What is more comforting than a Christmas carol? Beginning with a piano arrangement of Good King Wenceslas, she slowly fleshes out a harmony on the piano, building it up into an impressionistic wash of sound before entering with a soothing, warm vocal that ... and here's the problem: it's not remotely consoling. It's tenderly sung and arranged certainly, but Nina is telling her charge that she may as well give up: "It's time you knew / All you can ever count on / Are the raindrops that fall / On little girl blue." The culprits are everywhere, adding tender harps and vibraphones to tales of woe
The song isn't on the album but listen anyway
Guardian UK Newspaper Review
’Atlanta singer Lizz Wright's calm authority, technical elegance and cool sophistication as a jazz vocalist can make you forget how deep her roots in church music go. But in live performance, those qualities reverberate around a room like the boom of an organ. Church minister's daughter Wright is a natural choice to sing on the Barbican's tribute to Nina Simone, on a bill shared with the operatic vocalist Dianne Reeves, with West African singer Angelique Kidjo and Simone's daughter, who has recently released the big-band tribute album Simone On Simone.’
I had the pleasure of first seeing Lizz in Manchester a few years ago and since then I was hooked. I enclose a few videos that demonstrate the calibre of the assembled cast. I suggest that the strength of the assembled musicians and the music of Nina Simone has the potential for a cracking night.
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