Jazz Review wants to thank Ann Hampton Callaway, Cyrus Chestnut, Brenda Earle and Sherrie Maricle for taking time to share with us their Christmas memories and plans. Where did you spend Christmas growing up and what special memories do you have of that time? Ann Hampton Callaway: No one does Christmas like Chicago, with great white lights everywhere and snow swirling in the wind. It’s like you live in a holiday snow globe. I love …

Rory Partin is a renaissance man in the world of big band swing music. Although he wasn’t born when many of the standards that appear on his new CD The Very Thought of You were first written, he sings them with the same charm that made Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin and Nat King Cole household names. One of the premier crooners in music, the Louisiana born Partin is the lead vocalist and bandleader of the Rory Partin Band. Listeners will enjoy his smooth rich vocals on favorite tun …

Whether she is singing in front of an audience, on a CD or talking to you, Adi Braun has a sensuality that drips from every note and leaves you hanging on every word. "I think we all sing about love," she says. However, Braun is much more than lusty vocals, she is a very good jazz singer who is quickly making inroads both in North America and Europe. Braun’s Rules of the Game album is filled with love stories from some of the best songwriters past and present. She provides a beautifu …

Take a space age sounding name like Galactic, mix in musical influences from Mardi Gras Indians and Professor Longhair, add some great honest sounding organic jazz tunes and you gain some insight into the music of drummer Stanton Moore and the influences that infuse his tunes. Moore combines a career as the drummer for Galactic with a burgeoning solo career that just saw him release his third project under his own name. The CD is simply titled Stanton Moore III. At the time of ou …

"I like to be able to walk inside sound and touch this or that element," says Brazilian singer Cibelle from her home in London, England. "I have this song, then this world starts growing inside of my head and I start painting that song out. I embrace that poem with sounds that, let’s say, helps this poem reach where it has to go," she says. Her multi-layered songs are as much a product of the many facets of her personality as they are of continuous mixing of the tracks until she arrives at a …