World Jazz Scene featuring music, instructional materials, art and photography.  
World Jazz Scene featuring music, instructional materials, art and photography.
 

Libby York - Jazz Vocalist     The Chicago Scene



    John McDonough of Downbeat Magazine has awarded the recording "Sunday in New York. 4 stars and says, ''Stylish and cosmopolitan, with a broad streak of lush life urbanity, Libby York has a sound that recalls, without any condescension or gratuitous nostalgia, the slightly world weary, been around the block ennui of post war Anita O'Day, Chris Connor, and Sarah Vaughn.''
    Chicago jazz radio personality Neil Tesser intones in his liner notes to the CD, "York finds the complicated emotional center of a lyric, and sets it out with disarming simplicity." Gary Walker, the Music Director of WBGO, arguably the nation's foremost jazz station, remarked, "'Sunday in New York or anytime, anywhere, Libby York's voice leads outstanding musicians on new paths through the jazz evergreens.''

    York was born and raised in Chicago. She went east to college at American University in Washington, DC, and graduated with a degree in Political Science.
    The 1980's found York dividing her time between New York City and Key West Florida, where she bought a house. She began studying piano with Yehuda Guttman, a superb pianist who had taught at Julliard. She joined a reggae band called The Survivors, doing three-part harmony with two other girl singers behind the lead singer.
     During her dozen years in New York City, York studied with the renowned jazz singer Abby Lincoln, who she says, "taught me about the truth and soul of a song." She was also the featured vocalist with Swing Street, an eight-piece band that performed in concerts all over New York. While there she had a brief stint as a production assistant at "Saturday Night Live." In 1994 she moved back to Chicago and began singing in clubs there.
   What Libby most offers is a combination of intelligence and know-how with lyrics, and the overriding influence of jazz in her singing.

All CD's $14.99 plus S&H 

"Sunday in New York"

1. Midnight Sun
2. Sunday in New York
3. Waltz for Debbie
4. Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You
5. Down in Brazil
6. I Go For That
7. All My Tomorrows
8. In the Wee Small Hours
9. Like Someone in Love
10. That's All
Billy Drummand - drums, Renee Rosnes - piano, Libby York - vocals,
Frank Wess - tenor sax, Todd Coolman - bass