Album Notes

Some music you listen to, some music you feel. Be it smoky and sensual or fiery and fierce, we all recognize the instant when our breaths catch, our pulses race, and our hearts know. In compiling this album, Sylvia Brooks has said “I don’t feel I chose these songs, but that they’ve chosen me.” And she may very well be right. Growing up in Miami, hearing her mother sing at the Eden Roc and Fountainebleau, and listening as her musician father played the canon of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in jazz clubs across the country, the road map of her musical tastes began to come almost imperceptibly together. And you can hear it all in this collection of songs, on a route that stretches from a palm-lined causeway connecting Miami to South Beach and its famed Latin Quarter nightclub, to its terminus in New York’s Harlem at the legendary Cotton Club. From the bold proclamation of "When The Sun Comes Out," to the brassy hot "Sway," from the haunting strains of "Harlem Nocturne," to the rueful reflections of "The Man That Got Away," Sylvia Brooks captures the drama, the glamour and the quiet storm of emotion behind these classic tunes, while reinterpreting them for a whole new generation. So give yourself over to the performer who The Hollywood Reporter calls, “First rate,” on a journey to live freely...and love dangerously.