I’m continuing with the single listen/short review process to lower the must-listen pile. Here are first impressions of releases from Argentine-German vocalist Sabeth Pérez, New Mexico all-stars Michael Anthony and Terry Burns, and Swedish vocalist Frida Touray.

Sabeth Pérez
Searching for Beauty (Rogue Tone Records)
A review
Vocalist and composer Sabeth Pérez is a complete and beguiling package, as her latest release, Searching for Beauty, makes eminently clear. She possesses and commands all the necessary tools: an exquisite vocal clarity and agility; apparently effortless control of timbre, pitch, and emotional nuance; wide range; daring, lighter-than-air improvisational lines; compositional sensitivity; warm immediacy and intelligence; and a sense of humor. Oh, and she’s poetic: her deceptively simple lyrics uncover a depth of human feeling and experience, as on the album opener, “Familiar,” an inner monologue of heightened romantic anticipation (and plotting) of an accidental touch. Six of the 11 tracks are wordless—she’s a horn, gliding over the rhythm section with the ease of a hawk riding thermals. She knows how to pick perfectly sympathetic colleagues, too: Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Nicola Caminiti (saxophone), Gabriel Pérez (flute, saxophone), Charles Altura (guitar), Jon Cowherd (piano), Ben Tiberio (upright bass), and Keita Ogawa (percussion, drums), with additional contributions from Martin Bruhn (percussion) and Henry Cole (drums). At the center of it all is Pérez’s embrace of life’s beautiful impermanence and the gift she makes of it for listeners, wrapped in folkloric rhythms, luscious harmonies, and the exhilarating freedom of jazz.

Michael Anthony and Terry Burns
Try & Catch Me (SongSpeak Records)
A review
Guitarist Michael Anthony and bassist Terry Burns have a few things in common. Both are virtuosic musicians and well-respected teachers who left successful careers—Anthony in Los Angeles, Burns in Minneapolis—moving to New Mexico to help out family. Both love and possess an encyclopedic familiarity with the jazz canon and have rubbed shoulders with some of its finest practitioners. Both were happy to find a lively jazz scene in the Albuquerque–Santa Fe corridor, where they have established themselves as top-line players. Together, they take no prisoners on their new release, Try & Catch Me. Inspired by the renowned Joe Pass/Neils-Henning Ørsted Pederson duo, the Anthony/Burns duo delivers an engaging conversation on tunes that were familiar to Pass and Pedersen, and it is no less elevated a conversation than the Pass/Pedersen offerings—with a good bit livelier back-and-forth and a hefty helping of secret chords. Highlights includes their exuberant take on Wes Montgomery’s “Four on Six,” the romantic “Angel Eyes,” a lively excursion on Pat Martino’s “The Visit,” the burning title track (a Michael Anthony arrangement based on Pass’s “Catch Me”), and the swinging “Whims of Chambers,” but every one of the 10 tracks offers something to raise a smile and set a foot atapping.

Frida Touray
Homebody (Edition Records)
A review
I was drawn in by the warmth in her voice’s intimate alto, and I was held by the unflinchingly vulnerable reflections on her self, loves, ambitions, family, and challenges. Not the least of those challenges was a medical condition that threatened to steal her voice and forced a retreat, a reassessment, and a search for the comfort in the healing creativity of music making. Written in collaboration with bandmates and friends, the songs on Homebody, her second album, have the spare, evocative intimacy of singer/songwriter material and could fare well with just her voice and a guitar, but they have been polished to a fine pop luster in a lush but restrained production tinted with jazz and soul. With her voice intact, Touray finds much to be grateful for, and listeners will be grateful for the quiet resilience of this talented singer/songwriter.

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