Gill Manly at Pizza Express, W1

 

 Review: Gill Manly
(Ronnie Scott's January 2nd 2010, review by Sarah Ellen Hughes)

The backdrop of the club's bandstand still has the 50th Anniversary logo emblazoned: “Ronnie Scott’s – presenting the finest jazz since 1959.” In a jazz club which seeks to entertain such a diverse range of clientele, each listener can have their own idea of what the "finest jazz" is and what constitutes a hit or a miss. For me, Gill Manly's Nina Simone Songbook was a definite hit.


The evening got off to a superb start with Sam Mayne fronting the Ronnie Scott’s All Stars – this evening featuring Leon Greening on piano, Sam Burgess on bass and Chris Dagley on drums. I was particularly struck by the haunting melodic line of Jobim's Inútil Paisagem / If you never come to me – an ethereal alto over a lilting bossa.


Then came Gill Manly. Fiercely launching into ‘Mood Indigo,’ this told the audience one thing: “I mean business!” She immediately demonstrated her massive range and the incredible drama that she brings to her delivery. She is a great singer – capable of singing with a catalogue of emotions in just an 8-bar phrase. This was a tribute - of sorts. Much of the repertoire was drawn from Nina Simone’s 1984 album “Live at Ronnie Scott’s.” We had brief bursts of recordings from interviews with Simone, and Gill was also working with Nina’s last drummer, Paul Robinson.

Gill and her band worked hard. 15 songs in the first set, only to take a break for an hour and do the whole lot again. Simon Wallace on piano, who had done many of the arrangements, duetted sensitively with Gill’s vocal line. Each song was executed finely, but there were a few that stood out for me: Little Girl Blue was poignant and powerful; Mississippi Goddam had a haunting message; You’d be so nice to come home to featured Gill’s inner-instrument by way of a well-crafted scat; and the magic of I loves you Porgy was brilliantly quiet, captivating and with an emotional aching. This was the performance which generated the biggest applause.


Gill has had an interesting life, from being a jazz singer to discovering Mahayana Buddhism, to running a café in South London. All this to return to recording and performing after the realisation that jazz was her greatest love.


Anyone expecting a Nina Simone carbon copy from Gill Manly would have been disappointed – Gill doesn’t sound like Nina, nor does she play the piano, nor does she replicate the same assortment of styles for which Simone was famed.

Be all that as it may, there is only one possible closer for a Nina Simone tribute. And Gill took care to introduce it with the same words that Nina had done 25 years ago in the very same room “I think this is what you've all been waiting for...”

So the opening chords “My baby just cares for me,” were greeted by the audience with the laughter, the applause, and the pleasure of expectations being happily fulfilled. Gill Manly's tribute to Nina Simone was an evening of hip, swinging, and very, very cool singing. More, please!

16 June 2009
Vortex

CHRIS PARKER

Originally conceived as an 'Ella retrospective', but also containing a duet ('I Keep Going Back to Joe's') with US singer Mark Murphy unconnected with Fitzgerald, this album marks a welcome return to the recording studio for a woman widely respected by her peers but oddly neglected by the listening public. As Ian Shaw remarks: 'I have always been a huge fan of Gill's creamy, soulful voice...and to have it wrapped around the songs that we all learnt from Ella is just the proverbial icing.'

Manly's jazz literacy is proved not only by her choice of bandmates - pianist Simon Wallace, bassist Mark Hodgson, drummer Ralph Salmins, augmented by perfectly judged guest appearances from trumpeter Guy Barker - but also by her selection of much material that is justly celebrated in instrumental form ('Robbins' Nest', 'A Night in Tunisia', 'Daydream', 'Sittin' and a Rockin'') as well as some achingly lovely songs ('September Song', 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most', 'Where or When', 'Lush Life'). It is, though, her ability to infuse these familiar songs with her own spirit that is so impressive throughout this absorbing album.

These four last-named can often provide less talented singers with unearned short-cuts to emotional sophistication; in Manly's hands, they become once again subtly nuanced, even complex, but always genuinely moving, Rodgers and Hart's masterly 'Where or When' in particular the perfect fusion of melody and sentiment.

In these post-Aretha/Whitney days, it often seems that soul-based vocal pyrotechnics (fine in their place, it's important to stress) have become jazz singers' upper gears; Manly's power and grace are (gratifyingly) rooted elsewhere: in the era of classic jazz inhabited by the likes of Hampton, Jacquet, Gillespie and Ellington, as well as Ella, Billie and Sarah. Warmly recommended.

