A Song for You

For her fourth album, genre-jumper Janine Gilbert-Carter evens out her repertoire of recorded gospel and jazz by balancing the scales with another jazz album. This one is a live set from a Washington DC-area jazz festival, though one can hardly hear any response from the fans on the recording. The set holds primarily to some of the classic standards, using the songstress' full-sounding voice in what almost seems an Ella Fitzgerald-inspired phrasing from time to time. Of course, Fitzgerald's a tough act to compare someone to, and that comparison is likely unfair as a result. However, Gilbert-Carter has a fine voice on her, and is able to take hints of style from gospel to infuse a little more energy into some otherwise relatively flat numbers. The album is a bit hit-and-miss, without a whole lot of material that can't be heard on other similar regional diva albums. Pick it up for that tiny hint of gospel infusing the songs perhaps, but for straightforward and classic jazz diva-ship, go for the masters first (Lena Horne, Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, etc), and then think about the contemporary regional talents working from the American songbook.