Patricia Barber | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | November 8, 1955 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Songwriter, jazz singer, pianist, composer |
| Instrument(s) | Voice, piano |
| Years active | 1989-present |
| Labels | ArtistShare, Blue Note, Premonition, Concord, Impex, Floyd, Antilles |
| Website | www |
Patricia Barber (born November 8, 1955) is an American songwriter, composer, singer, and pianist.
Barber's father Floyd was a jazz saxophonist who played with Bud Freeman and Glenn Miller. [1] She played saxophone and piano from a young age, sang in musicals in high school, and studied piano at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s. [1] From there Barber went to Chicago and began performing regularly in bars and clubs. [1] She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in March 2003, an unusual accomplishment for someone working in the field of popular songwriting. [2] The Guggenheim allowed her to devote time to a song cycle based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. [1] She is married to musicologist Martha Feldman. [3]
An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release.
| Year recorded | Title | Label | Personnel/Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989* | Split | Floyd | Trio, with Michael Arnopol (bass), Mark Walker (drums) |
| 1991 | A Distortion of Love | Antilles | With Wolfgang Muthspiel (guitar), Marc Johnson (bass), Adam Nussbaum (drums, percussion, finger snaps), Carla White and Big Kahuna (finger snaps) |
| 1994 | Café Blue | Premonition | With John McLean (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), Mark Walker (drums, percussion) |
| 1998 | Modern Cool | Premonition | With John McLean (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), Mark Walker (drums, percussion), Dave Douglas (trumpet), Jeff Stitely (udu), Choral Thunder Vocal Choir |
| 1999 | Companion | Premonition | With John McLean (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), Eric Montzka (drums, percussion), Ruben P. Alvarez (percussion); Jason Narducy (vocals) added on one track |
| 2000* | Nightclub | Premonition/Blue Note | With Marc Johnson and Michael Arnopol (bass; separately), Adam Nussbaum and Adam Cruz (drums; separately), Charlie Hunter (guitar) |
| 2002* | Verse | Premonition/Blue Note | Most tracks quartet, with Dave Douglas (trumpet), Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), Joey Baron (drums); one track quartet with Eric Montzka (drums) replacing Baron; one track with Cliff Colnot String Ensemble added |
| 2004* | Live: A Fortnight in France | Blue Note | Quartet, with Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnapol (bass), Eric Montzka (drums) |
| 2006* | Mythologies | Blue Note | Most tracks quartet, with Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnapol (bass), Eric Montzka (drums); some tracks with Jim Gailloreto (sax) added; some tracks with various vocalists added |
| 2008* | The Cole Porter Mix | Blue Note | Most tracks quartet, with Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), Eric Montzka (drums, percussion); some tracks quintet, with Chris Potter (tenor sax) added; some tracks quartet with Alger (guitar), Arnopol (bass), Nate Smith (drums, percussion) |
| 2010 | Live in Concert | Floyd | Duo, with Kenny Werner (piano); in concert |
| 2013* | Smash | Concord Jazz | |
| 2019 | Higher | ArtistShare | Recording of song cycle "Angels, Birds and I…" |
| 2021 | Clique | Impex Records | A product of the same recording sessions as her 2019 album Higher. |
Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan said, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression. However, he adopted elements of modernism after 1940 in some of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955); and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of serialism in his Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).
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