Kate McGarry at Jazz Standard

Kate McGarry, one of her generation’s most unique and influential singers, has earned acclaim for blending her love of folk and pop music with jazz fluency and improvisation. With Girl Talk – her fifth Palmetto Records album and first 'straight ahead' project in many years - McGarry pays homage to her many role models among the visionary women of the jazz vocal tradition; from Betty Carter and Sheila Jordan to Anita O'Day, Carmen McRae and Shirley Horn. Says McGarry, "The great women jazz singers didn’t allow the songs of the time to define or reduce them – instead they redefined the meanings of the songs with their bold storytelling." This was my intention in recording Girl Talk. The challenge and opportunity in this album was for McGarry to “honor the tradition these women developed but also allow the music to reflect life today – " my life today,” she says. “Singing these songs can’t be like putting on a costume. I didn’t grow up in the ‘30s or ‘40s or ‘50s, and I wouldn’t consider myself a traditional jazz singer per se, but the elements of harmonic and rhythmic improvisation, of swing, of storytelling – these are where those classic jazz singers and I connect. I see this album as a bridge between the contemporary music I was influenced by and the jazz tradition I learned so much from.”...

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Kate McGarry, one of her generation’s most unique and influential singers, has earned acclaim for blending her love of folk and pop music with jazz fluency and improvisation. With Girl Talk – her fifth Palmetto Records album and first 'straight ahead' project in many years - McGarry pays homage to her many role models among the visionary women of the jazz vocal tradition; from Betty Carter and Sheila Jordan to Anita O'Day, Carmen McRae and Shirley Horn. Says McGarry, "The great women jazz singers didn’t allow the songs of the time to define or reduce them – instead they redefined the meanings of the songs with their bold storytelling." This was my intention in recording Girl Talk. The challenge and opportunity in this album was for McGarry to “honor the tradition these women developed but also allow the music to reflect life today – " my life today,” she says. “Singing these songs can’t be like putting on a costume. I didn’t grow up in the ‘30s or ‘40s or ‘50s, and I wouldn’t consider myself a traditional jazz singer per se, but the elements of harmonic and rhythmic improvisation, of swing, of storytelling – these are where those classic jazz singers and I connect. I see this album as a bridge between the contemporary music I was influenced by and the jazz tradition I learned so much from.”

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