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While the back panel of vocalist Roseanna Vitro's The Music Of Randy Newman (Motéma,
2011) says "File Under: Jazz/Pop/Vocals," those labels don't do her
justice. Vitro's vocals are a conduit to the very core of American music—from
blues and rock to soul and jazz—and her recorded output over the past three
decades speaks to her talents and wide-ranging abilities in all of these
arenas.
Some vocalists who have been dubbed "jazz
singers" are afraid to move outside of the borders of tradition, but Vitro
embraces all that she encounters, allowing every experience to enrich and
deepen her own artistry.
Throughout her career, whether looking at her
formative years in Arkansas and Texas, or her high-profile albums on the Telarc
label in the '90s, Vitro has managed to avoid
easy categorization, due in large part to the fact that she follows her
artistic instincts instead of musical trends. When discussing this aspect of
her career, which is immediately apparent when looking at her discography,
Vitro notes, matter-of-factly, "I just follow my muse."
Her
earliest connections to music—her parents—gave her a diverse introduction to
music of all shapes and sizes. With a father who was, as Vitro notes, "an
Italian opera buff, who was really like a mafia guy, into Frank Sinatra andDean Martin," and a mother who was raised on country and
gospel music, "from a family of ten from the hills of Arkansas," she
learned early on that music has no borders. In terms of absorbing all of these
influences and allowing them to seep into her sound, Vitro mentions "we
all just have to be who we are, and it doesn't mean we can't be educated and
then develop, which hopefully I can say I've been doing."
When
Vitro made her first big move, decades ago, from her hometown to Houston,
Texas, she didn't have experience on her side and she was an unknown entity to
the local musicians, but she had determination and the confidence that comes
with youth. "It started out in Houston," Vitro says. "I don't
even think I had a right to want what I wanted, because I didn't have that much
experience about jazz under my belt, but when the jazz musicians discovered me
in Houston and treated me with such love and respect [and] had a coming out
party for me, once I got jazz
and really got on fire about it, I never looked back and I was always looking
for the greatest musicians to sing with.
I
was so spoiled by my first band in Houston. Scott Hardy, a guitarist, who is now a bassist with Leslie
Pintchik, who was a child
prodigy there and is a fantastic musician, and Bliss Rodriguez, a blind pianist
that could play in any key," along with saxophonist Arnett Cobb and other local heavyweights, helped Vitro gain
confidence in her own abilities.
"These
guys just spoiled me," she continues. "I just worked up songs like
crazy and, I think, in the early days, this great gig I had at a room called
the Green Room, where people like Bill Evans and Oscar
Peterson came in and sat
in with me and liked my singing, gave me the courage to just keep going
on." Read more on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=40042
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