Georgia Mancio is a coolly expressive jazz singer with a refined technique who cherishes lyrics and who listens closely to her playing partners. This compilation brings together a dozen live recordings from the ReVoice! singers’ festival she curates – with classy guests including Nikki Iles and Ian Shaw on piano and bassists Andy Cleyndert and Michael Janisch.
Mancio is quietly reflective with Cleyndert’s bass on Sting’s Fragile, and with Iles’ softly buoyant chords on I Do It for Your Love, and she scats ingeniously through Just in Time, over Janisch’s onrushing bass-walk. But if she can be improvisationally adventurous, she also appreciates the power of leaving a fine song alone – as on moving accounts of Carole King’s Going Back and David Bowie’s When I Live My Dream, and on the bittersweet original Bendita, performed with Tom Cawley, which emphasises how much impact she can make with the smallest of sounds. It’s a traditional jazz singer’s album, with plenty of scatting, but it never sounds knowing or slick.
