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“Beata Pater is a Polish born international jazz star, but a star with her own language of music. Classically trained as a violinist in the Music Academy of Warsaw, Pater understands rhythm, pitch, the vocalise, and the juxtaposition of musical lines better than many of our finest classical musicians, and yet she employs all of these traits to her unique gifts as a jazz singer. Rather than concentrating on lyrics Pater instead puts her abilities to the test of communicating a song’s meaning through simply using her rather incredible instrument of a voice to produce musical lines instrumentally. On this fascinating CD she performs works written with her pianist/composer partner Mark Little though she does open the album with a work ‘Afro Blue’ by Mongo Santamaria. In ‘West Wind’ she shares the spotlight equally with Little and it is a contest of pitches and rhythms. When a singer relies solely on notes and vocalization of pitches she better have a broad spectrum of musical sounds and that is where Pater impresses. Everything here is wordless, not unlike the scat singing of the famous ladies of song Sarah Vaughn, Shirley Horn, Carmen McRae etc. The ensemble collected for this concert is comprised of Mark little, piano, Jon Evans, bass, Scott Foster, guitar, Renzel Merrit, drums, Celia Malheiros and Josh Jones, percussion, Darius Babaazadeh, sax and flute, Mikole Kaar, sax/flute/clarinet, Carl Roessler, didgeridoo (prominent on ‘Mr. Tad’ where the other feature is Renzel Merrit’s Rasta incantations!), and David Sturdevant, harmonica. And what a phenomenal group of instrumentalists this is – equal to Beata Pater’s concept of jazz. This is strange listening at first, but stick through the album and you’ll likely be seeking out her other releases. She is a bit of a wonder! Grady Harp”
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