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Ellen Robinson

In an art form awash with ingenues and shiny singers newly minted from music school, Ellen Robinson’s emergence is a breath of fresh air. With her new album Don’t Wait Too Long, the Oakland jazz vocalist makes a convincing case for the value of life experience as a template for reimagining American Songbook standards and more contemporary fare. Displaying impressive skills as a songwriter, she also infuses hard-won wisdom in original tunes. Like her two previous releases, Don’t Wait Too Long was produced by the sure hand of drummer and veteran DJ Bud Spangler. It’s the work of a late-blooming artist with a clear, heartfelt vision, exquisite taste, and lovely voice that lingers in your ear long after the music has finished.

Recorded live at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley CA, the album captures the vivacious singer with her highly sympathetic band featuring the articulate bassist Sam Bevan, versatile drummer Dan Foltz, the unabashedly lyrical saxophonist Kristen Strom, and pianist Murray Low, one of the region’s most sought after accompanists. Focusing on ballads with sinuous melodies, Robinson sustains a dreamy mood with a deceptively unadorned style, eschewing vocal acrobatics and scat solos in favor of close attention to melodies and emotionally insightful phrasing. Exploring a program laden with unexpected treasures, she distills the essence of each song. “I have to feel connected to the lyrics,” says Robinson. “I’m not a gymnastic singer in terms of scatting. I do like taking a straight ahead jazz tune or a pop tune and making it my own.”

The album opens with “Dance Only With Me,” a rarely sung gem by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Greene from the 1958 Broadway comedy “Say, Darling” about the making of a Broadway musical. She turns the song into a wistful reverie, far more a whispered prayer than an imperious demand. Even when Robinson interprets familiar material, like Lerner and Loew’s standard “Almost Like Being in Love,” or Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen’s “But Beautiful,” she unveils new shades of meaning in the lyrics, letting the tunes unfold at deliciously languorous tempos.

When Robinson takes liberties with a song, like her slyly re-harmonized version of Irving Berlin’s “Be Careful It’s My Heart,” she doesn’t so much reinvent it as highlight the tune’s playfully imploring lyric. She transforms songs of more recent vintage too, like her jazz appropriation of the mid-60s pop hit “Our Day Will Come” which she delivers with righteous conviction.

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Album Review

Ellen Robinson: Don't Wait Too Long

Read "Don't Wait Too Long" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Bay-Area vocalist Ellen Robinson is a study in jazz grace and elegance. Rather than a bright and shiny repertoire of specialized training (of which there is nothing wrong), Robinson sports a music education degree from Manhattanville college with a major in piano, and rides an experiential arc in to the heart of the Great American Songbook. Robinson readily stakes her claim on the rich melodies of the stage and Tin Pan Alley, demanding that the lyrics move her before she ...

334
Album Review

Ellen Robinson: Mercy!

Read "Mercy!" reviewed by Jim Santella


The vocal duet that Ellen Robinson and Ben Flint sing on “The Dimming of the Day comes with a heartfelt message all its own. That's her forte. With this program of fourteen delicate melodies, the singer delivers from the heart. She just lets it fly, and what happens is a lovely melodic parade.

Recorded at several live concert performances in San Francisco, her program runs comfortable with a light, acoustic texture that appeals to a broad audience. From ...

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Recording

"Don't Wait Too Long," 3rd CD By Bay Area Jazz Vocalist Ellen Robinson, To Be Released Oct. 16

"Don't Wait Too Long," 3rd CD By Bay Area Jazz Vocalist Ellen Robinson, To Be Released Oct. 16

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

Since her arrival from the East Coast in the late 1970s, Ellen Robinson has established herself as a protean figure on the active San Francisco Bay Area vocal scene. She’s made her mark as an educator, choral director, dynamic performer, and—over the last ten years—recording artist. Her first two albums, On My Way to You (2001) and Mercy! (2006), earned her fans beyond the Bay, including vocal master Carol Sloane who memorably wrote that “Hers is a white chocolate sound, ...

"Hers is a white chocolate sound, intense and pure, swinging and bitter-sweet. Mercy! Ellen Robinson Live showcases the West Coast singer in a beautifully balanced program of standards and fresh material." Carol Sloane

"Ellen Robinson is blessed with great pipes." Jazz Improv Magazine

"Ellen Robinson knows how to connect with an audience. Each song has a story to tell and she does so with clarity and warmth." All About Jazz

Primary Instrument

Vocals

Location

Oakland

Willing to teach

Beginner to advanced

Credentials/Background

Bachelor of Music: Ithaca College Graduate Education: Bank Street College of Education, SUNY-Stony Brook, Hofstra University, C.W. Post. Teaching since 1971. Currently: Vocal teacher Jazzschoool Berkeley CA Member of NATS Director of vocal groups in the San Francisco Bay Area: The Anything Goes Chorus - mixed chorus for men & women Women's ensemble - Swingshift Singers Formerly: Vocal Instructor at U.C. Berkeley Extension, Berkeley CA. Choral Director at Oakland Youth Chorus, Oakland CA

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Mercy!

Self Produced
2007

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