Women Only

Boxset CD Women Only Kellylee Evans

Kellylee Evans:
A successful candidate in 2004 at the prestigious "Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals" competition with a jury composed of Quincy Jones, Al Jarreau and Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kellylee Evans, a young Canadian woman (Ottawa) with Jamaican roots, starts off her career singing « soul pop ». Her 2 first albums earn her a "Gemini Award" and the award for Best Female Artist of the Year at the "Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards" in 2007.
Back to her basics at the end of 2009 for this velvet-voiced artist with the recording of the album "Nina", a beautiful tribute to an artist she has carried within herself for a great number of years and whom she particularly admires, the great Nina Simone.
Surrounded by François Moutin, Marvin Sewell and André Ceccarelli Kellylee Evans and "Nina" are just 'starting" a very great career in Jazz.

Elizabeth Kontomanou
Invited by the Arsenal in Metz on January 19th 2008 and accompanied on this occasion by the Lorraine National Orchestra (conducted by its permanent conductor Jacques Mercier), Elisabeth Kontomanou goes back to the great standards that made the history of Jazz.
Accompanied in this adventure by three orchestrators, Tom Harrel, Gustav Karlström and Ann-Sofi Söderqvist, Elisabeth Kontomanou combines this major repertoire with more recent compositions, including Summer (a composition of her own), Siren Song (by her son Gustav Karlström) as well as a duet (Dreams of Gold) composed by and sang with Gustav Karlström.
The rhythm section (Thomas Bramerie, Laurent Courthaliac & Donald Kontomanou) and the orchestra (composed of 76 musicians) brilliantly carry and magnify the captivating voice of the « great lady » of Jazz.
Elisabeth Kontomanou, in perpetual search to « approach » and to « touch » Jazz, offers us with this recorded concert sublime and rare instants of music and emotion.
This CD track includes the smash hit "I put a spell on you".

Laika:
Laika Fatien sings English lyrics on songs popularized or dedicated to Billie Holiday, which is unusual for a woman born in Paris of a Spanish-Moroccan mother and a father from the Ivory Coast, and raised Jewish. There's little affectation in her phrasing that suggests her heritage, while diction and hard accents on certain syllables are unmistakable. Her pliant voice is rendered fairly straightforward in a limited range, sometimes echoing Carmen McRae, and as she describes it, is executed in a expressionistic way rather than utilizing theatrics and showy gimmicks.