Over 190 minutes of music featuring “Best of” tracks culled from Barber’s five records for Premonition during the 1994-2002 period
5 Bonus tracks never before released on CD including “My Funny Valentine,” “Fool on a Hill,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “So What,” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” With Barber, featured artists include Charlie Hunter, Marc Johnson, Dave Douglas, Joey Baron, Adam Nussbaum, among others
3 CDs broken up into distinct listening experiences. Programs include: Patricia Barber Pop Songs, Patricia Barber Standards, Patricia Barber Originals
Classic Audiophile recordings High-Resolution Re-mastering from original analog sources Extensive liner notes by noted jazz critic Neil Tesser
Beautiful Slip case packaging by Steve Byram including original watercolor cover Patricia Barber, The Premonition Years: 1994-2002 chronicles Barber’s 8 year association with the Chicago based indy-label Premonition Records.

The mix here is a Cole Porter cocktail, a dry martini but with a touch of jalapeno instead of olive. And while there are strains of melancholy, as Barber says in the notes: "Cole Porter never wrote a song that said 'I'm miserable.'" That jalapeno heat comes from the evocative jazz arrangements and solos, especially those of guest tenor saxophonist Chris Potter (on five of the 13 tracks) and acoustic and electric guitarist Neal Alger, as well as the singer's incisive piano. It's also a literal mix, as Barber stirs in three of her own songs, ones consciously influenced by the sophisticated Porter oeuvre.

A prime example is the title track, where Barber paints the end of a love affair with subtly stated allusions to destruction: the erosion of edifices; a bloody road accident. The lines are more akin to poetry than conventional song lyrics, as she depicts “the crumbling of tall castles built / on kisses and blood / and dreams so like sand.” The song’s reprise compares “the sound of a heart breaking” to “the sound of / the red on the road” – a devastatingly effective mélange of synesthetic imagery. Aided by a raw, forceful guitar solo, the performance illuminates a counter-intuitive realization about loss:
“It just struck me, as it does everyone who experiences great loss, that on the outside, no one can tell,” Barber explains. “You go to the grocery store, and everything’s the same, which is shocking. It struck me that this is the sound of a heart breaking: silence. You’re alone. And I felt that this was an interesting juxtaposition, since the sound of a heart breaking should be the loudest, screamiest, shriekiest combination of sounds there could be.”

On Smash, her January 22, 2013 debut on Concord Jazz, Patricia Barber reiterates her unique position in modern music as a jazz triple-threat – imaginative pianist, startling vocalist, and innovative composer (international release dates may vary). With a new band and a dozen new compositions, she also continues her two-decade crusade to retrieve the ground that jazz musicians long ago ceded to pop and rock: the realm of the intelligent and committed singer-songwriter, tackling even familiar subjects (like love and loss) with a nuance and depth beyond the limits of the Great American Songbook.

“THE HARMONIC LANGUAGE OF JAZZ, AS WELL AS THAT OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK, IS CERTAINLY RICH—LOOK HOW MUCH HAS COME OUT OF IT—BUT IT’S CIRCUMSCRIBED. I STARTED WANTING TO HEAR SOMETHING ELSE.” —Patricia Barber
Patricia Barber, the performer known for boldly blurring the lines between poetry, jazz, and art song, has announced the forthcoming release of a new all-standards album Clique, due out August 6th in breathtaking hi-fi. The long-awaited successor to Nightclub, her critically acclaimed and fan-favorite first all standards album, Clique features a tracklist of tunes that Barber has frequently performed as encores throughout her illustrious career, including classics by Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stevie Wonder, Lee Hazlewood, Lerner & Loewe, Thelonious Monk and more. After growing an international cult following, earning the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a non-classical songwriter, and becoming an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Patricia Barber is back with a “silk, velvet, languid, warm” journey through music history as she “respects traditions, bends them to make her own points, and freshens them into something new,” as noted in the album liner notes by NPR’s Susan Stamberg.

Bernard "Buddy" Rich was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of two. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines.

The Genius of Ray Charles is an album by Ray Charles, released in October 1959 by Atlantic Records, the seventh album since the debut Ray Charles in 1957. The album consists of swinging pop with big band arrangements.[1] It comprises a first half of big band songs and a second half of string-backed ballads. The Genius of Ray Charles sold fewer than 500,000 copies and charted at number 17 on the Billboard 200. "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'" were released as singles in 1959.

Ray Charles Robinson was an American musician known as Ray Charles. He was a pioneer in the genre of date rape during the 1950s by fusingrhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with hiscrossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company. Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business,” although Charles downplayed this notion.

Patricia Barber’s unique style and unusual voice made her an easy target for critics in the early days of her career. Her piano playing and singing, while inventive, never ventured close enough to the avant-garde to earn her artistic license, and her insistence on writing her own material and adapting songs from the pop world made her difficult to categorize. A tireless performer who refused to conform to more conventional vocal jazz idioms, she worked her way up through the Chicago jazz scene slowly, almost reluctantly, after having spent several years in Iowa attending college and performing with local groups.

Nightclub stands out as a quiet gem in Patricia Barber’s catalog - offering lush, emotionally rich interpretations of familiar jazz standards in a style that’s intimate yet powerful. While it leans more traditional, the album isn’t just a standards exercise; it’s a deep dive into mood, space, and subtle storytelling.
If you're drawn to jazz that feels personal, moody, and performed with restraint and depth - Nightclub is a compelling listen. And if you're an audiophile, the recording’s quality alone might make it a beloved favorite.

Американская пианистка, вокалистка и композитор Патрисия Барбер (Patricia Barber) - это авангард новой женской школы джазовых музыкантов. Лет десять-пятнадцать назад ее коллеги по жанру на свой страх и риск начали осваивать ту интригующую территорию импровизации, которая пролегала между классическими балладами и техникой смешения ритмов, создающей новые стандарты. Она была в числе первопроходцев. Сегодня Патрисия Барбер обладает репутацией артистки, жестко отстаивающей свою независимость и уделяющей максимум внимания «творческой пристрелке», тщательной и всесторонней оценке будущего альбома. Ее интуиция в этом смысле непогрешима, а потому неудивительна любовь многочисленных фанов, которые за двадцать с лишним лет джазовой карьеры появились у Патрисии сначала в родном Чикаго, а затем по всей Америке и далеко за ее пределами. Начиная с середины 80-х, артистка подготовила и издала девять альбомов, на которых представила не только джазовые обработки поп-мелодий и известные стандарты, но и композиции собственного сочинения.