Greatness can exist from beneath the most humble of appearances.
The goal of jazz artist Katerina Polemi may be to Spread the Music, Not the Name with her latest album, but she'll likely end up doing both whether she intends to or not. Polemi's record is a spicy amalgamation of Brazilian and Gypsy jazz with sweetly brewed Greek and world-music ingredients tossed in as well. Together they culminate in an unidentifiable genre all of Polemi's own. Welcome to the accessible side of postmillennial jazz, wherein a jumble of stylistic influences can produce the most compelling of artistic hybrids.
It's not just the songs that unveil Polemi's wildly engaging versatility; it's her voice. On the opening track, “Hats Relate to the Wind," Polemi's playful vocals groove effortlessly with the sultry sax and giddy rhythms of the track's Dixieland jazz flavors. Her self-confident strut on “My Dear Heart" is in synch with the song's shuffling beat while on “To: Inspiration," Polemi's loving croon rests comfortably atop the intimate acoustic setting.
Born in London, England but raised in Brazil and Greece, Polemi echoes the finest aspects of Spanish and European jazz. Her singing embodies the exotic beauty and rambunctious energy of the former with the open-minded creativity and classy tastefulness of the latter. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Polemi is also a guitarist and pianist. With inspirations that range fromAntonio Carlos Jobim to Ella Fitzgerald to Amy Winehouse, Polemi is one of those artists who obviously sees no boundaries in music, letting the flow take her wherever it wants to.
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