Jacintha

Dedicated to the great '50s torch song singer and jazz vocalist Julie London, Jacintha Is Her Name was inspired by and includes performances of several of Julie's most well known songs including Cry me A River, I'm In The Mood For Love, Gone With The Wind and others. Arrangements are by 2002 Grammy nominee Bill Cunliffe on piano with BMG recording artist Harry Allen on tenor and Ron Eschete on guitar.

This is Jacintha's third album for Groove Note, and her first with strings. Very popular in her native Singapore, she's beginning to get a worldwide reputation, and this release demonstrates why: Her voice is lovely, with clear diction and expressive, naturalistic phrasing. She draws the listener into a warm intimacy from the first track, "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams," a rarely covered and beautiful song with the perfect "rainy night in Paris" ambience supplied by Frank Marocco on accordion. Other highlights include a bluesy but refreshingly non-wailing "Black Coffee," with a fine, understated solo by Bill Cunliffe on piano; he's also good on the silky bossa "Manha de Carneval," where Anthony Wilson's melodic plucking contrasts nicely with the smoothness of the strings…

Jacintha picks up the tempo on her first bossa nova session. Featuring a program of some of the most well known classics of the genre, including several Jobim favorites like So Nice, Desafinado, Dindi and Corcovado, as well as less familiar tunes like O Ganso and So Danco Samba, this CD is a striking change of pace for Jacintha. With superb work from tenor Harry Allen and guitarist John Pisano (ex-Diana Krall), the album's supreme finishing is the magical playing of legendary Brazilian master percussionist Paulinho Da Costa, who blesses the entire album with an authentic bossa nova vibe.

Jacintha is a Singaporean jazz singer/torch singer and stage actress who has been well-known in parts of the Asia-Pacific region since the '80s and has been increasing her exposure in North America since the late '90s. Jacintha has never been the type of jazz artist who goes out of her way to be abstract, difficult, or complicated; her work has been quite accessible and easy to absorb, drawing on direct or indirect influences that have included Julie London and Shirley Horn as well as Brazilian star Astrud Gilberto. Jacintha has long been fluent in English. Her visibility in the United States and Canada started to increase in the late '90s, when she began working with producer Ying Tan and started recording for the Los Angeles-based Groove Note label. Jacintha's first Groove Note release, Here's to Ben: A Vocal Tribute to Ben Webster, was recorded in 1999 – and that album marked the first time that a Jacintha album was widely distributed in North America.