Modern Cool

Modern Cool further defines the always changing ‘Cool’ school of jazz. Powerful musicianship is employed tastefully and judiciously to original tunes as well as some interesting and refreshing covers.

In 1998, has any jazz-vocal record been more anticipated than Patricia Barber’s Modern Cool? Not among those who thrilled to her 1994 Premonition release Cafe Blue, and that group comprises some select company. On Modern Cool, Barber once again relies on her chillingly gorgeous voice, and on her continually evolving depth of vision, which makes songs fresh, incisive and as attuned to her time as Jung Hemingway and Miles Davis were to their own. This is heard in her starkly original lyrics; in her surprising revival of songs by the Doors “Light My Fire” and Paul Anka “She’s A Lady” and in her setting to music of a poem by F. E. Cummings. Modern Cool, which features eight new Barber songs, is sure to expand Barber’s already broad base of support which includes fans of postmodern jazz, adult alternative pop and contemporary classical. Thomas Conrad of Stereophile wrote of Barber: “If you have a voice that’s dark pure whisper straight up from the soul, and if you’ve lived it yourself, you can sing to people of their innermost anxieties and they will not only love it, they will need it.” That’s Patricia Barber and that’s Modern Cool.