July 2011

Vocalist Becca Stevens’ Weightless marks a shift in the way jazz singers see themselves, and the way we listen to jazz singers.


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July 17, 2011

The first clue that “Weightless’’ isn’t an album by a typical jazz singer is that it’s credited to the Becca Stevens Band. The point isn’t just that Stevens is also an accomplished string player whose guitar, ukulele, and charango work is central to her sound. Identifying herself as a bandleader who’s part of an ensemble speaks to her singer-songwriter sensibility, albeit one steeped in the kind of improvisation and instrumental interplay usually found in well-honed jazz combos...


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June 2011:

The Becca Stevens Band

Hometown: Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Notes: How better to start a music roundup organized by genre than with an artist who defies categorization? Becca Stevens’s sound courses through jazz and pop, detours at the corner of classical and folk, and exudes the kind of quirks and vocal soulfulness you wouldn’t expect from a trained multi-instrumentalist. The title of her new album, Weightless, hints at just how unfettered the music is, if unfettered can be heavy, too—in that cool sense of the word.

Reminds us of: An angular, oddly syncopated Joni Mitchell.


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May 12, 2011:

There is an artistic point where Jacqui Sutton (Billie & Dolly (Toy Blue Typewriter Productions, 2010)), Gretchen Parlato (The Lost and Found (ObliqSound, 2011)) and Norah Jones (Feels Like Home (Blue Note Records, 2004)) intersect, giving rise to Becca Stevens, whose creative arc gains traction in a direction different from, but informed by, those singers. By combining Parlato's coquettish, diaphanous singing style, Sutton's rootsy, organic acoustic approach and Jones' tuneful composing, Stevens charts a course all her own in a spirited new direction...

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May 2, 2011:

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Becca Stevens deftly navigates nebulous terrain in "The Riddle," which initially comes across as a cautionary tale: She warns against falling in love with a woman whose heart already belongs to someone else, and whose head is filled with confusion. "If you love her, you will lose it," Stevens sings against a rustic backdrop. "Her head's a fog, her heart's under construction."

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2011:

Becca Stevens has truly cultivated -- so early in her recording career; this is only her second album -- a sound one wants to savor again and again. Finding a sweet spot where jazz phrasing and improvisation meet classic acoustic folk harmonic structure and indie rock panache, Stevens slots neatly into no single category. But her appeal goes beyond her evasion of easy pigeonholing: This is a vocalist and bandleader with command to spare, a flair for making savvy, split-second decisions, pulling tricky changes out of the air, and crafting arrangements that appear simple on the surface but reveal true sophistication with each successive listen. None of this would matter much if the voice wasn't a keeper, and Stevens' is. She's got a light, airy but assured touch and tends to stay in her upper register, but she's supple and authoritative, and the occasional measured swoop in another direction adds further dynamism and depth. Her delivery is expressive but she never succumbs to the faux …

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February 28, 2011:

A few years ago, my wife came home one night raving about a young singer-songwriter named Becca Stevens. We put on her "Tea Bye Sea" CD and were enthralled. It's beyond merely a singer-songwriter album: it's music that is impressive, touching, and seemingly all-encompassing. I'm not alone in finding Stevens to be a musical revelation:she performs this month at Carnegie Hall and Sanders Theatre with Brad Mehldau. I was able to conduct this interview via the internet (as always, props to Al Gore for inventing it...) and I found Stevens to be as eloquent and forthcoming in her question-answering as she is in her lyric-writing.

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January 12, 2009:

In December, I caught Stevens singing a few songs at the Lily Pad (on a bill with Boston subversives the Quartet of Happiness and solo saxophonist Patrick Breiner). She was just as self-assured solo. She sang one song with a guitar, a second with a ukulele, a third with the small 10-string South American charango. She sang some of the songs from her Becca Stevens Band CD Tea Bye Sea, and here was not only that big voice and no-bullshit emotional delivery but also some impressive fretwork, as she finger-picked tricky rhythmic patterns against her vocal line and also worked in a little bent-note figure on her song "Canyon Dust" that I would have thought impossible on a ukulele.

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December 8, 2008:

New York-based Becca Stevens plays the sort of jazz-tinted folk and pop that inevitably gets branded Joni Mitchell-esque and which the self-congratulatory Aimee Mann has all but ruined. But that's the mere surface of Stevens' sound, as her rich voice--she's the pipes powering Travis Sullivan's Bjorkestra--and plangent melodies easily seduce the ears into thinking her music is mere folk pop. Stevens is an odd arranger, though, with an ear for idiosyncratic meters and contrapuntal elements, and you suspect she'd have her own private Mirah army if she'd just hurry up and pen a manifesto or don some vintage glasses or something.

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August 4, 2008:

It is undisputable. The new best-kept secret (not for long) is the uber-gifted Becca Stevens. A recent graduate of the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, this 24 year old singer songwriter fuses several styles, jazz to folk, into her own bewitching brew of rapturous sound. She is a master of stringed instruments, with a harmonic arsenal that includes the classical guitar, ukelele and the charango. She has performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival, NYC Jazz Fest and the San Francisco Jazz Festival. On her new release 'Tea By Sea,' she is backed by the Becca Stevens Band, an ensemble that includes accordionist-pianist Liam Robinson, the saxophonist-guitarist Colin Killalea, the bassist Chris Tordini and the drummer Tommy Crane. Every member of the band also backs her up on vocals, making every track bubble with ethereal harmonizations.

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August 2, 2008:

Ms. Stevens, 24, is still something of a best-kept secret, known mainly among her fellow musicians. But since graduating last year from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, she has established a strong identity for those who have paid attention. The songs on “Tea Bye Sea,” available on cdbaby.com and iTunes, introduce a sound both wistful and determined, reflecting her training in classical guitar; jazz and pop singing; and the dramatic, Celtic side of Appalachian folk music. “She’s one of the most exciting singers that I’ve heard in a long time,” said Kate McGarry, an accomplished jazz vocalist whose tastes run along similar lines. “She has a kind of urgency in her voice that’s not hype, but real. It’s a rare balance between the use of the mind and a surrender to the emotions.”

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