Tessa Souter at the Jazz Standard, Monday, October 22

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2007
JAZZ STANDARD
116 East 27th Street
(between Park and Lexington)
New York 10016
Tel: 212-576-2232
http://www.jazzstandard.com/
Sets at 7.30pm & 9.30pm
Cover $20 + TAX. NO MINIMUM

TESSA SOUTER QUINTET
WITH CARLTON HOLMES (PIANO)
MARCELLO PELLITTERI (DRUMS)
SANTI DEBRIANO (BASS)
SKYE STEELE (VIOLIN)

“British-Caribbean jazz vocalist Tessa Souter puts her own stamp on jazz and pop material through sure-footed musical instincts. The phrasing is absolutely serpentine as it slithers around the melodic line of a song. Who else would think to swing Cream's plodding 'White Room?' Souter can also render a ballad, like her soul-baring 'Here's to Life.' She's an important jazz voice at the moment"
--KIRK SILSBEE, LOS ANGELES BEAT

Born in London of Trinidadian and English parents, New York-based vocalist, composer and lyricist Tessa Souter (soo-ter) infuses jazz with the soul and passion of flamenco,Indian and Middle Eastern music. “One of the most imaginatively programmed vocal sets of recent memory," said the Los Angeles Times, in a rave review of her California debut at the Catalina Bar and Grill in 2002. The Philadelphia Inquirer praised her “amazing" debut CD Listen Love and her “crystal-clear voice with diamond-cut phrasing." A late-comer to singing professionally, Souter was first a features journalist for The London Times, The Independent, Vogue, Elle and others. She was one of the original six members, along with Po Bronson and Ethan Canin, of the Writer's Grotto in San Francisco, where she lived and worked as a freelance journalist from 1992 to 1996, before moving to New York and starting to sit in on jazz jams. In 1998 she won a scholarship to New York's Manhattan School of Music, which she left to study privately with jazz vocal legend Mark Murphy. WNPK Radio FM says: “It's hard to believe she only recently became a vocalist, because she sings with the authority and passion that usually comes from long experience."