IRISH TIMES 19/12/10
OUR TOP 50
MUSICAL MOMENTS OF 2010
TIME FOR TOBIN?
Dublin-born, British-based Christine Tobin is one of the best singer-songwriters on the world jazz scene. She is acclaimed abroad but still relatively unknown here. Her concert at the National Library last summer and Tapestry Unravelled, her remake of Carole King’s 1972 Grammy-winning album, could change that. RC
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Reviews of Christine’s gig at the Berlin Jazz Festival on Nov 7 2010
“Christlne Tobin should be considered the best female singer of the festival with her infallible sense for timing, intonation and the integration of her voice with the other instruments in the band. Her encore ‘Embraceable you’ could serve as a model for the kind of music that we would have liked to have seen more of at the festival.” Franziska Buhre, Berlin. Nov 12, 2010
“Glücklich durfte man auch seln, dass endlich mal wieder jemand an Christine Tobin gedacht hat. Die in England lebende Irin ist mit ihrer abgründigen Stimme und den phliosophischen Texten immer noch eine überragende Erscheinung im Uberfluss des weiblichen Jazzgesangs.” Ulrich Olshausen, Frankfurter Allgemeine
See English translation below…………………………….
“One also could be counted lucky that somebody had thought of Christine Tobin again. With her unfathomable voice and philosophical lyrics the Irish-born singer who now lives in England is still an outstanding phenomenon among the plethora of female jazz vocalists.” Ulrich Olshausen Frankfurter Allgemeine
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GUARDIAN live review by John L Walters 22 Sept 2010
606 Club, London 4****
Christine Tobin has proved herself as a jazz musician,
a songwriter and as a Leonard Cohen interpreter of
distinction. She is also a generous collaborator, lending
her warm vocals to projects as different as Don Paterson’s
Lammas, Harvey Brough’s Requiem in Blue and Crass Agenda.
Tapestry Unravelled is possibly her most personal album
to date – a duo with pianist Liam Noble. Yet it may also be
her most accessible, comprising songs from
Carole King’s Tapestry. This archetypal singer-songwriter
LP is packed with hits, many of them recognisable
to people whose parents weren’t even teenagers when
King wrote Will You Love Me Tomorrow.
Each of Tapestry’s songs seems to encapsulate a specific
feeling: first love, homesickness, optimism, regret, friendship.
King’s original recordings were played and sung simply.
Working with the blueprints created by King and her
collaborators, Tobin and Noble make fresh new shapes:
a barnstorming Beautiful; the gospelly You Make Me Feel
Like a Natural Woman; a moving, almost classical reading
of So Far Away.
Not withstanding the “Bleeding Gums” Murphy version of Jazzman
– in the Round Springfield episode of The Simpsons – King’s songs
have rarely been treated as jazz material. Noble’s arrangements
avoid the cliched “ching-ching” of 70s singer-songwriter piano,
finding space for reharmonisations and delicious passing notes in
King’s moody chords. Live in the intimate 606 Club, both musicians
resisted the temptation to make Tapestry Unravelled overly cerebral.
The hard-won musicality packed into songs such as I Feel The Earth Move
was more emotionally direct than any number of long improvisations.
The duo performed a handful of non-King songs, including
Milton Nascimento’s Ponta de Areia, Steve Swallow’s setting
of Robert Creeley’s She Was Young, and a gorgeous reading of
the Gershwins’ Embraceable You. But the main event was the
way Tobin found something fresh, affecting and deeply human
in King’s timeless pop music.
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5 ***** review in THE IRISH TIMES by RAY COMISKEY
CHRISTINE TOBIN & LIAM NOBLE
Tapestry Unravelled – CD of the Week
Trail Belle Records
*****
Keeping it simple as well as good is one of the most difficult things in any art.
And it’s a sign of maturity when someone pulls it off as superbly as
Christine Tobin does, with the significant help of pianist Liam Noble.,
in this visit to one of the most celebrated pop
albums of all time: Carole Kings Tapestry (1972).
It’s also a surprise. As a singer and songwriter, Tobin has forged a
strikingly original voice out of diverse jazz, folk and classical influences,
and her albums have mostly featured her own richly suggestive writing.
On the rare times she has done material by, say, Dylan or Leonard Cohen,
it is reworked and transformed. But she takes the generally uncomples
vision of King’s Tapestry – songs of love, loneliness, relationships,
occasionally allegorical – and treats it with compelling,
visceral directness.
The original album is bound up with memories of Tobin’s sister,
who died last year and to whom the new one is dedicated, so in a sense
it’s a conduit for Tobin’s feelings about those memories and a way of
keeping them alive.
Personal resonances aside, there is the sheer quality of Tobin’s
performance and the collaboration with Noble that makes this album
so special. There’s a kind of alchemy at work, particularly in how she
uses her warmly distinctive voice, malleable, poised phrasing and
impeccable intonation to get inside the material and make it personal.
Even the most well-known songs (You’ve Got a Friend, Home Again, So Far Away,
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow) have their intimate, one-to-one feelings, tender,
sensual and vulnerable, renewed and intensified.
