Grammy nominated in the ‘Best Jazz Vocal Album’ category, After Blue presents one of the finest homages to Joni Mitchell's oeuvre imaginable. The album, Sutton's first solo outing without longtime bandmates pianist Christian Jacob and drummer Ray Brinker, begins with a superb arrangement of ‘Blue’ featuring the singer alongside the Turtle Island Quartet. A similar level of invention, insight and iridescence is similarly brought to bear on all of the material, including a magisterial ‘Woodstock’ with Larry Goldings on piano, and a memorable duet with fellow Milwaukeean Al Jarreau on ‘Be Cool’. The two cuts from Mitchell's classic 2000 orchestral album, Both Sides Now – the recording which finally offered Sutton her ‘doorway into Joni-land’, as she puts it in the CD booklet – ‘Don't Go To Strangers’ and ‘Answer Me, My Love’, are both standouts. But best of all is the final track, a magical amalgam of ‘April in Paris’ and ‘A Free Man in Paris’. It's one of the most touching things you'll hear this year.