 

09 June 2009
In Tune International
Allen Pollock

Coming my way without prior knowledge of the singer, there was much to admire when listening to With A Song In My Heart (Linn AKD 328), a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, featuring Gill Manly, a colourfully attired lady judging from the artwork, who apparently last released an album in 1996. If anyone has this album I would appreciate hearing more about it as judging from this superb collection, we may have missed a treat, for the mainly London-based Gill has a warmly evocative vocal style which really should have been fully appreciated over the intervening years. However, I'm sure she has been honing her vocal craft in a few smoky jazz cellars somewhere as well as seeking a pathway to personally enlightenment. No doubt, such experiences have gained her maturity of vision and a deeply felt emotional gravitas in order to interpret the song choices on this album. Besides, with the venerated Simon Wallace (piano), Mark Hodgson (double bass), Ralph Salmins (drums) and Guy Barker (trumpet) to light the way, she has the advantage of a musicians fan-base in which to preview her wares. Gill obviously has a weakness for Ellington with ‘Daydream', ‘Take Love Easy' and ‘Sittin' and a-rockin'' allowing her to stake her claim, leaving ‘Midnight Sun', ‘Spring Will Really Hang You Up The Most' and ‘September Song' to brightly shine. The title song and ‘Where or When' show her poignant way with choice Rodgers and Hart ballads whilst jazzy ‘Love For Sale' is briefly prefaced by Bernard Hermann's moody ‘Taxi Driver' movie theme as the ideal showcase for Guy Barker's magnificent playing. In any case, anyone who can vocally nail ‘Lush Life' and also enlist the enriching vocal service of the great Mark Murphy to share ‘I Keep Going Back To Joe's' gets my support with my sincere hope Linn Records will hold on to Gill for more albums of this quality.

 

 17 April 2009
Record Collector
Paul Rigby


On a more contemporary note, albums released by Gill Manly aren't exactly plentiful. The first release since her debut in 1995, and temporary retirement due to health problems, With A Song In My Heart is a personal reflection on Ella Fitzgerald. Manly certainly has Fitzgerald's easygoing approach to a song, while occupying a higher vocal register. There's no real apparent effort to her delivery, resulting in a smooth performance.

 

29th March 2009

Phil Muse
Atlanta Audio Society

Manly puts personal stamp on standards

For the benefit of us Yanks, this British vocalist's given name is pronounced “Jill” as in Jillian, not “Gil” as in Gilbert. For the singer is definitely a lady, and in fact her seamless vocal artistry, ranging from a breathless girlish whisper to a boldly swinging full voice, will inevitably remind listeners on this side of the pond of none other than Ella Fitzgerald, on whose work Manly offers her own reflections. It's no coincidence the album is populated with jazz standards like Midnight Sun, Daydream, Night in Tunisia, Taxi Driver/Love for Sale, Take Love Easy, and Lush Life that have long been associated with Ella. Manly's interpretations have a dual appeal in that they pay eloquent tribute to the great American singer in a personal, fresh, and highly accessible style that is uniquely her own.

In songs like Lush Life, Where or When, and Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most, Gill combines nuanced interpretations with the absolute vocal clarity they require. In the latter, the personal intensity and the sensational lilt she gives the refrain really makes its memorable. She doesn't take as familiar a standard as September Song for granted, either, bringing out the pain in the lyric beginning “It's a long, long time / from May to December” in a subtly understated way that makes it all the more poignant.

Her take on the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn favorite Sittin' and a-Rockin' manages to be be almost more pure fun than the law should allow and faintly melancholy at the same time. And for me, she has done the seemingly impossible task of disassociating the album's thrice-familiar title song With a Song in My Heart from all Helen Morgan connotations. Here she uses the warmth of her jazz artistry to bring out the intimacy in the passage “When the music swells, I'm touching your hand. It tells me that you're standing near, and....” which occurs as a quiet reverie before returning to the melody in the next stanza and taking it big. Simple, yes, but you have to have the instinct for it.

Credit the support Gill Manly receives from the superb trio of Simon Wallace, piano; Mark Hodgson, double bass; and Ralph Salmins, drums. They show us all the unobtrusive ways a group can highlight a great singer. Longtime associate Mark Murphy adds his presence to a memorable duet with Gill in the concluding number I Keep Going Back to Joe's, which rounds off the program very nicely. And Guy Barker, a name we've often had occasion to cite in reviews of British jazz, takes a sensational melismatic riff in Night in Tunisia to compliment Gill's scintillating scats. Look for him adding his distinguished timbres to Manly's vocal artistry in Midnight Sun, Robbins' Nest and elsewhere throughout the program. In fact, there isn't a clinker in any of the 13 tracks on this album: all are winners, slow ballads as well as swinging numbers. How often does that happen?