More assertive songs are similarly absorbed and refreshed.
It’s Too Late and the limited I Feel the Earth Move are delivered with
authority and plenty of oomph, while the yearning, gospel-flavoured
Way Over Yonder and the allegorical Tapestry unite a sense of
otherness with the feel of life lived.
Noble’s role as accompanist and soloist combines the individual
and the apt so well that it’s impossible to conceive of the album without him;
the folk ballad Smackwater Jack, with no vocal, is his solo feature.
Incidentally, the original album’s Where You Lead is left out:
its servile lyrics don’t chime with how women,
rightly, see themselves now.
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For many jazz singers, the Great American Songbook is the body of work that must be delved
into and reinterpreted. In more recent years, the work of writers such as Tom Waits and
Nick Cave is emerging as the source for some fine jazz-based interpretations.
The singer/songwriters of the ’70s, perhaps surprisingly, have yet to become
such a central part of the jazz vocal canon, but singer Christine Tobin and pianist
Liam Noble may be set to change things with Tapestry Unravelled. This re-visioning
of Carole King’s multi-million selling Tapestry (Ode, 1971) is a beautiful, innovative
and very personal take on King’s songs, which delves deep into the originals’
emotions and imagery.
The idea for this album came from Tobin, who was introduced to Tapestry as a child
by her sister Deirdre. After Deirdre’s untimely death in 2009, Tobin sang “Beautiful”
at her memorial service. Soon afterwards Tobin enlisted Noble, an innovative pianist
who has played in the singer’s band for some years, to play these songs at a club gig,
and the response led them both to Curtis Schwartz’s recording studio. The entire
album was recorded at a single session.
The songs on Tapestry Unravelled are instantly recognizable, but Tobin and Noble
lend each of them a unique twist. In most cases Noble stays close to the melody,
but he’s also happy to make the occasional shift and turn to move the tune in
unexpected directions. “Smackwater Jack” epitomizes this—a solo piano piece
played with a percussive, jagged, style that gives the tune an edge missing
from its original incarnation.
Tobin’s voice is exceptional—strong, soulful and capable of delivering slow
ballads like “So Far Away” and up-tempo tunes such as “I Feel the Earth Move”
with equal skill. Her performance of “You’ve Got a Friend” is stunning—
a strong vocal, but with small inflections and shifts in emphasis that
reinvigorate the tune and invest the lyric with a genuine emotional resonance.
Piano and voice come together most effectively on “So Far Away”—Noble keeps it simple,
with soft, rich chords that leave plenty of space for Tobin’s voice before moving into a
delightfully atmospheric solo. A Tobin original, “Closing Time”—written specially for
the album—is the final track. It’s a delicate, slightly mysterious, ballad on which
Noble’s percussive piano sits perfectly with Tobin’s vocal interpretation.
Comparisons with the original Tapestry will inherently figure largely in discussions
about Tapestry Unravelled, but in many ways do this current recording a disservice.
Tobin and Noble have created an extremely affecting collection of beautifully-crafted
songs about love and life that stands on its own as a potential classic.
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The Jazz Breakfast review by Peter Bacon
Disc of the day: 29-06-10
Christine Tobin & Liam Noble: Tapestry Unravelled (Trail Belle Records, distrib Proper
Note TBR01)
In addition to writing some pretty fab stuff herself, the Irish-born, Kent and London resident
singer has shown herself to be a wonderful interpreter of other people’s songs. She has leaned
increasingly to covering Leonard Cohen rather than Rodgers and Hart, and when her older
sister, Deirdre, died last year, Christine recalled how Deirdre had played Carole King’s
Tapestry so much when the sisters were young, and how strongly she linked that album to
her. So this project is dedicated to the memory of Deirdre. One doesn’t need to know that to feel
the rich resonances in the music.
The singer and her pianist collaborator have changed the order of the songs and Christine has
added her original Closing Time to round the album out, but otherwise this is all the songs on
King’s Tapestry LP given new interpretations. What is remarkable is how much is achieved
in such an apparently unadventurous way. No, that’s not quite the right word, because in a
way the most adventurous thing to do is to sing these songs fairly straight and unadorned, and
to play them in a relatively unjazzy way, too.
There are few leaps off into improvisation, certainly not from Tobin and only from Noble in
the most sensitive and subtle ways. Both musicians have come to that point in their art, it
seems, where they have realised the beauty of simplicity and straightforwardness. It’s often
the most difficult thing for jazz musicians to do – to avoid the tendency to show off – and yet
it is the key to really great music. And I think this is really great music.
Of course you might be wondering – probably especially so if, like me,
you also grew up with the original Tapestry album and have it kind of hard-wired into your
youth – why you would need another version of it. It’s a thought that completely dissolved
for me about 42 seconds into the opening track, Beautiful. Noble’s chunky yet graceful piano
intro and the nuanced phrasing of Tobin’s first line were enough to convince me that this disc
was going to become even more special to me than King’s.
