my wife, the girl singer

I just have to take a moment to brag on my wife.

She's been taking a class at the Nashville Jazz Workshop for the past 5-6 weeks. She wanted to do it and really has enjoyed it. Tonight, they had a concert with each of the students performing 2-3 songs. All from the Rogers and Hart songbook.

She was great.

For those that don't know, my wife was actually a vocal major (classical/soprano) in college, so it isn't like i didn't know she could sing. She sings around the house frequently and..well, yeah. She's good. But she also has a fairly soft, small voice. She worked through much of college to counter that while singing classically (arias, no mics, etc). Worked a lot on technique and how to sing as big and strong and exaggerated as possible. She was good at it...but tonight, she was singing jazz. In my opinion, this is what she was made to sing.

Thanks to the mic, and the fact that she was singing a ballad (one of the songs anyway) really let her shine. She was able to drop all the exaggerated stuff she had been forced to do singing classically and just allow her voice to be natural. It was really beautiful. She did well on the up-tempo tune too, no question. Good energy, but not crazy, etc. But the ballad...this woman was made to sing lullabies and torch songs.

There was video shot, and i'm hoping we get a copy soon. I'll try to convince her to let me post it. I tried to record it using her Sansa, but it just didn't turn out too well. The band over balanced her in the recording (it was fine live) and i'm not sure if i am going to post it or not.

Anyway, i thought she was great, and really look forward to making her forget everything she learned in college and sing more pretty, jazzy stuff.

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Side note: The Nashville Jazz Workshop was awesome. That place is amazing. The players in her backing band tonight were very good (though for other acts later they seemed to be a little less-tight) and the building and atmosphere is amazing. Driving there looks really sketchy, but once you're inside the building it is awesome. It has me wanting to take some drum classes just so i can work on my chops some for the Quartet.

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Side note 2: This is my 250th blog post. :-)