[NEW RELEASES] Karrin Allyson

Karrin Allyson’s darkly beautiful and melancholic “Round Midnight” offers a sharp contrast to her last album, 2008’s Grammy-nominated “Imagina,” a bright and breezy, upbeat homage to Brazil’s bossa nova master Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Here Allyson shows her versatility with a tastefully understated, back-to-basics collection of classic jazz and pop ballads (with a few rarities) by such masters as Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Johnny Mandel, Stephen Sondheim and Paul Simon.

Allyson makes this album even more personal and intimate by handling all the keyboard parts herself for the first time on the 13 albums she’s recorded for Concord over the past 20 years. Her classical piano training shows in her elegant introduction to Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.” Allyson’s musicianship is evidenced by the fact that she wrote nearly all the arrangements herself, starting with the opening “Turn Out the Stars,” slowing down the tempo of Evans’ tune to elucidate Gene Lees’ bittersweet, nuanced lyrics.

Karrin Allyson “Round Midnight”

Label: Concord
Genre: Jazz

AP