Becki Biggins: The +ve (The Positive)

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Becki Biggins (v, ts)

Label:

Spotlite

June/2010

Catalogue Number:

SPJ CD 580

RecordDate:

November 2009

This follow-up to her 2005 solo debut First Love from 20-something singer, saxophonist and former NYJO member, Becki Biggins, is a 12-track collection of standards and pop material. Biggins has already notched up a number one album in the US Smooth Jazz Chart, Hardcastle 5, with composer/producer Paul ‘N-n-n-n-Nineteen’ Hardcastle, for which she co-wrote four of the tracks. Biggins is blessed with a seductive, golden-timbred set of pipes and, as her languorously lyrical solos prove (not to mention a BA in Jazz Studies from Leeds College of Music), certainly knows her way around a tenor sax. There are some strong statements on the album including a cover of Melody Gardot's ‘Who Will Comfort Me?’ which easily eclipses the original, and the metrical shifts of ‘Cheek to Cheek’. Elsewhere, however, songs such as ‘Night and Day’, ‘Alfi e’ and ‘Blue Moon’, while tastefully done, offer little in the way of a fresh perspective. The singer couldn't wish for finer accompanists than pianists Laurie Holloway and Malcolm Edmonstone.

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