good poet can tell a story with a minimum of text. So when Nora McCarthy tells the story of lies that have been "swept under the carpet / all scramble like roaches in the early morning light," she extends the idea in a couple of directions at once – with a kind of vocalese, aided by skittery piano bits. The presentation says far more than a couple of paragraphs could, that's for sure.
Reviewer: http://www.jazz.com/music/2009/1/30/nora-mccarthy-in-the-early-morning-light
                            Read more...
                        

                            
The only constant for Nora McCarthy is change, and that’s just the way she wants it. An original who continues to explore human thought and feeling in varying artistic forms and instrumental configurations, McCarthy most recently has chosen to record songs, as well as her own compositions, of her choosing accompanied solely by pianist John di Martino. 
McCarthy is a fearless singer who deftly refuses to be categorized as she explores personalized means for expressing ideas. She travels infrequently heard avenues for exploring thought and adapts vocal technique to fit the circumstances of her message. Circle Completing starts conventionally enough with an affecting performance of “Come Fly with Me,” complete with the seldom heard verse. The musical situation for Circle Completing is set. as di Martino’s comping allows for freedom and support for McCarthy, particularly during her comfortable, middle-range scat chorus. And so, it seems, Circle Completing will be a salon type of recital of standards, with McCarthy’s burnished alto carrying the tracks. And so it is. To a point. “To Be with You” and “Too Late Now” follow a similar format of mid-volume, mid-range descriptions of situations leading to evoked emotions. For example, “to be with you for just one hour of each day” leads directly to the point: “I need you so.” McCarthy deserves much credit for understanding the power of the song’s intended feelings and for delivering them softly, slowly, forcefully. However, things change after that song. Gradually.  Almost imperceptibly. McCarthy sneaks in “The Hawaiian Wedding Song”—a song seldom heard recently—with the same modest charm applied to those preceding it. It turns out that McCarthy pays tribute to her three Hawaiian sons by singing it, and she brings out this previously unknown facet of her personal life by its inclusion on the album. Delivered with the same painstaking and straightforward attention to lyrics, in English and Hawaiian, by her unadorned elongation of notes, the song leads gradually into the freer and more adventurous remaining tracks, as if easing the listener into them. McCarthy covers the blues with “Little Red Rooster,” backed by the earthiness of di Martino’s bar-room-style piano. More importantly, McCarthy starts departing from the melody with a brief ululating “oooo” after the word “howl.” Notes start to be bent. The even volume of the preceding songs gives way to hushed “yeah’s” contrasting with sudden shouts. The initial songs’ romance and matrimony lead to bawdiness. Strict adherence to words disappears as scatting happens. And so Circle Completing goes through a gradual progression from conventionality to improvisation, from standards to blues, from tonal adherence to form to freedom. Then she ignores all of the rules, and we’re in full Nora McCarthy mode, inimitable and original. Her own “In the Morning Light” emphasizes the melodic element of poetry, as she sings images with intervallic leaps, her wide range finally employed. Obviously, di Martino is familiar with this side of McCarthy, with whom she has worked in the past, notably on her 1996 CD, Red&Blue. He supports the combination of verbal description and pitch by the use of harmonies at time borrowed from Bill Evans’s introduction to “So What.” McCarthy clicks and wails and sighs and hints at atonality, never resolving a phrase where one would expect and adding drama to observations like “and lies swept under the carpet all scramble like roaches in the early morning light.” (Sung in intervals of fifths with soft sonic imitations of scurrying.) Now we hear the fearless originality associated with McCarthy from past recordings. Then McCarthy goes back to standards, in this case “The Shadow of Your Smile,” sung darkly, deliberately in largo tempo, words cushioned with unembellished delivery—until she delivers her wordless chorus in her middle and lower range as if she were crafting a burnished lyrical trumpet solo. The remainder of Circle Completing is completely McCarthy as she interprets her own compositions. The jazz waltz “Life Is a Song to Sing,” correlating McCarthy’s passion for music with characteristics of fulfilled living, is notable for its extended metaphor, presented voice particularly enhances her own song as she avoids extremes of pitch, establishing delicacy of feeling and felicity of thought about avoiding complacency: “For every dream to realize / You have to fly away.” McCarthy ends Circle Completing with yet another sung tribute, like her homage to Billie Holiday, “Billie.” This time her subject is the influential but long-struggling singer Jimmy Scott. McCarthy abbreviates Scott’s biography, mentioning in song his being a “motherless child,” “living his life in jazz clubs,” “happiness lost, then found,” “dead-end jobs,” “marriages and break-ups” and then “blessings came” after “thirty years come and went.” Written poetically, expressed in song, “Faith in Time” consists of a series of melodies stitched together to conform to the rhythm of the words in rubato style as di Martino follows her lead. Eventually, McCarthy concludes Scott’s artistry-from-hardship story with its “taking its place among the greats of all time.” Her point is well taken. Another Jimmy Scott enthusiast, I concur heartily. And heartily is how McCarthy approaches any song she sings, as she loses herself in it. Circle Completing provides further evidence of that virtue.
                            Read more...