With a Song in My Heart is apparently Gill's first album since 1996 and marks a comeback for the singer, who had been in retirement since the end of the 90's (Considering the history of the world since then, it was a good time to “take five.”) If it takes this artist 13 years to get it as absolutely right as she does with this album, let's hope we're all around in 2022!

 

27 March 2009
6moons.com
Frederic Beudot

I am not the resident Jazz expert, Ken is. But sometimes a recording just transcends tastes and styles and Gill Manly's With a Song in my Heart is just such a one. Manly has not put singing to disc since 1996, focusing on her spiritual quest and occasional live performances for more than a decade instead. For this long-awaited effort which marks the end of her self-imposed retirement, she did not follow the easy path however

With a Song in my Heart is clearly meant as tribute to the great Ella Fitzgerald with songs like "A Night in Tunisia" and many Jazz standards like "Taxi Driver" or "Midnight Sun". On this album, Manly avoids even some of her more gutsy bluesy singing to provide us instead with a more intimate and emotional, almost sensual interpretation as if trying to emulate Ella again with a very personal touch, a slight edge that she can't or won't completely forego.Manly manages to bring to life those well-known songs in a fashion that still surprises. She draws from her experience as an actress and decades of life performance to always keep the audience both comfortable and off balance. Only the most mature singers manage the exceedingly challenging task of making great classics sound new without making a fool of themselves but Manly does with talent while creating a clear bond with Ella.

If not enough for our pleasure already, throughout this disc Manly also keeps a powerful ace up her sleeve. Guy Barker's muted trumpet is an unexpectedly warm counterpoint to Manly's most intimate moments. It's not Ella and Louis nowhere near. This is a more caressing and engaged duo, one that gives "A Night in Tunisia" a more languid feeling than Ella ever achieved. If you let Manly and Barker guide you, you will smell the warm nights of the southern Mediterranean sea. Served beautifully by Linn's always excellent recording, Manly took me by surprise and had me rethink what I thought of contemporary female jazz singers. Whether you love jazz or not, you too should discover her as well since great music-making absolutely transcends boundaries and styles.

 

11 March 2009
Sempre Audio (translation)
Michael Holzinger

 

The aim of the album “With a Song in My Heart” was to capture Gill Manly’s personal reflections on the work of Ella Fitzgerald. The album therefore includes jazz standards such as Midnight Sun, Daydream, Taxi Driver, A Night in Tunisia or Take Love Easy and Lush Life. All of course in immensely interesting, accessible and catchy interpretations.

 

With every track Manly throws into the ring her experience gained through years of live performing. She succeeds, effortlessly, in drawing the audience - here the listener - under her spell within a few bars. Her training as a actress must likewise have been very helpful in developing the feel for how one can have a great effect with little accents and small gestures. Thus the artist baffles you as the listener with constantly new facettes and details, just when you mistakenly think there is nothing more to surprise you.

 

The album, produced by Simon Wallace and Gill Manly herself, is beautifully mixed by Simon Wallace and Mark Murphy, and refined by Philip Hobbs’ mastering. 

 

 

In “With a Song in My Heart” Gill Manly has achieved a fantastic piece work. The album is like a good book which you can’t put down till you’ve reached the last page. And having reached the last page, leaves you wanting more . .

 

10 February 2009
The Jazz Breakfast
Peter Bacon

Jazz singing is so much more difficult than many of the new jazz singers believe. It's so exposing, for a start - there is no external instrument to hide behind, no place to hide.

One note hit not quite in the centre, one shaky rhythmic moment, one verse which doesn't quite convince the listener... it's just so easy to fall.

Have you ever heard of Gill Manly? Nope, neither had I. I think we might be excused our ignorance as this is her first recording in over a decade and even before then she was working mostly locally in London.

For a while she turned to a spiritual quest, convinced her singing career was behind her. She picked up the mic again two years ago and this is very much the work of an artist given a much valued and strongly embraced second chance.

It's inspired by Ella and there are moments when an individual sample, subjected to a voice pattern test, might throw up an uncanny similarity in phrasing and timbre. To be able to approach the vocal near-perfection of the great Ms Fitzgerald is an achievement in itself. But this is certainly not to suggest that Gill Manly is an imitator for nothing could be further from the truth.

