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Music CD - Lizz Wright: The Orchard
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Music CD: The Orchard
Artist: Lizz Wright
List Price: $13.98
Our Price: $6.20
Your Save: $ 7.78 ( 56% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Verve Forecast
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Coming Home
2. My Heart
3. I Idolize You
4. Hey Mann
5. Another Angel
6. When I Fall
7. Leave Me Standing Alone
8. Speak Your Heart
9. This Is
10. Song For Mia
11. Thank You
12. Strange
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0602517511262
Label: Verve Forecast
Manufacturer: Verve Forecast
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Verve Forecast
Release Date: 2008-02-26
Studio: Verve Forecast
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wright is right on
Comment: If you know anything about Lizz Wright, you know she can sing. If you dont know anything about Lizz Wright, she can sing. Yet this is not the most extraordinary thing about this CD. First off she co-wrote 8 of the 12 tracks and you can feel the feeling and emotion in every one of them. Secondly and what struck me even more was the subtle and yet incredible diversity in her music. There is a strong acoustic presence throughout but you get a little gospel(Coming Home), a little rock(Leave Me Standing Alone) a little country(Song For Mia)and a little ballad(This Is). It is really an amazing array and shows to my delight that this lady doesnt have A style but many and does them all very well.
When I first bought the CD and saw track 11(Thank You) is said it cant be. My music roots were rock and roll back in the day and I clearly remember a Zeppelin tune of the same name. I checked the writing credit and guess what-Lizz was covering a Zeppelin song. I figured this would be a bust-most people cant cover Zeppelin and dont even try. I listened to it and I believe both Page and Plant would be proud of the result.
After this CD I am convinced Lizz could sit in with the boys on an acoustic version of 'Stairway' and if Jimi were alive could do a killer duet of 'All Along The Watchtower".
Buy this CD. Ms. Wright is a very talented singer, a thoughtful and emotion songwriter and has one of the more versital sounds I have heard in awhile.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lenora's picks
Comment: This is my favorite Lizz Wright CD. I was surprised that she was so young. Her voice and spirit is rich with experience and passion. I look forward to seeing her perform in person. Sit back, close your eyes, and let her enter your soul.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A storytelling vocal that creates the album's sensual charm.
Comment: Lizz has never been shy of experimentation with her sound - seemingly exempt from any commercial pressure, she has been allowed a journey (perhaps by her label) that many of her contemporaries would truly envy.
"The Orchard" continues with evolution of her artistry off the beaten path and the result is an incredibly personal album.
Working again with producer Craig Street (a producer famous for his work with a broad palette of singers such as Cassandra Wilson, k.d. lang, Me'Shell 'Ndegeocello), she moves further away from the accessible jazz of her 2003 debut "Salt" and toward contemporary soul without sacrificing any of her music's sensuality or spare beauty.
Her debut album was a great success critically, but "Dreaming Wide Awake" was an attempt at Norah Jones pop/jazz.
Now, Wright is back on the right track working with folk/blues ace Toshi Reagon on half the dozen cuts.
"The Orchard" is the mostly self-written album and it reflects her journey through life, starting with her life growing up in the small, rural church town of Hahira, Georgia. She may be technically considered a Jazz artist, but she's got plenty of Soul and Rhythm & Blues in her music as well.
The CD features an eclectic cast that includes noted singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon, who co-wrote several songs with Wright; Calexico members Joey Burns and John Convertino; avant-guitar hero Oren Bloedow; longtime Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell; Ollabelle member Glenn Patscha; and guest vocalists Catherine Russell and Marc Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius).
A youth spent singing in southern churches has left an indelible mark on the music of jazz-pop phenom Lizz Wright. But above and beyond her innate soulfulness -- her father was the preacher and musical director of her hometown church in Hahira, Georgia -- the young singer's strongest attribute is her tenacity.
When you first listen to her voice, many great names come to mind: Anita Baker, Cassandra Wilson, Regina Belle and Tracy Chapman.
Let it be said here: Lizz Wright is in a class all her own: the timbre of her voice is what strikes you first - rich and strong, infused with gospel and the vocal heritage of jazz.
Her knack for writing and interpreting intensely personal songs make it difficult to place her anywhere but in the heart.
She commits herself fully to her third effort, including the majority of the material she co-wrote. But something truly awesome transpires when she settles into hits by Led Zeppelin and Patsy Cline, each of which culminates with mind-blowing oomph.
In fact she luxuriates in her sprawling cover of Led Zeppelin's "Thank You", and her rendition of the Patsy Cline hit "Strange" is sublimely dreamlike.
Like any great singer, Wright has the ability to completely re-imagine and inhabit classic songs. She has the competence to get right inside her material, because she has an enviable ability to make focused, commercial music of great honesty.
Her voice, a large, contralto sound, often slow and heavy, is packed with emotion and commands attention, like on the opening track "Coming Home", a ballad with a prominent beat, a song that seems a blend between a spiritual and rock music and on the vibrant "My Heart".
The producer Craig Street, renowned for his understated, skilful recordings, doesn't overplay Wright's spectacular voice; instead, he drapes it in a polished contemporary jazz context mixed with blues and R&B plus a trace of pop and rock.
She responds with subtle grace and seeming sincerity, radiating a self-possession and maturity beyond her years.
Standout tracks : the intimate "Song for Mia", arranged in slow waltz-time; "The Silence", all pulsing piano and brushed-snare sixteenths and her blues-inflected, sultry interpretation of Ike Turner's "I Idolize You", where she oozes with primal desire.
It's not jazz, soul, blues or gospel - it's heart music.
"I'd been trained in choral, gospel and a little bit of opera", she says, "and wanted to move away from those styles. I love songs that create moments, that are very personal and that tell a story".
A storytelling vocal that creates the album's sensual charm.
Customer Rating:
Summary: New talent
Comment: Lizz Wright has a rich voice and uses it compellingly. The arrangements are tight and the songs very good, albeit not yet at the "great" level. A singer to watch as she expands her repertoire and uses that magnificent voice to its fullest.
Customer Rating:
Summary: more than i expected
Comment: i have LiZZ Wright's SALT album and i love it. This current one, The Orchard is more than I bargain for. I love it to bits ... she is in her own space. Brilliant
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Editorial Reviews:
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Wright's collaboration with Craig Street continues on The Orchard. While her prior releases boasted contributions from some of the jazz world's most respected jazz players, The Orchard features an eclectic cast that includes noted singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon, who co-wrote several songs with Wright; Calexico members Joey Burns and John Convertino; avant-guitar hero Oren Bloedow; longtime Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell; Ollabelle member Glenn Patscha; and guest vocalists Catherine Russell and Marc Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius). The Orchard's fluid, intimate performances reflect the unpretentious spirit in which the music was created. The project actually began with a set of photographs taken by Wright in her rural hometown, focusing on the orchard of the title, a setting that she's known since childhood. That organic approach was maintained throughout the recording process, which took place at studios in upstate New York's Catskill mountains, in Tucson, Arizona and Brooklyn. The sessions emphasized spontaneity and chemistry. That rare ability to exist within the musical moment is one of the qualities that make Lizz Wright a special artist and The Orchard a career milestone. "This record was a huge learning experience, in every way, and I think it showed me a lot about myself," she states. "I never would have imagined that I would have written some of the things I wrote on this record, or told some of these stories. But I felt really free and I really let myself go, and I surprised myself."
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