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London Jazz News: Patricia Barber at Monument-National (Montreal International Jazz Festival)

"The Montreal audience for Barber was wonderfully supportive throughout and was rewarded with two encores. Howard Reich wrote recently that “every syllable, every chord change, every whispering vocal turn sends a message, and if you dare to breathe, you may miss it”. Yes, the Montreal public seemed to get that completely," READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Long-time Green Mill Regular Patricia Barber Reaches 'Higher' With a Profound New Recording

Barreling down the highway from a Minnesota gig the night before, Patricia Barber sounds exuberant.
 
“Minneapolis is one of my favorite places to play in the United States,” says Barber, speaking via cell phone, both hands on the steering wheel, she assures me.
 
“That’s because they understand English very, very well.”
 

HIGHER REVIEW: ALL ABOUT JAZZ

Patricia Barber is more than the sum of her talents. As a composer, she peels back the craft of song to expose its barest textures, cultivating each like a tree that, while holding its own shape above ground, makes apparent the roots below it. As a singer, she understands not only that we perform our voices but also that our voices perform us. Whether crooning through the Great American Songbook, as on Nightclub (Blue Note, 2000), or rowing through intensely original waters, as on the Ovidinspired Mythologies (Blue Note, 2006), she shapes words and meanings as one and the same.

PATRICIA ELECTED TO THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, 2019

On April 16, Patricia Barber was elected to the illustrious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a society founded in 1780 to honor excellence and convene leaders from every field of human endeavor toward advancing the common good. Among others elected this year are Michelle Obama, Jonathan Franzen, Judge Merrick Garland, gender philosopher Judith Butler, actress Anna Deveare Smith, and poet and president of the Mellon Foundation Elizabeth Alexander.

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