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Louise Gibbs and Kirk Lightsey

Everybody's Song But Our Own

33 Records 33JAZZ172

For this album, its name adapted from the celebrated Kenny Wheeler composition, singer Louise Gibbs and pianist Kirk Lightsey have taken their material from modern jazz classics (Wayne Shorter's 'Footprints', Charles Mingus's 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat', Thelonious Monk's 'Ruby My Dear' etc.) and the odd standard (three, coincidentally, spring-themed: Michel Legrand's 'You Must Believe in Spring', the Wolf/Landesman evergreen 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most', Rodgers and Hart's 'Spring is Here'), but unlike many such projects, this is a genuine duo album rather than one featuring singer-plus-accompanist.

Partly, this is due to Gibbs's predilection for scatting, which results in the album's wordless musical content being unusually high, but it is also attributable to Lightsey's sheer skill and imaginative inventiveness, which has meant that his elegant trademark mix of power and grace is everywhere apparent.

Gibbs's voice is an unaffected, natural one, her confession of emotion straightforwardly candid, her trust in the power of her judiciously selected material apparent in the ease of her delivery. In tone and timbre, her closest vocal equivalent is probably Norma Winstone, whose lyrics to Jimmy Rowles's 'Peacocks' and to the (near) title-track Gibbs delivers with a touching unfussiness that recalls their writer; other highlights include a visit to Dianne Reeves's lyric for McCoy Tyner's 'You Taught My Heart to Sing' and a subtly affecting version of the aforementioned Legrand classic.

Overall, an album infused with Gibbs's infectious respect for both the songs and ‘ amusingly documented in the false start to 'Spring is Here' ‘ the playing of Lightsey.