It's truly remarkable and truly inspiring to hear a "new" singer who is this good.

The songs are mostly familiar ones - September Song, Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most, Midnight Sun, Lush Life - but the insights Gill gives, both to their melodic and harmonic content, and to their lyrical meaning are fresh and original.

She is just as comfortable at quicker, swinging paces as in slow ballads, and her vocal technique is both impeccable and apparently effortlessly delivered.

She has a strong trio behind her, led on piano by Simon Wallace, Guy Barker adds some tasty trumpet and Mark Murphy pops in for a duet.

I've searched this disc for some failure, some fall from grace, but I have searched in vain. It's as near perfection as we humans can manage.

 

19 February 2009
The Times
Clive Davis

Gill who? Until a decade or so ago, Gill Manly was a familiar face, a versatile singer who - like her friends Barb Jungr and Ian Shaw - could skip between blues, jazz and pop and who had built an impressive reputation as a teacher and all-round ideas machine. Serious illness then interrupted her career, and her devotion to Buddhism carried her off on a different path all together.

Now she is back with an album that is easily one of the best vocal efforts of the past 12 months. With a Song in my Heart is a desperately old-hat title, to be honest, and the bland cover photograph of the artist, microphone in hand, is not likely to stop many punters in their tracks. It is only when you delve deeper that you truly sense the level of sophistication. It is, perhaps, the sort of record that can only have been made by someone who has done her share of living. Lush Life is the ultimate test, and Manly passes it in style.

Her Soho date was a slightly more easy-going affair, the singer - who now walks with a cane - remaining seated for the most part as her band, directed by that understated pianist Simon Wallace, blew an unpretentious path through songs from the album. Guy Barker stepped up to add peppery trumpet obbligatos.

It was not all torch songs. Manly let rip on I Ain't Got Nothing But the Blues and swung gently on Sittin' and a Rockin', the drummer Ralph Salmins and bassist Mark Hodgson setting up a nonchalant pulse.

If the choice of material was conceived as a homage to Ella Fitzgerald, the finished product bears the stamp of Manly's own personality. Her performance, particularly on Midnight Sun and Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, had an intensity that made the work of many of her younger rivals seem callow by comparison.

 

 

26 February 2009
Jazzwise
Peter Quinn

London-based jazz singer Gill Manly releases a well-received debut Detour Ahead way back in 1994 and then, for personal and professional reasons, completely dropped of the radar. And that, so it seemed, was that. Conceived as a personal reflection on the work of Ella Fitzgerald, With a Song in My Heart marks a stunning return to the recording studio. Coaxed out of retirement in 2007, and now signed to Linn Records, Manly's interpretations glow with a sense of rediscovery.

In contrast to the empty mannerisms of some jazz chanteuses, it's a joy to hear classics such as ‘With A Song In My Heart', ‘A Night in Tunisia' and ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most' sung with such intelligence and self-possession. As her take on ‘Lush Life' demonstrates, Manly is a singer who exquisitely balances clarity of line and emotional nuance, all wrapped up in her characteristically lustrous timbre. A terrific duet with her friend and mentor Mark Murphy, ‘I Keep Going Back To Joe's', fittingly brings the collection to a close.

 

05 March 2009
Home Theater Hi-Fi, Spirit of Change & Bay Area Reporter
Jason Victor Serinus


Oh my god. The last thing I wanted was to sustain a transatlantic relationship. But I've fallen in love with a new (to me) veteran jazz singer from the U.K. named Gill Manly. As I listen to her start her seductively slow version of Rodgers and Hart's classic song, "With a Song in my Heart," with the intro, "To my joy and delight, it's a new kind of love at first sight," her singing is so intensely personal and focus that I can't help feeling that she's singing just to me.

Given that Manly has emerged from retirement to devote her first album in 12 years to her spiritual teacher and father, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, her intimacy also carries the warmth of a universal embrace. The voice, which expands from soft, half-whispered sweetness to swinging openness, is adorable. Insinuating volumes with every phrase, Gill Manly recorded this album as a personal reflection on the work of Ella Fitzgerald. With the support of subtle piano, double bass, drums, muted trumpet, and Mark Murphy's guest vocals, she gives us such classics as gay composers Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" and Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life." Among the high-resolution SACD's other tracks, all of which can be played in either stereo or multi-channel format, are Anderson/Weill's "September Song" and works by Ellington and Gillespie. Available in hard copy or downloadable from linnrecords.com, this album is destined to bring Manly countless invites to the grand U.S.A. You've got to hear this fabulous artist.

