Lizz Wright - And The Healing Has Begun
Friday, January 28, 2011
Lizz Wright has returned to her gospel heartland on her latest album Fellowship delivered with the intensity we have come to expect with the singer.
Yet it turns up some unexpected twists and turns that illuminate Wright’s remarkable talent. Interview by Peter Quinn
If Lizz Wright’s 2003 debut Salt gave the first indications of the stunning beauty and emotive power of her voice, then her latest album Fellowship takes her story into fascinating new areas. Her fourth album is one which completely envelops you in her gospel roots, her personal history, and her musical soul.
She may now be living in the western mountains of North Carolina (“It’s cold, but it’s beautiful and it’s clear, so I can see well into the woods,” she tells me over the phone), but cast your eye over the new album and it’s clear that her heart still lies in her Georgia birthplace. The signs of home are everywhere. Her chosen collaborators include Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon, the Georgia-born founder of the internationally renowned African-American a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock. Dr Reagon’s daughter, Toshi, is Wright’s trusted co-writer and, on this album, co-producer.
Ranging from the sacred to the secular, her chosen material includes an epic gospel medley kicking off with ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, a classic African-American congregational song which she would have grown up singing in church; ‘Amazing Grace’, the hymn she sang as a 19-year-old at a club on Peachtree Street, Atlanta, which marked the beginning of her current musical journey; and Wright even invests ‘Imagination’ by the Atlanta-based family group Gladys Knight & the Pips, another Georgia link, with a kind of ardent resolve.
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #149 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE CD...