Karen Ashbrook

From the moment Karen Gomyo first heard Astor Piazzolla on disc, at the age of fourteen, she was spellbound: ‘I had never heard such a combination of sensuality, fierceness, playfulness, sadness and nostalgia.’ As a violinist she found the role of the violin in Piazzolla’s music especially inspiring, and soon started playing it herself – first in various group combinations, and eventually together with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist Pablo Ziegler and his Tango Quartet. For the present disc she has chosen to record strings-only versions of three works originally for tango quintet (Seasons), guitar and flute (Histoire), and solo flute (Études).

Poised to be recognized as one of the great new voices of jazz today, Karen Souzas sensuous voice floats between clouds of strings and winds and creates an atmosphere that can only be described as vintage.

Nice soothing jazz covers of songs we all know ,Karen's voice and her interpretations of these songs are great with…

After beginning as a vocalist for numerous house music producers, Karen Souza participated in the successful series Jazz and 80’s and its successors. Now, Karen has launched her solo career with Essentials, a summary of her career as a jazz singer, where her unique and seductive voice draws you in. This album brings us recreations of classics such as Every Breath You Take (The Police), Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? (Culture Club), Creep (Radiohead) and Tainted Love (Soft Cell), which have become classics over the past few years. Essentials is a different album, where jazz appears at its most elegant, thanks to Karen´s amazing voice.

Karen Carroll has plenty of opportunity to strut her stuff on her debut, Had My Fun. Unlike many contemporary blues albums, which are highly polished blasts of blues-rock, Had My Fun takes its time. Many of the songs are torchy slow blues or down and dirty Chicago blues – either way, they sound natural, never forced. That's appropriate, since Carroll sings like a natural, caressing the ballads and growling the nastier numbers. Best of all, there's actual grit in the production – four of the songs were recorded live – and that allows Carroll to achieve her full potential on this impressive debut.