 

 

01 February 2009
Sunday Herald
Alan Morrison

There's a subterranean nightclub vibe to jazz singer Gill Manly's first album in more than a decade. The lights are low and the spirit of Ella Fitzgerald is hovering close by, particularly on American songbook standards from Duke Ellington and Rogers and Hart. But Manly is her own woman, even when she launches into an Ella-style rendition of Love For Sale and lets loose with her vocal gymnastics. Such is the precision of her diction and the perfection of this recording that every whisper is like a kiss blown in your ear. If this all sounds a bit too easy-listening and not "jazz" enough, then head to A Night In Tunisia, with its buzzing trumpet solo by Guy Barker. The album ends with I Keep Going Back To Joe's, done here as a duet with Mark Murphy; as an encore it deflects attention, for surely Manly deserves to keep every bit of our applause for herself.

 

16 February 2009
Yorkshire Post
Andrew Vine

It's been a decade since the last album from singer Gill Manly, and it's good to have her back. She's a wonderful interpreter of top-drawer songs and this new CD oozes class.

The programme is designed as a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, so the programme is packed with timeless standards, as well as a few less familiar choices. Manly is superb, her rich voice bringing the best out of the lyrics, and her interpretations are coloured by a sense of improvisation, not least on a duet with the super-hip Mark Murphy on I Keep Going Back to Joe's.

 

SCOTLAND TODAY

Published Date: 01 February 2009

By ALISON KERR

GILL MANLY ***

With A Song In My Heart

Linn AKD 328, £12.72

Once you recover from the shock of the portrait (the singer as Frida Kahlo) that greets you when you open the case, there is much to savour about this recording. London-based Manly has, ironically, a very feminine, feather-light voice, terrific control and – judging by the selection here – great taste in repertoire and musicians. Trumpeter Guy Barker and pianist Simon Wallace lead an impressive quartet which creates just the right atmosphere for Manly's intimate vocal style.

 

 

 

Dr Sin's Blog The Eigth I Am

Believe it or not - and with this blog, you do have the choice - ace comic Spike Milligan was one of the jazz scene's most acute observers.  In 1969, he remarked that British musicians had come into their own and were a match for anyone in the world.

At the time, he was thinking of people like Tubby Hayes, once a leading light of The Jazz Couriers along with Ronnie Scott and later a multi- instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader of towering ability.

On this Saturday's programme (6/12 from 1pm), I'll be showcasing Tubby's orchestra in a version of "Milestones" that more than gives the Davis original a run for its money.  

Listen out too for a sneak preview of Gill Manly's forthcoming CD, "With A Song In My Heart" featuring Simon Wallace, Guy Barker and special guest Mark Murphy.  It's been a decade and then some since Gill last made off with our breath on disc, so this one's achingly overdue.  

If Spike were still with us, it'd be interesting to get his views on the future of jazz in the UK.  Perhaps he'd modify his famous epitaph ("I told you I was ill") to read "I tell you, folks, it's Gill!"

 BOB SINFIELD JAZZ FM

 

 

It has to be said that until recently Tuesday’s for me must have been the non-event of the week! Nothing happens on a Tuesday and nor on most occasions am I in a fit state after events of the weekend to want to do a great deal either. But for the past month Tuesday’s have somewhat become ‘the’ weeknight to get out of the house. February gave birth to Body & Soul, the Jazz Lounge at the RVT and it has to be said I’m a little bit hooked!

Over the weeks Gill Manly has embraced her weekly Tuesday residency by showcasing to The Tavern, some amazing musicians and revealing to us all her impeccable voice. What a way to end a successful opening month than to bring, for the first time ever in front of many of his South London Action Girl’s Society, Jonathan Paul Hellyer AKA The D.E. Experience as himself?

Gill Manly showed many new faces just what a star she is, an outstanding voice and air of true jazz legend about her, joining Jonathan for a finale duet performance of ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ that saw them leaving the stage and mingling with the masses.

Rating: 10

DEBBIEAN -SCENE - OUT.COM

 

"Then as the 'Powerful voice of Gill', filled the room singing 'Somewhere' against a video collection of clips relating to Human right issues, starting with Martin Luther King, covering the Stonewall riot, up to the present Campaign to 'Free Tibet', I was moved to tears as it was extremely moving and something I didn't expect to see at the RVT".

Scene-out 2008