Critical praise for Barb Jungr’s live performances and 2010 studio album, The Men I Love: The New American Songbook:
“Barb Jungr’s voice has established her as a superlative interpreter of the great song-books”
Independent on Sunday
“A quiet revelation… her sensual performance casts the songs in a fresh light” The Times
“Magnificent …Jungr’s voice is truly a thing of wonder.” The Daily Express
Barb Jungr, the much-revered vocalist, composer and songwriter arrives in Australia for a September 2010 national tour taking in the Noosa Jazz Festival, The Salon at the Melbourne Recital Centre, The Basement in Sydney, and many more dates.
English born, but of Czech and German parentage, Barb is one of Europe’s finest voices hands down. Critics regularly compare her to Nina Simone, Peggy Lee and Edith Piaf. The Village Voice in New York declared that “(Barb Jungr) is one of the best interpreters of Jacques Brel and Bob Dylan anywhere on this angst ridden planet today”.
This is why Barb Jungr is more than just a great singer. She’s one of the world’s premiere song stylists, drawing acclaim in Australia, Europe and the United States and famed for her inspired recasting of classic material. Her latest album, “The Men I Love: The New American Songbook”, has received rave reviews and is her first for the label Naim, documenting Jungr’s love of American popular song and its songwriters.
As has come to be expected with Jungr, the material displays her impressive ability to re-imagine well-known popular songs, revealing deep meanings and latent emotional content that comes to light when she dislodges the songs from their original contexts. It is this level of artistry that The Sunday Times calls, “astute…simmering….intelligent.”
This upcoming Australian tour will feature many of the songs on her new album – music written since the 1960s, including some by stars like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen. Alongside these is also an adventurous mixture that takes in Motown, The Monkees (via Neil Diamond), Bread, and even Talking Heads.
Fans can expect Jungr’s famed powers of interpretation to be in full flight as she breathes new life into every moment, and sounds as if she has lived every line of every song. In concert, Jungr will be joined by her sublime piano player, Jenny Carr – and together the pair deliver an experience that feels like each song has been taken apart to find out how they work, before remodeling them for a fresh look at a profound work of art.
As Time Out New York recently said about her 2010 live show: “One of the world’s great cabaret singers, England’s Barb Jungr is a genuine original, deploying warmth, high drama and sensitive musicality to reinvent everything she sings. Her supple and versatile voice glows like a hearth on a winter’s day, and her emotional intelligence is faultless: She knows just how a song should feel.”
The 2010 New York Times live review enthused, “She creates a level playing field, in which no genre, be it folk, soul, country or traditional pop, is better than any other, and every song is scoured to uncover its own raw truth. Empathy is her game, and few singers in any genre extend themselves more deeply into the lives of others.”
Is it true, as Jungr implies with her eye-opening interpretations, that many American songwriters from the rock era and beyond are not a breed apart from their predecessors like Gershwin, Kern, Mercer and Berlin? Is it right to have already closed the book (or the door) on the Great American Songbook? Jungr believes it is still being written and that Dylan, Springsteen and Cohen can comfortably sit beside Porter and the rest.
Make sure you find out for yourself this September as Barb Jungr delivers her extraordinary song stylings – combining her unique vocals with radical, minimal arrangements and interpretations. Barb is accompanied on piano by Jenny Carr.
Don’t miss one of these stirring musical evenings of mystery and intrigue.
Here are links to Barb’s sites:
http://www.myspace.com/barb.jungr
http://www.naimlabel.com/artist-barb-jungr.aspx
TOUR DATES:
Thursday 02 September 2010 -The Salon, The Melbourne Recital Centre
Friday 03 September 2010 – The Salon, The Melbourne Recital Centre – Vic
www.melbournerecital.com.au
Sunday 05 September 2010 – 2010 Noosa Jazz Festival – Noosa Heads – Qld
www.noosajazz.com.au
Tuesday 07 September 2010 – The Street Theatre – Canberra
Wednesday 08 September 2010 – The Street Theatre – Canberra – ACT
www.thestreet.org.au
Thursday 09 September 2010 – The Basement – Sydney – NSW – Click here to buy tickets – Moshtix
www.thebasement.com.au
Saturday 11 September 2010 – The Clarendon Theatre – Katoomba -NSW
www.clarendonguesthouse.com.au