Songs you have heard a million times and often murdered by poor singers – like You’ve Got
A Friend, for example – come up reinvigorated and filled with new depth of feeling. The pair
do some lovely spontaneous things at the end of It’s Too Late, while Home Again features a
beautiful solo from Noble in the middle of a beautiful bit of singing from Tobin.
It’s not really a CD that I would want to spend a lot of time analysing and trying to describe –
that would be to interfere with the magic of it. So suffice to say, if this disc sells as many as
Carole King’s original, the world will undoubtedly be a better place. It might have been made
as a response to a death, but I can’t remember when I last heard a more direct and profound
affirmation of life.
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JAZZWISE ALBUM REVIEWS JUNE 2010
Christine Tobin & Liam Noble
Tapestry Unravelled ****
Trail Belle Records TBR01
Christine Tobin (v) and Liam Noble (p).
How do you improve on pop perfection? Quite simple, really.
First, enlist the help of musical polymath Liam Noble
on a wonderfully rich Steinway grand piano. Second,
strip away the string quartet, the backing vocals and all
the other excess textural baggage. Third, sing the songs as
honestly and purely as possible, while adding your own subtle twist.
See, easy. Dedicated to the memory of her eldest sister, Deirdre,
who first introduced Christine to Carole King’sTapestry, the genius of
Tapestry Unravelled is the way in which it pays sincere homage to the
spirit of the original while simultaneously opening up an entirely new
window onto these classic songs.
From the majestic falsetto leap in ‘Beautiful’ to the emotional candour
of ‘So Far Away’ to the summary feel of the self-penned ‘Closing Time’,
it draws you into a world of elegiac reflection, plaintive melody and
unalloyed soulfulness. Liam Noble brings the entire spectrum of his
pianistic brilliance to the date, creating watercolour accompaniments
which support and enfold the voice quite magnificently. Definitely one
for my year-end ‘Best of’ list.
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The Arts Desk review of live gig by Peter Quinn
Christine Tobin and Liam Noble, Lauderdale House
Friday, 07 May 2010 03:01 Written by Peter Quinn
Shining a new light on cherished classics:
pianist Liam Noble and vocalist Christine Tobin photo by Curtis Schwartz
A bad cover version can be a dangerous thing. Imagine, for example,
that your first encounter with the brilliant Gershwins was Kiri Te Kanawa’s
egregious Kiri Sings Gershwin. This, potentially, could be so distressing that
it might put you off George and Ira for life. In fact, it could put you off music for life.
Rather than “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”, Michael Bolton’s typically
understated take makes you want to throw yourself in. And then there’s
Sting’s John Dowland tribute, Songs From The Labyrinth. This was released
over two years ago, so there’s a possibility that Dowland has now stopped
spinning in his grave. But I doubt it.
The euphoric flipside, of course, is when an artist shines brilliant new l
ight on a cherished classic. Or, in the case of Christine Tobin and Liam Noble,
classics. In the congenial setting of Lauderdale House – this was the closest
you’ll get to having Christine sing in your living room – the duo unveiled
their stunning new album Tapestry Unravelled. A tribute to Carole King’s
award-winning magnum opus, many of the album’s songs -
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, “You’ve Got A Friend” – have long since
been absorbed into the white noise of our thoughts. But by stripping away Tapestry‘s
broad textural palette to leave just voice and piano, Tobin and Noble uncover an
entirely new sense of space, intimacy and poetic power.Hearing the duo’s delicately spun versions of
“Home Again”, “Way Over Yonder” and the title track performed with such candour made you appreciate
anew the perfectly crafted beauty of King’s songs. “So Far Away” was especially moving,
not least for Noble’s captivating solo, an extended reverie which seemed to chart
unknown depths of lonesomeness. By contrast, his one solo vehicle of the evening,
a radical reworking of “Smackwater Jack”, was a seething mass of polyrhythms
and pounding bass ostinatos that was a world away from the chugging bass and
drums of the original. The singer’s self-penned “Just Your Friend” in the first set,
and Milton Nascimento’s “Ponta de Areia” in the second, offered respite
(not that any was needed) from the all-King programme.
More important than any textural detail, rhythmic sleight of hand or harmonic detour,
was Tobin’s spine-tingling voice. Coupling a magnificently rich timbre with an intense d
epth of feeling, the singer eloquently captured both the sadness and joy of these timeless songs,
imbuing them with an even greater expressive warmth and luminosity.
Officially released on 28 June, Tapestry Unravelled deserves the widest possible audience.
The Independent review by Phil Johnson
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Following the death of her elder sister Deirdre, who had introduced her to Carole King’s
Tapestry album as a child, Irish vocalist Tobin was moved to return to this most iconic set of
songs and interpret them anew with the brilliant pianist Liam Noble, a regular partner.
Not everything works (what can you do with “Smackwater Jack?”), yet half are close to
perfect. All the most familiar numbers are done well but “Home Again” and “So Far Away”
are empathetic masterpieces, Tobin’s bluesy voice wailing mightily.
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